Victorian Tea

By Erin Nicholes - 04/16/2008

Men’s and women’s turn-of-the-century footwear are lined up in Virginia Loranger’s home.

Delicately draping a long black skirt over her arm, Virginia Loranger noted the garment’s surprising weight and elegant beadwork.

“It’s my grandmother’s,” Loranger said of the skirt, worn to Anaconda social affairs in the late 1800s. “She always had it in a box in the closet. She’d open it up and I’d say, ‘I’m going to wear that someday.’” Today, the skirt is among a collection of period clothing Loranger assembled from her ancestors’ closets. She brings out the pieces for special occasions, such as an Anaconda Garden Club event slated for Friday and Saturday.

The club is hosting a Victorian tea and fashion show each day at 1 p.m. at a historic home at 218 W. Seventh St. The event includes a luncheon and tea party. Following, Loranger will display her collection and its role in Anaconda’s past.

“My uncle was an antiques collector, and we just kind of kept everything,” Loranger said of the collection, which includes her grandmother’s wedding gown, a child’s fur coat and a variety of shoes and hats.

The public is welcome to the event, which costs $12 and is a fundraiser for the garden club’s beautification projects, including downtown flower baskets and copper ladles throughout the community.

Casual dress is welcome, but guests may get in the spirit of the event with period attire, said Rosemary Corrigan, club president.

“We’re encouraging people to come and have fun and if they have this sort of stuff, to share it,” she said. “We will have a bunch of hats there, but if they have their own that would be wonderful.” The club, she said, needed a fundraiser to supplement the holiday historic home tours, and members opted for a tea party after other groups had success with similar events.

“I have given several teas at my house as fundraisers,” said Alice Richards, a garden club member and tea party organizer. “It’s a fun get-together of letting your hair down and pretending.” The menu includes several tea flavors, scones, ribbon sandwiches, salmon on rye bread, cucumber sandwiches, a chicken-and-rice salad and four dessert choices.

“Once the dessert is being served, we’ll start our fashion show,” Corrigan said.

In addition to viewing Loranger’s collection, guests will get an insider’s view of one of Anaconda’s most historic homes.

The Anaconda Copper Mining, Co. — which historically owned Butte’s copper mines and Anaconda’s copper smelter — built the home around 1920 for the superintendent of the Anaconda Reduction Works. The company sold the house after superintendent Frank Day retired in the 1970s. It is now owned by Fay and Jack Weber, and often hosts social events.

“It’s sort of an Anaconda tradition … Helen and Frank Day were very generous about the use of their house,” Jack Weber said. “People have used this house for nice little things.” Erin Nicholes may be reached at erin.nicholes@lee.net