Busks were first used in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries in Europe, England, and America as accompaniments to undergarments worn with fashionable attire for both men and women. Commonly associated with women's attire in early America, by the end of the seventeenth through to the early nineteenth century, busks were used in tandem with "stays" because the bodice of women's dresses lacked support and required a separate, stiff undergarment to create the desired form of the body. Stays created a straight line from the chest to the waist, while busks could be added to the front to further smooth the stomach and accentuate the stiffness of the torso.1
Changes in the form of dress and an increasing fashion by the mid-nineteenth century for a curved, womanly figure, resulted in the adoption of the corset. Corsets differed from stays in that they accentuated the curves created by the bust, waist, and hips. While some early nineteenth-century corsets incorporated busks, by the 1850s, the term referred to a metal strip with clasps used to close a corset.2 While these "busks" performed a stiffening function somewhat like earlier examples, they took a very different form.
