A Digression on Cataloging

On August 17, 2012August 17, 2012 By kittycalashIn Museums2 Comments

Sew 18th Century had a great comment about the striped linings on the quilted petticoats: are they linen? The catalog record doesn’t say. I think they are, and I remember feeling linen on the insides of the petticoats, but I lay awake wondering: what if those linings are linsey-woolsey? I know women are running away in “lincey” petticoats in 18th century Rhode Island, what if…what about that blue silk? Is that superfine wool in the lining?

To relieve my mind, I did some searches at the Met and the MFA and discovered a familiar inconsistency: quilted petticoats described as being made of silk. Silk and cotton. Silk, cotton, linen. Sometimes the lining was called out, sometimes not. The MFA Boston has some of the best catalog records: major thanks to the creator of the record calling out the ribs in the cotton and linen petticoat with polychrome crewel work.

What does all this mean? It means, when you are lucky enough to be able to ask the collections person for more detail, do! Because the records up in museum online catalogs are in process. Sometimes that process is drawn out over a series of years. The catalog record created for the calamanco petticoat in the RIHS collection was made in 2006 by a young woman working on a grant. her major interest was fine art, but she needed a job, was smart and conscientious, so I talked her into doing the textiles inventory. Along the way, the Registrar and I tried to help her, but the museum was draped in workmen, the Library in open revolt, the basement flooding, and I think that was the summer there were two serious accidents in the Registrar’s family–unless it was the summer she had mono. Not ideal conditions.

We were also cataloging in a home-made, twice-modified Access2003 database, so data entry was entirely manual. That requires even more will power on the part of the cataloger–you’re typing it twice. In the database we use now, the description can contain such lovely phrases as “calamanco exterior with wool batting and plain weave linen lining, pieced from two striped fabric lengths.” You can get poetic in the description. Then in materials you can select straightforward “fibre, wool,” and “fibre, linen” but you’re not typing it again. This makes me want to spend more time on the description, because I know that someone will get the basics in the material field.

So those petticoat records are early, based in some cases on information I know is not quite right, and they need to be edited. What I find so useful is knowing people are interested! That means that I can justify taking the time to go over a block of records, improve them, and upload them again. It won’t be as soon as I like, but I can think of this as a winter project that will give me great pleasure and make up for whatever super dull administrative tasks I have, and benefit a wider population.

As for the Curatorial Assistant, she’s teaching English and Art History at the high school level now, and it’s just me, the Registrar and the Assistant Registrar/Photographer, all of us only two days a week in the museum; the balance of time is at our library. We are responsible for all of the displays in the museum, all new exhibitions at the museum, temporary exhibits in our satellite museum, environmental monitoring, new gifts, old gift untangling, research and reference requests, disaster planning and response, loans, oversight of construction projects, actual hands-on gallery renovations, exhibit object preparation, mount making, and installation, database administration, collections digitization…some just for the 30,000 museum objects, some of that for all of the collections.

That’s an extreme case, but most museums have similarly pressed staffs and that’s reflected in the level of detail in the catalog records. When we’re finished with the NEH Sampler Archive Project, we’ll have the best sampler records ever–because the grant pays for us to spend the time counting threads in the backgrounds, and for new photography of all the samplers. It takes that level of commitment to get very high quality records with images for all objects.

Most of the time, I don’t get into this kind of discussion, because I don’t want to sound defensive or whinging. But the hard truth is that money talks, and we focus cataloging where there is money to support the cataloger, or the rehousing of cataloged objects, or the digitization of the objects. Priorities have to be set, and for now, they’re set by funding. As the man says in The Right Stuff, “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”

Still, that doesn’t mean I won’t find a way to indulge my love of quilted petticoats come December, pull them from the drawers, and revise the records.

Sleeves of Wonder

On July 28, 2012 By kittycalashIn Clothing, Museums4 Comments

They’ll be evil sleeves as soon as I try making them, but check this out: Mrs. Cephas Smith, Jr. (Mary Grove) and child, about 1803, seen at the MFA today. (Online catalog photo at left)

The dress reminds me a lot of the brown silk Quaker dress at the MFA (early 19th century).

What doesn’t fully register until you can get close to the painting is the sleeve detail.

Drawstring waist, check. Probably front-closing and not a wrap dress. Probably earlier than the Quaker dress, but of similar materials. I can feel the taughtness of that shoulder and think a similar detail of the front is shown in a drawing in Arnold or Bradford. The neck is a little higher than I’d expect, but this is not a high-style gown like the ones shown in Arnold. It’s a dress worn in Rutland, VT.

But those sleeves–I’d venture to guess at embroidery in silk thread and buttons, based on the repeated motif at the neck.

Buttons? They look like they sit above the fabric, float, in a way that embroidery would not. But I think of buttons (aside from some stomachers and buttons for polonaise loops) as decorative elements on women’s clothes coming at least a decade, maybe two, later than this painting. Time to sit down with 19th Century Costume in Detail again.

Watson Farm

On July 3, 2012July 3, 2012 By kittycalashIn History, Museums

Sunday afternoon we decided to go to a farm, and chose Historic New England’s Watson Farm on Jamestown. It was a good choice, I think, and perhaps this will be the summer of historic farms and landscapes.

I always wanted to be Tasha Tudor when I was little, live in a historic house, wear historic clothes, eat historic foods, perform historic chores. We lived in a ca. 1875 house in Chicago, so of course I wanted 1875 clothes for my school, which was also ca. 1875, at least in part. Fortunately, I did not get them, children being even less tolerant in the Dark Ages of my youth than they are today.

So Watson Farm’s ca. 1790 date and traditional methods appealed to me, and appealed to Mr. S, who wanted just “farm,” and the Young Mr. was just stuck with the decision.

The farm is largely uninterpreted. HNE provides a brochure and map for a self-guided tour, and there are cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, and cats scattered about the landscape. The fields are pasture, with the farm managers maintaining a vegetable garden for their own use. In terms of learning, it was not a stellar experience and knowing what I do about the farm, I can see why. With 285 acres that need to remain untouched, you can’t plant signs everywhere despoiling the landscape and getting in the way of cattle. In terms of beauty, it was outstanding.

The brochure takes you on a roughly 2-mile walk through the fields and down to the shore of the island. (There is a shorter loop option.) The view was lovely and on Sunday, with weather coming in from the west, the sky was dramatic and it was just about like walking in a Thomas Hart Benton painting.

I think the best moment for me was hearing the cows eat. I don’t remember ever hearing a cow eat grass before, but it was a wonderful sound, “like eating a whole lot of celery, with a pillow over your head,” said Mr. S. Well, sort of. I wish I’d made a recording of it, because it is a sound very few people ever hear anymore. Even the most urban among us can encounter police horses snuffling in their feed bags, and reenactors can visit the dragoon’s horses at battles. But cows snuffling up and chewing grass–that’s another kind of almost-lost sound altogether.

And that’s the whole point of these historic landscapes, preserving the things that would otherwise be lost: not just the vista, the plants and the animals, but the sounds the animals make, the smell of hay toasting in the sun, the sandy prints of burrowing animals, and the truly otherworldly, out-of-time experience of stepping off the asphalt path.