Tag: Federal style

Friday’s Fright: A Dress in White

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events, History, Living History, Uncategorized1 Comment
The Frightened Girl, oil on canvas by Cephas Thompson ca. 1810. MFA Boston, 1986.397
The Frightened Girl, oil on canvas by Cephas Thompson ca. 1810. MFA Boston, 1986.397

Two paths crossed for me this week, both in the early Federal era. Cephas Thompson, a self-taught New England painter, recently became very interesting to me. Although he grew up in Massachusetts, Thompson painted extensively in Virginia, but also in Providence, so of course the story resonated with me. But even more than the story, I loved the images. What a show the portraits would make– and he seems to have painted miniatures as well– so when I met with a local preservationist who turned out to be a fellow art school fugitive, wheels began to turn.

“What clothes!” my new friend said.
“I can get you a room full of people in those clothes,” I replied. And what fun would that be, a gallery opening where the people in the portraits appear to have come to life? Beats the pants off mere mannequins, but keep your Cossacks on: this one’s gonna take a while. In the meantime, what about those clothes?

Salem Register, July 14, 1803.
Salem Register, July 14, 1803.

Saturday marks the third time I’ve been part of the Salem Maritime Festival, and once again the West India Goods Store will be the base of operations for a mercantile enterprise. Millinery has its charms, but this year, the park historian shared fascinating notes on “She Merchants” of Salem, and the Hathorne sisters really intrigued me. Drunk Tailor dug into online newspapers (harder than ever to access remotely) and found an 1803 issue of the Salem Register

That’s an incredibly helpful list of goods to sell (and to pack from the Strategic Fabric Reserve), but a new year means a new dress, of course, and for reasons still not entirely clear to me, this seemed like exactly the right time to wear white. That’s sort of where Cephas Thompson comes back into play: white dresses.

Mrs. Cephas Thompson (Olivia Leonard). Oil on canvas by Cephas Thompson, 1810-1820. MMA, 1985.22
Mrs. Cephas Thompson (Olivia Leonard). Oil on canvas by Cephas Thompson, 1810-1820. MMA, 1985.22

There’s a pile of white cotton and white linen on my table, ready to be packed up this evening: with the dress on for a fitting, I felt like a bowl of whipped cream, the red silk Spencer and scarf the cherry on top. Happily, white and red are documentable to New England, though I would be mortified to be as frighted of a garter snake as the girl in Thompson’s painting. Strawberries and coffee are entirely different, and I shall probably require a bib for Saturday, lest my whipped cream be spoilt.

Privacy and Proximity

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, personal3 Comments
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Feeling the Wyeth at Kiefer House

It has been a long time since I read Bowling Alone, and longer still since I read A Pattern Language or Jane Jacobs, but all of those came to mind this past weekend.

I don’t mythologize or romanticize the villages of the past: we all know how The Crucible turns out, but I thought about privacy and proximity, and I thought about scale. Let’s take privacy first.

In this century, it’s difficult to experience the past as anything more than a series of simulacra which we piece together in a crazy quilt of understanding, but past notions of privacy are far different from our own.

Bedroom

Early one morning, as I lay in a creaking rope bed, I considered how unfamiliar most of us are with the noises of other humans. The wall of our bedroom just barely fit against the exterior wall, and moonlight on whitewash showed the spaces between planking and the plaster, and we slept with the bedroom door open to take best advantage of the cool evening cross breeze.

As I lay awake, my companion happily asleep, I pondered the true extent of my laziness. How much clothing did I really need to wear to go up to the public facility? How loud would relieving myself in the chamber pot be? And what would the reaction be? (I have been on the side of someone else’s choice not to use a chamber pot, and said, “I wouldn’t care,” but one never knows.) And though I elected to put on more than my shift and walk to the public convenience, I began to wonder: what did the people in the past tolerate, ignore, or politely decline to mention?

What did living together feel like, when people shared smaller spaces? When the boundary between private and public, bedroom and parlor, was pierced with holes?

My Grandfather’s Trunk

On By kittycalashIn Events, History, Living History, Reenacting2 Comments
Some objects you can't shake. And then you buy them.
Some objects you can’t shake. So you buy them.

When I was little, one of the games my mother and I played was “I packed my grandfather’s trunk.” You start with that line, and take turns adding an item in alphabetical order. The trick is, you have to repeat the whole string as you go along, so that by the time you’re packing a zebra, a zither, or zwieback, you’ve got to remember the other 25 things you and your companions have packed. It’s a good game for waiting rooms when you can’t run around, and fun for people who love words. How many nouns that start with “y” can you think of?

After lining the bottom with paper, I packed the linens.
After lining the bottom with paper, I packed the linens.

In less than a week, I’ll be packing someone else’s greatx-grandfather’s trunk for a trip westward into the (relative) wilds of New York State to join a Sketching Party. Despite two intense weeks, I’ve persevered on the orange check gown and made significant progress on the Thriller Spencer and finished the second sheet. This is a trip to a different class altogether, one of my two annual forays into the mercantile class of the early Federal period.

It’s quite the thing, packing your alter ego’s equipage for another century, and as I’ve enjoyed a longer commute recently, I’ve pondered the ways in which we stereotype certain kinds of living history practitioners. Progressives don’t always travel light: they travel right, and in this case, it means a quantity of baggage to create the proper simulacrum of an 1814 excursion.

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It’s a quantity of stuff, isn’t it?

While I decry the use of film and television as sources for historical costuming, I do appreciate them for inspiration, and it is remarkably easy to get someone else hooked on a good adaptation like the BBC’s 2009 Emma. The depiction of the picnic on Box Hill is particularly good (i.e. excruciating) and the pile of materials required for appropriate comfort is overwhelming to anyone who prefers to travel lightly. Never before have I considered a turkey carpet a possible accessory to an excursion, but when one intends to ape one’s betters and bring culture to the frontier, anything is possible.

Criss Cross, or, My Checker’d Past

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events, Living History1 Comment

Every now and then I look up from what I’m doing (tiny stitches, usually, though sometimes budget math) and realize that Objects in Mirror are Closer Than They Appear. Oops. It was just yesterday I was daydreaming about miniatures, and now I shall want a paintbox and brushes in a mere six weeks– and those six weeks are punctuated by a courier trip, a couple of exhibits, not to mention shepherding The Young Giant through prom and finals.

Top: check silk taffeta, Artee Fabrics Bottom: check cotton, Mood Fabrics
Top: check silk taffeta, Artee Fabrics
Bottom: check cotton, Mood Fabrics

This weekend, thanks to the SFR hunt for collar interfacing of an appropriate weight, I realized I’d better get a wiggle on my own sewing, and managed to hunt up the orange check from hell, pop it in the washer, and hunt up the pattern I intend to use.

Mrs Catherine Morey oil on canvas by Michael Keeling, 1817. (c) Walker Art Gallery; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
Mrs Catherine Morey oil on canvas by Michael Keeling, 1817. (c) Walker Art Gallery

I’m stuck on that 1817-1819 range because of someone’s eventual and particular Mode of Transportation, so I was super pleased to find this portrait while trolling the BBC’s Your Paintings site. Actually, I’m pretty over the moon about this image, since it places that cross-over front firmly in 1817. I’ve made a version of this form already, so I can but hope the next iteration will be even closer to correct for the period, once I tweak the pattern a bit.

The pattern: therein lie so many rubs, often going the wrong way. Still, I remain enamored of the check and of the cross-front gown. Any checkered doubts were dispelled when Alison for reminded me of the sort-of-cross front check gown at the Met, whose catalogers are hiding behind circa 1820 which allows leeway back to 1815. Behold, of course, the ruffled neck of the bodice (I do expect mine will fit a bit better since I am squishier than a mannequin, and possess appropriate infrastructure).

Morning dress ca. 1820. British, cotton.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase. 1979.385.1
Marcia Sand Bequest, in memory of her daughter, Tiger (Joan) Morse.

Speaking of infrastructure, the appropriate stays are finished, entirely hand-sewn, and ready for deployment in pattern fittings before they debut at Genesee.

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Six weeks to Genesee: at least one 1817 dress, another sheet, a portfolio and paint box, followed immediately by 18th century stays, a front-closing gown, and a bucket repair. Surely that’s all manageable, right?