Month: September 2012

Runaway! Ambitions

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, making things9 Comments
The Met, ca. 1774

Regular readers know I have a tendency to make things, especially clothing, especially for events. So another event–actually two: What Cheer Day! and Nathan Hale–approaches, and the question, as ever, is what to wear?

I like to start with the runaway ads for inspiration and documentation. The ads for Rhode Island runaway women can be limited, so I look in Boston and New London as well, and sometimes Philadelphia. My mother lives outside Philadelphia, and I know that trade connected Providence and Philadelphia in the 18th century, in particular through the mercantile house of Brown and Francis.

Of course, I do also have a fabric problem not unlike my bonnet problem. I buy fabric, and stash it. Most sewers do, and after regretting a pair of very-marked-down red leather Andrea Pfister pumps I did not buy at Marshall Field’s one winter, if I like something, I buy it. It is often red, viz:

I know what merchants were selling in Rhode Island, and as early as 1768, Samuel Young in Providence at the Sign of the Black Boy, is selling “Chints, calicoes, and patches of all figures and prices.”

When I found the ad for the runaway wearing the red and black chintz gown, I knew I wanted to make that gown.

“Run away, on the 30th of last March, from the subscriber in Fourth street, near the Post office, an apprentice girl, named Anne Carrowle came from London with Captain William Keais, in the year 1769, she has a fresh complexion, brown hair, near sighted, left handed, round shouldered, and about 16 years of age; had on, when she went away, a green silk bonnet, an India red and black and white calicoe long gown, a blue halfthicks, and striped lincey petticoat, a white apron, and new leather shoes; she has been seen trolling on the Lancaster and Gulf roads, on pretence of going to service at Esquire Moor, and the Bull Tavern, and then at Carlisle….” [Pennsylvania Gazette, 27 April, 1774]

To add to the fun, I know Lancaster and Gulph, and this could be close to where my mother lives now. Too bad I am so far from 16.

Moving on…Here’s the dilemma: front closing or not? Open robe or round gown? The last one seems easier, as the petticoat is described, and thus probably showing, so an open robe. But the bodice, what about that? Stomacher front or closed?

There is a gown in the National Trust dated ca. 1770 with a closed front. And there is a gown with a missing stomacher in the National Trust dated ca. 1770. There are many gowns in the Snowshill Collection with closed fronts, but what is documented to New England? Before 1773, it seems, only stomacher front en fourreau gowns.

PMA, ca. 1775-1780s

I think the answer is that the runaway in 1774 is not wearing the height of fashion–though at 16, she will trend as new as possible, and could be wearing a closed front gown. For me, as a middling to lower sort, I think the best choices will be a stomacher front gown with robings. I have a bodice block for a front-closing gown, know the fit works, and have a back a like and a sleeve I can live with. So on to a muslin for the stomacher front, I think. The center front closings of the striped cotton gown in Philadelphia are probably too modern for what I’m doing, and for my age.

Really, it should be brown linen. Sober. Mature. Not running away. But what are costuming and living history, if not a kind of running away?

Smelling the Past

On By kittycalashIn History4 Comments

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What did it smell like? I think that’s something many of us would like to know about the past. We can, with some hard work and luck, know what it felt like (clothes, furniture, household furnishings can be touched with an appointment in some museums). We can know what the food tasted like–and last weekend’s event at Coggeshall provided excellent examples of that, since we ate meals based on traditional receipts and made with vegetables and meat grown on the farm. Musicians play period music on period instruments, deportment books, plays, and letters give us insight into how things sounded.

But what did it smell like? That seems more elusive, but just as important. Smell is critical to forming memories, and recent research has highlighted links between odors/scents and the formation of memories, especially episodic and emotional memories, and summarized well here and here. So knowing what the past smelled like–and that is a crazy big generalization–would help us understand the way people experienced their lives and formed memories, like Proust and his madeleines.

But it’s easy, you say, the past smelled of horse dung, urine, and wood smoke, and to a degree it did. But yesterday, sitting on the hill of the John Brown House watching weather slowly come in from up the Bay, I thought of the smells of Providence. The lawn smelled of dry mowed grass, because it had been mowed in the sun on Monday. The wind smelled of fish and salt water as it whipped up off Narragansett Bay, and I thought of the smell of the shift, apron and shirt washed at the farm on Saturday, and realized we forget the smell of laundry.

When we unpack from an event, the house smells different: things reek of wood smoke, sweat, and black powder, and sometimes rain. The smoke smells a little different each time, depending on the wood we burn. But the things from the farm smelled really different, and it was the laundry. It smelled of fat.

Basic soap is made of fat rendered with wood ash and lye, though fancy soaps used olive oil instead of animal fat. So my laundry smelled of the soap that was used, just as it does today, but this soap had both a softer and a stronger odor. That is, there wasn’t the bite of chemical backlash you get with some detergents, but one shirt, one shift, and one apron, folded, created a marked island of scent in the corner of the room.

If I had been sitting in mowed grass on the slope of Power Street 213 years ago, I would have smelled my self (wood smoke, laundry soap, sweat), the grass, and the fishy wet wind from the Bay in addition to whatever was rotting in the midden or festering the street where the horses had been. Spices and oranges on the docks might add to the wind from the Bay, and I like to think that all together, in the 18th century, Providence smelled like possibility.

Just Keep Stitching

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Museums

It is going to take a long time to finish, and longer because I’m doing it alone, have little room for the frame in our apartment, and have a family to sew garments for. But if I just keep stitching, it will get done.

The photo is from Sunday at Coggeshall Farm, and gives an idea of the set up. The frame worked well, though the pegs did fall out in the drier weather. No wobbles, though. It’s a little tricky to stitch from different angles and to maneuver around, but I’m accustomed to lap quilting even large pieces. This needs a frame, so I’ll just adapt.

The sandwich is comprised of a linen backing, wool batting, and a plain-weave silk and wool top. I’m quilting with some silk twist from Wm Booth Draper that matches pretty well. This is a compromise, given that I can no longer buy tabby and calamanco, or fine plain weave wool. The wool (calamanco/tabby) originals in the RIHS Collection are lined with wool, not linen (the silk petticoat that belonged to the Browns is lined in a fine white linen plain weave), but I could not find materials that satisfied my requirements for weave, sheen, color or fibre. The compromises I made I will have to live with—one hopes without recriminations—but they are balanced by the panels I stitched at about 13 to 13.5 inch intervals to match the dimensions of the originals. I’ve also laid the petticoat out in the same proportions as the originals.

Now all I have to do is keep stitching…

The Public: Not Quite the Enemy

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Museums, Reenacting9 Comments

Ah, the public. We’re not really much without them—we need an audience, don’t we? Living history practitioners/costumed interpreters/re-enactors are all looking for an audience. We like to tell people about the past, so we need the public. Sometimes, though, the public is a trifle confounding.

In one weekend, I heard or heard about the following questions or comments:

Are you Jane Austen? (This from a 10-year-old girl in a grocery store, so it’s actually score one to the girl for knowing Jane and getting the dress period right, and one to Dana, who answered with grace.)

Look, it’s the Pilgrims!

Gosh they must have been hot back then. I guess they had to adapt, but they must have been awfully hot, even if they didn’t know any better.

Why is it like it used to be in here? (My favorite!)

Did children chase chickens back then?

What are you chopping all that wood for?

Oh, look, the fire’s on!

I thought you’d all look pretty like the ladies on British TV. [i]

There was also a group that trouped in and just stared. Stared. Hard. I couldn’t manage to say anything, though Vicky and Johanna did an excellent job explaining what we were doing. By the time it was my turn, they’d stared in silence for several long minutes and it was just too weird to say anything.

So, what to do? Not much, I think, but to join and support your local history organization to encourage history education for all. And for those of us on the receiving end? Take a break, eat a snack, stay fresh, and park the snark. Wait until the tour has left the building to react.

I had only one not-great experience. A child came behind my quilting frame, popped on my bonnet, and left the room while I asked several times, “May I have my bonnet back, please?” Her mother turned to me and said, “We thought this was interactive!” Well, yes, but that is my personal bonnet. So the lesson for me is hide my bonnet better, and for the public? It never hurts to ask if you can try on the item sitting next to the interpreter, or to touch the things they’re clearly working with. And never touch an interpreter or re-enactor unless invited to. Yes, it has happened.

Manners transcend centuries: please and thank you always work.

[i] This is similar to what a guide at work said the first time I did a program in period dress, wearing a linen gown. “I guess they were more comely at Colonial Williamsburg than in New England.” I am not a fancy lady. But not comely? Well, maybe I’m built for speed.