On Objects and Things: The Wilkie Wedding Dress and the Drawings of Sarah Casey

Abstract

Clothing is often cherished long after memories have begun to fade and the inevitable process of decay have begun. Such is the case with the silk wedding dress and bridal veil worn by Evelyn Normand Wilkie (1902-1969) in her 1927 wedding to Douglas Howard in Nova Scotia, Canada. Her homemade dress has now yellowed and the silk is shattered and given its poor condition the dress is an unlikely candidate for acceptance into a museum or study collection. This object biography probes the thingly presence of Wilkie's wedding dress as an object and as the source of creative inspiration for the drawings of artist Sarah Casey that became the focus of a 2019 exhibition at Ryerson University in Toronto.