Month: January 2013

Feeling 1820ish

On By kittycalashIn Clothing1 Comment
Walking Dress, 1820
Walking Dress, 1820

For no good reason, I’ve been feeling 1820ish. This is a huge distraction from my primary objectives, which for the short term are 1775, 1799, and points in between. The in-betweens depend on what unit Mr S is fielding with, and at which event. Monmouth, for example, is the 235th of the battle fought June 28,1778 in New Jersey. The Second Helping regiment was at that Battle, (I checked the order of battle and know from diaries like Jeremiah Greenman‘s) and that means that his regular old hunting frock (called the “fluffy shirt” by my Facebook friends) would do, if—and only if—he fields with the Second Helpings. If not, then it is another piece of work altogether. Major casualties at that engagement were from heatstroke, by the by, so it may be that wearing two layers of wool in New Jersey in June is not recommended by most physicians.

But I digress, yet again.

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I am feeling 1820sish because Robert Land has, at long last, shipped my Regency Lady’s Boots. They should arrive by Saturday, and for having ordered them in mid-October for a mid-January event, we are actually on fairly normal Robert Land time. Sigh. I’d get mad, but the man’s shoes fit my pedal extremities, which really are colossal.

So the boots are on their way, in green, and while they won’t be exactly like these, they can be modified, with blue laces to begin with, and tape later. 

And that has led me to think about the obstreperous bonnets of the 1820s, like this fantastic quilted item from the MFA,

Quilted Bonnet, MFA

There are dresses at the V&A for which I have comparable fabric, and Spencers at the Met, and many fashion plates to delight (see the Pinterest board. I may not get any of these things made, but they’re fun to think about—especially the bonnets.

This is all supposed to be fun, isn’t it? It’s surely more fun than moving 18,240 books (some of them twice) which we did this past week at work.

Projects A-Waiting and Awry

On By kittycalashIn Historical Sew Fortnightly, making things

One of things I like about the HSF series is that it keeps me sewing. It’s good to have accountability, and the challenge provides it. Structure, and deadlines: good for the soul.

And then there’s that factor known as work. We’ll call it that, as the effects are often described in language not suitable for the New York Times, last bastion of manners. Poor William Shawn spins as each New Yorker is printed: he’d never let //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” target=”_blank”>douchebag pass.

But I digress.

Things changed in the schedule and now I don’t have to sew delicious frock coats and corduroy breeches for February. The good news is that I will not have to wrangle the unwilling to be fitted immediately, and I will be that much more skilled by Fall, when the clothes will be wanted. It also means (sort of) that there is actually time to sew for me. This is a very good thing, as I am planning to attend Dress U and even to teach (heaven help us all) two classes, one on using museum records and collections online and in person, and another on what Reenactors and Costumers can learn from each other. So while I’m thinking about 1790s wool jackets and trousers, a Battle Road-worthy wool gown (pfft! Gowns seem easy now!), Battle Road men’s wear (a little queasy, not so easy) and at least one more pair of overalls (unprintable, really) I am also thinking about how much I don’t want to be the tiara-less, non-sparkly girl again.

What does that mean? That means silk, and the Curtain-Along Gown, which I think I have figured out. (Figuring out the silk part will come later, I’m just happy to have gotten this far…)

1780-1790 chintz gown
1780-1790 chintz gown
Fairfax House
Fairfax House

Historical Sew Fortnightly  #3 Under It All: I meant to do my shift, but that changed. Voila, petticoat. I have Ikea cotton curtains that will make a lovely petticoat that can be worn with a Curtain—Along gown of the dark red Waverly chintz, which I plan to make in the style of one of these gowns. An all-cotton, all-curtain ensemble makes me laugh: I am a Carol Burnett fan.

If I get the petticoat done, then I will have to make the pretty dress, at least eventually, which should be sometime between overalls (April 20) and Dress U (May 31).

10th Mass LI at Nathan Hale
10th Mass LI at Nathan Hale

That leaves time for something wicked regimental this way comes by June 15. Oh, yes, I expect Monmouth is in my future, humidity, turnpike and all. Why would I miss that?

A Visit with the Ladies

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, History, Museums6 Comments

The apple never falls far from the tree, my mother used to say, of me and my grandmother, her mother, Elsa. Elsa went to a woman’s college, majored in botany, graduated in the mid-twenties, and went back to western New York State, where she opened an eponymous dress shop.

Elsa, Studio Portait ca 1935
Elsa, Studio portrait ca 1935

Elsa managed that shop for more than 50 years, dressed most of the women in town (or at least the type of woman who knew how to dress, and be dressed), and even dressed a woman who later became a donor to the architectural collection I managed in St. Louis.

She was a controlling woman, no doubt, and carefully managed and cared about her appearance. She was also a lady of a steely, ladder-climbing type native to the 1940s and 1950s, full of the foibles and desires of the daughter of immigrants who spoke Swedish at home. The stories they told about her would make a cat laugh: the day the local radio station called and Elsa answered the phone (on air? That part was never clear) to find out that the household had won a month’s supply of white bread.

“Oh no,” she said. “I don’t believe we care for that,” and hung up.

Not of the quality to which she had become accustomed, you see: she insisted on some picky particular white sandwich bread for fancy lunches, and otherwise ate the limpa rye the cook or  Ingeborg made. All the household help was Swedish, as were the women who did alterations at the shop.

Elsa married late, at 35, and her husband moved into the house she shared with my great-aunt and their father, August, known as Morfar after my mother was born. Buying trips to New York for her store resulted in the delivery of boxes from Saks Fifth Avenue, deliveries that came so often, in such quantity that my grandfather questioned her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “They just keep sending them.”

Elsa in Italy ca. 1980
Elsa in Italy ca. 1980

They were boxes of shoes, spectators and sling backs, pumps, court shoes, Cuban heels, stilettos, peep toes, sandals, every kind of shoe you can imagine, and all in brown, tan, beige, ecru, off-white, cream, none of them black or red or blue or green. Beige: that was her signature color, beiges and browns with occasional accents of coral or green or gold. She assigned blue to her younger sister, my great-aunt Gladys, and when Gladys once dared to buy a beige dress she liked, Elsa had a temper tantrum. A quiet one, but effective.

She died before she could meet my husband, died before I was married, and I am sorry about that. But I remembered her this week when I went with my friend (and Registrar) to visit two older ladies, sisters, on the East Side. We picked up a collection of clothing worn when the two ladies (now in their early 90s and late 80s) were babies, the wedding dress their mother wore in 1918, the dress one wore in 1939 that her daughter wore again in 1970, with quite the wrong black moccasins, at a Christmas Eve party in Georgetown.

The sisters reminded me of my grandmother and aunt, and the clothes reminded me of what my grandmother sold and boxed and wrapped in her store. Sitting at the mahogany table for lunch, drinking tea and eating a slightly stale roll, I missed Elsa and Gladys terribly, but was glad for all they’d taught me about how to behave and what the world was like for independent women in the 1940s and 1950s

Women’s Work

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, Reenacting5 Comments
Cooking. Gets you every time.
Cooking. Gets you every time.

Three holes (at least; there might be four) and mending to do. The patches are cut, but I’m thinking now that a wool apron might be a good thing to have. The other thing I’ve been thinking about is what James Thurber called The War Between Men and Women, and how even in educated, enlightened North America, it plays on. [i]

At living history events or reenactments, the work and activities are divided along gender lines. Participants are supposed to follow “the rules,” which keep women on the observer side of the rope line and the men free to run around with muskets. Women sometimes seem purely decorative at the military events, and the relationships between men and women are curious. There’s the sexism between reenactors, and the sexism of the public, who can often assume women know nothing about what’s happening.  Women should, after all, know their place, just as the men know theirs.  Women can cook and clean up after the men, and the men will do all the talking, even when they’re wrong.[ii]

In a more domestic setting, this same historical dynamic can play out: women cook and serve the meals, wash the dishes, fetch the wood and water, and clean the kitchen, while men muck about outdoors until their tools break. Then they lounge about smoking, drinking, and talking.

Sandby, Washing at Sandpit Gate, 1765. Royal Collection.
Sandby, Washing at Sandpit Gate, 1765. Royal Collection.

That’s all OK, to a degree.  But we’re not in the 18th century, and the women in the kitchen don’t enjoy washing other people’s dirty dishes as well as all the cooking pots and tools. We had a system on Sunday evening, but I did notice that some men just can’t be the only guy helping: once the other guys leave the room, they’re out, too, with a kind of desperation, even as the light wanes and we need all the help we can get to finish up.

So what to do? Interpreting the 18th century means facing gender roles that most American women today don’t like or embrace. What’s the best way to interpret women’s history and women’s roles in the past to people today?

On Sunday, I left the house to call the guys to the first meal, and a visitor asked if the sheep in the field were part of the site. “Yes,” I said. “ But I don’t know where the sheep are today; I don’t get to leave the house much.” And that is true: aside from fetching water when I didn’t have a man or boy to ask to do it, there was hardly need, reason, or even time, to leave the house.

I think we do a disservice to the visitors to living history sites of all kinds if we don’t find a way to talk about women’s history, and the roles—proscribed or not—that women could take on. At a RevWar encampment, we can talk about the reasons women followed the armies, the kinds of work they did for pay or rations, and what the Revolution meant for women. At the farm and at the manor, I think it’s important to talk about women’s lives in the Early Republic. How this would work at the farm, exactly, I’m not yet certain; at the manor it is easy enough, for the women who lived there were born just before the Revolution. They were well-educated and expected to choose their own husbands. We know who they were; we know less about the women at the farm, though we know about their work.

How we experience that work isn’t really the point, but the chasm between choosing to spend a day never looking beyond the scope of the hearth and having to spend days that way is enormous. It’s a point I want to make,  in a way more sophisticated than “life was hard and greasy.” It’s something to work on.

[i] This is in no way meant to equate the petty first world problems of a bunch of reenactors/living historians with the larger and more brutal problems elsewhere in the world. But relationships can change when situations change…

[ii] Fortunately, the Second Helping Regiment doesn’t work quite this way, and not just because they’re busy chewing whatever has been made for them. Cooking, and the subsequent chewing, can be used strategically.