Month: June 2014

Gentlemen Prefer Blue

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, History, Living History, Museums, Research
Blue wool coat c. 1800. RIHS Museum Collection 1968.38.1
Blue wool coat c. 1800. RIHS Museum Collection 1968.38.1

Continuing the theme of wool coats that will make you itch in August, I present you with another Rhode Island coat. This coat has features I’m more familiar with: a smooth sleeve head, slightly fuller tail pleats, and tail pockets (I love secret pockets). The notched collar with its fine beak-like points makes me think this is later than 1790-1800, as the style heads in the direction of the white wool coat from yesterday’s post.

Slit cuff with two buttons, RIHS Museum Collections, 1968.38.1
Slit cuff with two buttons, RIHS Museum Collections, 1968.38.1

There’s no waist seam, so we can be pretty certain that this coat is earlier than 1818, if not 1810. Another telling measure of age is cuff treatment. This slit cuff seems to start in the 1780s or 1790s and persist into the early 19th century, (and beyond: gentlemen, check your coat sleeves and you’ll see what I mean).

That’s an awfully long range, 1780s to forever, but the smooth sleeve head and lack of waist seam help narrow the time frame. I’d hazard– and this is a hazardous business– ca. 1805 date for this coat, which would give me leeway for a common man to wear this into 1812, though make it more difficult for him to wear it in 1799/1800. (You can look back in fashion, but high style on the lower sorts is a tricky business and requires a lot of thought.)

1925.11.1A, RIHS Museum Collection
1925.11.1A, RIHS Museum Collection

For travel to 1790-1800, I have another coat in mind, though it will probably be a long time before I get it made. This, too, has classic markers of its time, though the collar’s stand-and-fall style makes me think it is closer to 1790 than to 1800.

The lining of this coat is a particular treat: every time I’m able to pull this out for viewing (and since it’s boxed right now, that’s not happening), that blue glazed wool is a treat. The wear mark on the left proper tail lining is intriguing, too: sometimes those start as moth holes and progress, and sometimes they’re wear that’s later found to be delicious and expands by chomping. (Wool and silk and protein, and delicious treats for pests.)

I find these coats really exciting, and often feel a little “Make All the Coats,” but of course I can’t, not quickly, anyway. And these two don’t really solve my August in 1812 problem, as the clock ticks on…but I think there is a solution, thanks to Sharon Burnston and Fitting & Proper.

Dating Mr Darcy…

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, History, Museums, Research7 Comments
1996.66.4, RIHS Museum Collection
1996.66.4, RIHS Museum Collection

Or at least his coats.

I don’t know about you, but as the summer weather warms up, I like to think wool. I’ve got menswear to sew and desires beyond my knowledge, skills and abilities. Making a wool coat for an event in August seems like a patentable Bad Idea, so it’s a good thing that I have a nice piece of Italian linen-cotton denim-like fabric that I’ve set aside to make a summer-suitable coat for Mr S.

There is a Rhode Island coat, in a Rhode Island collection, of which I am particularly fond. I’ve had this coat in mind for some time now, and have inflicted it upon have shared it with experts several times.  It has a lot to recommend it: a soil mark on the collar, extensive damage and repairs to the left sleeve, fading and wear on the back, fragments of botanical material in the pocket lint, and the nicest linen fabric I’ve ever felt.

This is the coat I wanted to make for Mr S, but then I started thinking about that waist seam, which eliminates this from the style competition for 1812. Rats! But, OK, no reason that we can’t use this as inspiration and make a coat using the fabric but not the waist seam.

1956.9.3, RIHS Museum Collection
1956.9.3, RIHS Museum Collection

So I looked at another coat that just happened to be handy (I know, I am very lucky, and that’s part of why I’m sharing this with you). At first glance, I thought I was good. And by glance, I mean extended looking. But look again: there is a waist seam, it’s just harder to see. So much for the iPhone and lousy light, right? (I noticed the seam today, in even less light, so go figure.) This coat is made of a single twill off white wool can easily be mistaken for plain weave and that is rather light. Very summery, in a way.

Coat style found? Maybe. But I was wondering about the sleeves. I spend a great deal of time looking at sleeves and backs of much earlier coats, so I’m accustomed to a smooth sleeve head. That’s not what you’ll find on this garment, though. This one has gathers, and I thought that was pretty exciting. My closest expert probably had a weird twinge at that moment that he will soon learn to associate with an incoming email from me…

Sleeves, 1956.9.3 RIHS Museum Collection
Sleeves, 1956.9.3 RIHS Museum Collection

This is a nice detail, but one I’m not familiar with. The fashion plates on Serendipitous Stitchery’s post do show increasingly full sleeves in the early years of the 19th century, but that detail didn’t fully register with me until I looked at this coat and processed what Mr C had told me about sleeves and shoulders. Seeing an extant example always makes principles more real.

So what next? At work, I’ve started updating the catalog records for these coats, and they’ll go live early next month. Every time we learn something new, we try to update and correct records so that everyone can benefit. That’s the easy part.

The hard part is reconciling style details for Mr S’s coat. In comparing these examples with fashion plates, I think it’s clear that they are both later than 1812 (waist seam) and nodding to but perhaps not fully embracing high style (see the gathers on the white coat, but the blue coat has only one gathered sleeve, which I attribute to maker error). Plausible dates for both might be 1818-1826, bearing in mind that these will be interpretations of styles, the way Old Navy knocks off adapts its sibling Banana Republic’s styles.

I may be back at that fabulous checked linen coat at the Met, with inspiration drawn from Providence’s plainest blue coat. The process always seems a compromise, in part because I do not think Mr S wants a checked coat, and in part because I’d like to use fabric I already have. Still, there is yet another coat to think about…but tomorrow is another day.

Musical Monday: Chester

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, Reenacting
Virtue Rewarded
Virtue Rewarded

Saturday was Flag Day, but you knew that, right? There are a lot of holidays we no longer pay much attention to, from Armed Forces Day (when Mr S and I once hosted a very amazing and lengthy party in an 1870s brick row house in St. Louis) to Arbor Day to Flag Day.

To celebrate the Bicentennial of the Star Spangled Banner, the Paul Revere House asked us (which means Mr HC) to lead the visitors in the national anthem. “Never miss an educational opportunity” could be one of the 10th Massachusetts’ mottoes, so with the regimental colors unfurled, the time was right to lead the assembled company in a rendition of Chester, written in 1770 and perfected in 1778 by William Billings, and the song to which the men are accustomed to march. (It is also the song mostly likely to play accidentally on my phone while it’s in my pocket.)

So here they are, the 10th Massachusetts and Members of the Publick, led in Chester by Mr Cooke.

 

As mentioned elsewhere, it is nearly impossible to read and sing simultaneously. It is also clear that we do not generally sing in our daily lives, or not nearly as often as people did in the past. Most of us think we have awful voices and refuse to sing, though we endure singing in school, or did. It’s an art that we should enjoy more and more often. You don’t have to be Idina Menzel to please the right audience (in my case, some cats).

History is Not a Competition

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, Reenacting1 Comment
IMG_1583
Drilling by the Sergeant

Saturday was my first post-operative foray into costumed interpretation, up to Paul Revere House on Flag Day. This went much better than my first attempt at Paul Revere House, which ended in ignominy as I missed the train. In April, I managed to convince Mr S to drive in Boston, which he usually refuses to do (in fact, he nearly abandoned me once at the Old State House one Saturday after a miserable drive that had us stuck in the Downtown Crossing vortex).

I’m so glad we managed this, Despite anticipatory near-tears and epic pouting by the Young Mr, we managed to have a rather nice time.

Poise, with extra elevation by the Young Mr
Poise, with extra elevation by the Young Mr

We were in the courtyard, and Mr HC and Mr FC told the story of Amasa Soper’s company and its members several times to the streams of tourists. They solicited recruits and ran them through the 1764 drill using the nicest wooden muskets I’ve ever seen, though with mixed results. Some new volunteers held their muskets backwards, and the Young Mr’s ramrod got stuck in the barrel, though that is a known issue with that particular musket.

I sat on my ladder-back chair near the house and made the tiniest hems I could on Mr S’s next shirt, which will be for best. People asked about the sewing and my clothes, and I had a chance to talk about what women wore, typical fabrics and fibres, supplying the army, and who made what.

The day was warm, but fortunately not overwhelming, and as a museum person, I found the crowd quite interesting. This is a facet of Boston I don’t usually see: the tourist experience.

In one memorable moment, a pair of young women stood just outside the door to the house.
Young Woman Number One: “Is this really his house?”
Young Woman Number Two: “Yes, this is where Paul Revere lived.”
YWNO: “Oh, my God! I’m so excited! This is so neat!”
Kitty Calash: <eats heart out with jealousy> “Why can’t my museum do that?”

The celebrity factor of Paul Revere is undeniable. There were tourists with guide sheets in Chinese, and tourists who made me wish I still remembered my college German. Some seemed to be hitting every Boston landmark they could in one day, carrying white cardboard pastry boxes; some seemed to be going more slowly, looking, and trying to figure out what they were seeing, and what it meant.

Virtue Rewarded
Virtue Rewarded

What living history means is something I’ve been thinking about lately, or trying to. It’s tangled up with questions of authenticity and appropriateness, but what I learned on Saturday, or re-learned, was how very happy this business makes me. I like history, and historic costume. It doesn’t matter to me if we are talking Revolutionary War or New Republic or Lewis and Clark.

My favorite visitors were a mother and daughter from Steamboat Springs, Colorado, visiting Boston for the first time with a young man from New Hampshire. The mother said, “There’s so much more history here than where we’re from. Our town’s only 100 years old.”

That’s a challenge I’m always ready for, so I asked where they were from. Colorado to me means Native American settlements reaching back a thousand years, Spanish explorers and conquistadors, French, and then American, fur traders. It means hundreds of years of history, and a chance to remind people this isn’t a competition for “oldest” or “mostest.”

Knowing where our country came from is important: so yes, please visit Boston, and Paul Revere House, and Providence and Newport, too! But knowing where you are is just as important. There’s history all around you, and your local historical site, society and museum would love to tell you about it.