About the Cover Illustration

The figure on the cover of Kotlin in Action is captioned “Habit of a Russian Lady at Valday in 1764.” The town of Valday is located in the Novgorod Oblast region, on the road between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The illustration is taken from Thomas Jefferys’ A Collection of the Dresses of Different Nations, Ancient and Modern, London, published between 1757 and 1772. The title page states that these are hand-colored copperplate engravings, heightened with gum arabic. Thomas Jefferys (1719–1771) was called “Geographer to King George III.” He was an English cartographer who was the leading map supplier of his day. He engraved and printed maps for government and other official bodies and produced a wide range of commercial maps and atlases, especially of North America. His work as a map maker sparked an interest in local dress customs of the lands he surveyed and mapped; they are brilliantly displayed in this four-volume collection.