Month: August 2013

The Authenticity Challenge

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events3 Comments

We’re going up to Minute Man on August 24, or at least that’s the plan. We have hostages to exchange (one ends up with other folks’ spoons and bowls when one does the dishes) and drilling to do for the September 28 event in Boston.

Immediately after Sturbridge, the authenticity question blossomed on the interwebs, as there was an unusually fine crop of bodices on view in the village that weekend. (To be clear, I am pro-authenticity and anti-bodice, but I am still working over my thoughts on authenticity, which veered into hermeneutics, and are therefore not really germane to the conversation.)

Authenticity and standards are in the ether, and for this year’s event, all participants are asked to provide documentation, not just the people taking part in the challenge. I plan attend but not to partake of the challenge, as I have no desire to relive my childhood of never-even-third-place, thank you. Instead, I’m merely queasy and scrambling, as the only person in our household who seems really documented to me is the Young Mr, with his snuff-colored trousers  currently under construction, and two jackets from which he may be able to choose (presuming I get all buttonhole inspired). So he’s good. Run away!

I’ve been working on a ‘secret’ gown that’s not totally secret, but don’t feel I can adequately document it for this event. I have examples of the fabric advertised for sale, and a period print. But so far, the only gowns of this fabric type described in runaway ads have dark grounds. Granted, servants might tend to wear darker, more dirt-hiding colors, but I don’t feel that one print and some wrong-ground ads are enough. Next!

Anne Carrowle is Philadelphia, not New England: she’s passable for Monmouth and other Mid-Atlantic events. Chintz jackets: also fine for those runaway Dutch servants in NY and Philadelphia. Next!

Brown wool seemed too heavy for August, but the way the weather has been of late, maybe not. Well, anyway, it could get hotter. Next!

1772 red pompadoreThat leaves me with the New Favorite Gown, which I like, but which is based on an earlier British watercolor, so must be slightly altered at the sleeve or cuff as well as documented. At first I could find nothing to suggest that the color and fabric were within the realm of documentary possibility. Eventually I did find an ad in the Newport Mercury for what might be a likely candidate.

“Ran away on Sunday the 19th instant, from the subscriber at Newport, an Irish indented maid servant, named Elioner Clievland, pretty tall, who is very corpulent, with a red complexion, brown hair, and has a scar and a large dent in one of her arms, had on a red pompadore gown, and light broadcloth cloak: ” Newport Mercury, 8-10-1772

claret poplinTwo years later, “ a likely tall Negro Woman, known by the name of Violet Shaw, about 25 years old; has a Blemish in one Eye, carried away with her a white Calico Riding Dress, a strip’d Calico Gown, a claret colour’d Poplin Gown, a strip’d blue and white Holland Gown, a Bengal Gown, and many other value Articles…” Boston Evening Post, 8-1-1774

Well, I’m tall, and far from 25, but thankfully, I am not corpulent. But here are two wool or wool-blend, gowns, in reddish colors, in the right time period and place. Unfortunately, I have not yet found striped, or striped linsey, petticoats in Rhode Island, Connecticut or Massachusetts in 1772-1775—plenty in Philadelphia, where there are more servants running away—so what to do? I’ll look a damn fool without a petticoat.
brown petticoat newport

ShortGown There’s the brown petticoat solution. There is one in Boston (Weston), in August, 1774, and another in Newport, in January, 1773. I like the “brown camblet skirt;” I don’t have camblet, but at least the drape of the lightweight wool and cotton will be closer to camblet than to wool. I can agonize over the suitability of fabrics (and the vagaries of style) in some other post.

I made the gown intending to wear it with a blue and yellow striped as-yet-unmade petticoat (to look like the watercolor), but have some brown wool I can make up instead. Better documented than not (or nude).

Strip it! Wait, maybe not?

On By kittycalashIn Museums3 Comments

For once, the MFA’s search engine trumps the Met’s (hat tip to Sharon for pointing out painted versions).

Brace-back Windsor side chairs, Providence, 1780-1810. MFA Boston, 1976.776

Providence, thank you very much, green over black paint. Here’s another chair, clearly green. (This is very interesting, as the ones in my museum are not painted. Clearly, there’s wide range and variation in chair finishes. Now to think about temporal and geographic distribution of those finishes…)

High fan-back Windsor armchair, Boston area. MFA Boston, 64.86

My first concern was location. All I can tell you right now about the one I found is that is seems to be from New England: much more looking to do to narrow this down to a state. (Most of my furniture time is spent looking at shells, feet, and splats, but I like the Windsor style better, so this will be fun.)

Once I figure out where the chair came from–if I can–then I can decide whether or not to strip it. The easiest thing is to clean it and then repaint it in proper colors (like green over black, happily documented to Providence).

If the preponderance of examples I find like this are not painted then I will have to look at the condition of the wood (hmm…might not be so great) and see what I think. Somewhere I even think I’ve seen a furniture check cover for a Windsor chair in a painting…always more to hunt for.

Things are Red in New Bedford

On By kittycalashIn making things4 Comments
The Mouse Diorama, thankfully a short-lived art form.

Because the Boston Peace Treaty event got moved (it will now happen on Saturday, September 28; more on this later), we were free this past weekend. We went east on Route 6, where in years past I have purchased a Christmas tree at a clam shack, southeastern New England’s answer to the gas station tree lots I’ve visited in suburban Philadelphia. It’s not the prettiest drive, but it has some coastal views eventually, sporadically, you can end up at strange antiques emporia in converted mills.

It’s not pretty out there: people do bad things with objects. The exact heyday of the Mouse Diorama is unknown, but I believe this form flourished in the late 1970s and early 1980s; by the late 1980s, artists were, uh, “commenting ironically” on the form (if I had a slide scanner, I’d show you). This example makes striking use of red, and the “Love By Cat” title of the book read by the mouse in bed intrigues me. “Love by Cat?” And the cat portrait on the chair: does the mouse upstairs have some sado-masochistic cat-related death-wish fantasies hidden from Mrs Mousie downstairs in her sanguine faux-colonial gown? I don’t know, but this is one of the more disturbing rodent dioramas I’ve seen.

Poor painted chair.

In happier and less bizarre news, we found a decent chair. Bad things have been done to this chair, well, one bad thing called paint (oddly, also red; perhaps Mrs Mousie gets around). The bones of the chair are fine: basic country Windsor chair, but painted. We’ve seen a lot of painted “primitive” stuff out there in the antique shops lately. It’s pretty sad what people will to a perfectly usable wooden bowl, or saddest of all, an 18th century sea chest with hand-forged hinges. Paint! But, this chair was well-priced and half-off that price, so we bought it, and on the way home, bought stripper. It’s already wrecked so we might as well strip it and use it.

Hunting Frocks, Again

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Living History, Reenacting

They’re not Mr S’s favorite thing, and I can understand why. Hunting frocks lack pizzazz, buttons, tape, lace, lapels, skirts and all the things that make him so fond of the Ugly Dog Coat worn by the 10th Massachusetts in 1782. (I think these are the coats captured from British supply ships and dyed at Newburgh and West Point in tanner’s vats.) But what he has right now is a hunting frock.

Here’s the kid in his new hunting frock, and a hand colored copper engraving by Johann Martin Will from 1776.

You gotta hold your tongue just right when you drill.
Americaner Soldat, Johann Martin Will. Ann S. K. Brown Collection, Brown University.
Americaner Soldat, Johann Martin Will. Ann S. K. Brown Collection, Brown University.

And then there are the colored and plain engravings, “1. Americanischer scharffschütz oder Jäger (rifleman) 2. regulaire infanterie von Pensylvanien,” engraved by Berger after Chodowiecki.

Library of Congress
Library of Congress
Berger after Chodowiecki, Ann S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University
Ann S. K. Brown Collection

I started thinking about these again because not only am I reading Hurst’s thesis, but I’m fresh from helping the guys get dressed and arrange their capes and straps. I have been doing that as long as Mr S has been wearing historic clothing.

Early days of draping
Early days of draping

Drapey capes

The hunting frock drifts if it does not have some kind of fastening at the neck. The two halves migrate in opposite directions, and while belts help, the light infantry bayonet shoulder belt does not contain the hunting frock as well as one might like. So the thing to do, I think, is to attach a loop and button at the neck to hold the garment in place. From the period engravings, I think that’s acceptable. The garments all look as if they are closed at the neck. From the evidence in the field, and from the images, I plan to make loops and attach buttons, and hope that will limit some tendency to wander.

The image of the two soldiers together suggests another wrinkle in the hunting frock quandary, since the left hand soldier’s out garment looks like a long pocket-less coat with applied fringe and only a very small cape at the neck. Thank goodness that soldier is a rifleman, and thus outside the realm of immediate relevance. (And on a side note, I know a gentleman who very much resembles the Pennsylvania infantry man: identical calves, and even a similar face.)