It is lashing rain on the windows chez Calash, and soon enough the present-day chariot known as the Subaru will commence hauling Mr S to the train station and the Young Mr to school. Bikes and buses are unpleasant in the rain, though the Young Mr is always (and only) driven to school on Wednesdays due to a peculiar busing and schedule arrangement.
But what if they lacked this luxury, and had to venture out? The way it sounds out there, the smartest choice would be to stay at home by the fire, but someone has to fetch the wood and the water, and someone has to milk the cow and fetch the fool cat in.
Greatcoat, Chester County Historical Society. from Fitting and Proper, by Sharon Burnston. Scurlock Publishing, 1999.
If you could afford one, you’d wear your greatcoat (new or second-hand).
Made of broadcloth, this would be your non-flammable water-resistant choice for inclement weather. Woven and then milled, the fabric would be dense enough to resist water and hold a cut edge, which makes those capes a more winning proposition.
Over a slim-cut body, layered capes can emphasize and exaggerate shoulder width, making these utilitarian garments sexier than you’d expect. (Of course, I have a thing for guys dressed like this, so your mileage may vary. But by the Civil War, the lines are boxy and, well, yawn.)
Greatcoats aren’t even remotely on my list for this year, but someday I’d like to make one, if only to borrow it. Baby, it’s cold outside.
Coat, 1790s American CB: 38 in. Gift of The New York Historical Society, 1979.346.42. MMA
Textile Sample Book, 1771. British Rogers Fund, 156.4 T31, MMA
Some gentlemen I know should consider what they might want to do to avoid (or alternately, encourage) having this coat made for them. It’s really a lovely thing, found as the best things are, while looking for something else.
Wm Booth has a new linen coming in the winter, and as the men in my house have outgrown or outworn their shirts, I am thinking of making new check shirts. I did finish a white shirt at Fort Lee, which will go to the Young Mr (his small clothes being now his too-small clothes). I will have to make Mr S a white shirt for best wear, but they could each use a second working shirt. At least with checks you get “cut here” and “sew here” lines.
Last week, I found a weavers’ book in the Arkwright Company Records (Box 1, Folder 1, 1815). It’s a slim, blue paper-covered volume with small samplers glued in to the pages, and full of checks and stripes. Blue and white, red and blue, checks and stripes were prevalent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The more I look at extant garments, sample books, and ads, the more I think the streets must have been a vibrant, if grimy, visual riot.
Lot 194, hammer price: $22,500. Estimate:$4,000-$5,000
On November 13, Augusta Auctions held a sale in New York that included some really wonderful things, and chances are good that if you read this blog, you know about some of the items, like the British consul’s coat, some very lovely leather trousers, and my personal favorite, the Rhode Island man’s day suit.
That suit! I’ve heard about that suit from a couple of people, but I’ve never seen it in person. I’ve made a jacket from a pattern taken from the coat, but until the photos turned up on the auction site, I didn’t know what the original looked like. It’s not flashy. You think, it’s a plain brown linen suit, no big deal, until you start to look at the simple, direct construction methods (which I have seen in other Rhode Island garments), and the rather elegant lines. This seems, from the distance at which I have to observe it, very like the boy’s jacket at Connecticut Historical Society. They share similar lines, are similar in color, and probably represent the most common everyday wear of the middling sorts of southeastern New England.
Historians and curators increasingly recognize the importance of the “common everyday” people and their material world, whether it’s Jill Lepore on Jane Franklin Mecom or whoever bought this suit. There are and were more of the 99% than the 1%, and to really understand the past, we have to collect what we can to document the daily lives of the majority of the people.
So of course I wanted this suit very badly. I looked up previous auction results, I poked around in other museum’s catalogs, and looked at our own collections. I prepared a case statement and took it to the Board committee that oversees Collections– when we spend large sums, we have to get approval. The Board committee authorized me to bid, but set a limit based on our acquisitions budget, which is funded from prior sales of duplicate or unrelated material in our collection. (Things like 20th century oriental rugs and mid-Atlantic corner cupboards– we can’t use them, they weren’t made or used in Rhode Island, but were acquired to furnish our house museum, until it was over-furnished. Then we went through a lengthy and formal deaccession process.)
Watching the online bidding, I could tell the sale was hot: there were folks with deep, deep pockets bidding, and I knew early on I would not get the suit. By the time it was all over, the hammer price was $22,500 (it’ll be $27,000 with the buyer’s premium) for a suit with a $4,000 – $5,000 estimate. I should say that it did rawther well, considering, but even in a different budget year, I would not in my wildest dreams have gone as high as the winning bidder did. Every result in this sale felt new, and dangerous, the way the Betty Ring sampler sale prices felt new and dangerous.
These prices feel dangerous because they skew the market and the past in a curious way: when the objects of the everyday become this valuable, this expensive, how can a museum with a mission to interpret the past of a specific people ever hope to compete? I can’t, not even with a concerted effort to develop a donor base that would support an acquisition at more than four times an estimate. What does that do to the market? It puts it squarely in the realm of the 1%.
That 1% is not just oil barons, it’s museums with enormous endowments and revenue streams, like the Met. I’ve posted before about the difference in museum revenue streams and endowments, and how a place like the Met can gross over a billion dollars in revenue in a fiscal year. With money like that, $22,500 is nothing. Museums like the Met and the MFA and the PEM and LACMA can out-bid smaller museums, vacuum up collections, and amass great hoards of material. What the little people have to do is to build relationships, and hope that they can get some of the material before it ever gets to auction. I didn’t have that chance, but it’s the only one I’ll ever have in what seems to be a new market for old things.
This sale also made me think that the museum world is increasingly a winner-take-all world much like politics or business, or even education. There are the haves, with large endowments and major gifts, attracting more gifts and endowments, and then there are the have-nots, with very limited funds and volunteer staffs. Those of us in the middle are feeling the same squeeze that the ever-smaller middle class is feeling, with similar income erosion as what our endowments earn buys us less, and as grant funds are ever harder to get. Programs are more competitive, and there’s less money for the big national endowments (NEA, NEH, IMLS) to give away.
Capitalism and market forces are at work, changing collections and changing how museums can and will operate. We have to radically and rapidly rethink how museums function both in acquiring collections (if we can continue to acquire them at all– there’s a cost not only to acquiring but to keeping) and in making them accessible. The smaller museums have to make better cases for mattering more to their audiences, or culture will be increasingly sequestered in larger, richer places.
Regency Green: Kochan & Philips + Robert Land = Matchy-matchy.
As expected, Mr Najekci dispatched the K&C wool before the Hook, so last Thursday evening when I arrived home after Gallery Night, there was a box of delicious waiting for me. And, also as expected though mostly hoped for, the wool and shoes were super simpatico. This will be a fun project when I get myself sorted to it.
I have not yet had the time to put all the projects into a spreadsheet, but I think it would help keep things organized and on schedule. For example, I have:
to work out the details and rationale of the sacque, vis-a-vis date and style
to finalize the Spencer pattern
to pattern and fit a frock coat, waistcoat and breeches for Mr S ca. 1775
to ask about the regimental for Mr S, which will be wanted eventually
to face making a tent by next summer
a plan for kettle bags, since I’d like us to pack lighter & more authentically
to fix my stays situation
an inordinate desire for a splashy bonnet to go with that Spencer
two shirts to make up for Mr S and the Young Mr
a red short cloak, for easier movement
Once I have a schedule and a plan, making things by deadline is somewhat easier. It’s “bridge” season now, between cooling and heating, summer and winter fashion collections, and that’s as good a time as any to work out plans for the winter. There’s nothing the guys must have for an event that they haven’t got already–for Fort Lee, they can wear their short wool jackets under their 10th MA hunting frocks and be perfectly authentic and warm. (The brown and green coat is 1777, and the Fall of Fort Lee is 1776. The blue and white short-tailed regimentals are 1781. No coat for you!)
So it’s worth taking the time to regroup, even as I rush headlong into projects…and considering I have jury duty (no scissors!) this week, maybe I should add hand-knit stockings to that list.
Kirsten Hammerstrom 
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