Tag: interpretation

Fashion, Fantasy, and Intention

On By kittycalashIn Art Rant, Clothing, Living History, material culture2 Comments
Fort-based: as military as I get.
Fort-based: as military as I get.

I am not a costumer, not really. But I’m not really a re-enactor in the classical sense: I no longer roll with a military unit and my military experiences are typically fort-based domestic activities. My favorite events have me representing women’s work in the past, the quotidian experiences of ordinary people. Documentation is my thing: what happened on a particular day, in a particular place. Who was there? What were typical clothes? The foods in season? The gossip of the day?

A Lady's Summer Promenade Dress, 1800.
A Lady’s Summer Promenade Dress, 1800.

And yet. Everything I do is really a fantasy, even when it’s work. We are not [yet, always] using the actual words people spoke or wrote. We typically inhabit characters who are grounded in fact but for whom we do not have full documentation. We are representations. We are playing, more than we are being.

I could easily be persuaded to take a walk along a sea wall  or coast to collect seaweed samples for pressing. This would inch me into Austen territory, especially if my friends will join me. I’ve even gone to the lengths of acquiring an appropriate hat, and to make another gown is but nothing in the pursuit of happiness.

Mary Gunning, Countess of Coventry. Jean-Étienne Liotard,.
Woman in a Turkish interior Pastel on vellum, Jean-Étienne Liotard, 1749. Museum of Art and History, Geneva.

If I could truly be a fabulist, I might be tempted to adopt a style a la Turque, for a portrait by Copley or for my paramour. This portrait by Liotard– who was known for his Ottoman works—  is a great temptation, with her patterned overdress and belt with golden clasps, though she is thirty-three years earlier than The Abduction from the Seraglio, Mozart’s comedic and trendy 1782 opera.

If I made myself a Turque (and Reader, it is tempting though useless), I will confess it would be for the multiple pleasures of wearing it, knowing why it had been worn in the past, and for the pleasure of having it taken off me. Because we forget what the European fascination with exoticism and Orientalism meant: they meant sex. The Abduction itself is, in essence, a tale of sex trafficking.

And that is something we do forget about the past, that the clothing we adopt as we portray the past had meaning– sometimes a meaning we miss, when we layer costume upon clothing. Wives and mistresses alike were portrayed a la Turque, and some theorize that this style of portraiture was chosen to portray the sitter in timeless, classic dress. For Copley’s sitters, it was a way to be at the height of London fashion; for Lady Mary Montagu, Turkish dress allowed her to travel freely in the Ottoman Empire. But portraits of women in Turkish dress situated in Turkish interiors were also allusions to polygamy and to sexuality, and there is no way of escaping the fact that paintings of women were largely made for men.

So what, then, of fantasy dressing in the past? What sense can we make of historical representations of “Oriental” fashion? How do we understand what our clothing and our appearance means? Every choice we make is layered with meaning, in the present and in the past.  For women, routinely objectified by society, the meaning of our clothing is particularly important, even when, or perhaps especially, when it is not what we want to focus on.

 

Documented Fantasies

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events, History, Living History, Museums, personal, Reenacting, Research5 Comments

It was three years ago on a warm August afternoon in the museum room we’d turned into a photo studio when I quipped, “All my fantasies are documented.” It’s been hard to live down ever since.

With Mrs B watching Miss B self-perambulate upon the sidewalk.
With Mrs B watching Miss B self-perambulate upon the sidewalk.

Documentation, research: we all do it, everyone who reads this blog does it. What matters is how you use it– or, maybe even more importantly, how well you understand how you are using your research. This past weekend was the Salem Maritime Festival, and round number three for me in the West India Goods Store (WIGS, which sounds far more political than it is). The year was 1804, and as you may recall, that required a new dress.

Reader, I wore it. And it survived!

Yes, it is made from an IKEA curtain. The pattern is my own, derived from examples in Janet Arnold, at Genesee, and the KCI. Once again, I discovered the power of upper body strength and leverage. It’s not that my stays are too big necessarily. The busk is too long, that I will grant you. But I think the shoulder straps are as well, and the shift– that slattern! She was rolling a la Renaissance Faire, which is completely unacceptable, of course, as she slid down my right shoulder by the end of the day when the shop had been unpacked into the conveyance.

So let us focus on the non-slattern part of the day, when a mercantile enterprise briefly overtook the WIGS.

Behind the Counter

There was some custom, though numerous debts were recorded in the ledger.  (Somehow, there are no images of Mr K sweating over the figures in the book, though I recall them clearly.)

IMG_7634 (1)

The shop was hot, but we attempted to stay fed and hydrated, as we discussed the various kinds of goods imported to places like Salem and Providence in 1804. Politics were rather difficult to discuss, as Mr K has a marked antipathy for Mr Jefferson that caused a mild agitation; expanding the country does seem a bold and perhaps unconstitutional move, given the deal Mr Jefferson has struck with Bonaparte, but perhaps this is for the best. The Indians will surely benefit from Christianity and education.*

It’s engaging in the moment, and we’ve done our research. But it’s a fantasy nonetheless, a kind of happening grounded in primary sources and material culture. I’m OK with that– I understand what I am doing– but I wonder sometimes if the people I’m watching on social media understand what they are doing with the fantasies they portray.

 

 

* To be SUPER clear, I’m staying in character here. I worked in Missouri and I have enough understanding of “manifest destiny” to disagree with this point of view.

The Landscapes of Things

On By kittycalashIn Collecting, Living History, personal

Or, you never know where things will end up.

New post, Old post, Cataloger
New post, Old post, Cataloger

You can learn a lot about a place by visiting its antique and junk shops. Here, where the China Trade was A THING, you can practically fall over Chinese export porcelain (and its imitators) of a variety of types every day. It can become a bad habit. You can become an enabler.

IMG_7449

Elsewhere, the objects for sale tell a different story. I’m fond of the haphazard antique malls museum of things world, and while on a tea pot delivery mission to Maryland, went to one in Mount Vernon. It was astonishing.

Mid-century modern furniture, the Arabia Anemone tableware of my childhood, and shelves of geisha dolls, Kabuto, ceramics, and the occasional sword confused me at first until I realized these were probably the jumbled contents of a prior generation of military and civil servants’  homes emptied by their children. The aesthetics were markedly different from what I typically encounter in southeastern New England, where I am accustomed to reading subtle variations between the states I frequent.

14

Local variations occurred in Vermont as well, though the general flavor was more familiar.

Some things are universal: chaotic piles of partially-identified snapshots can be found anywhere, stacks of pelts and dog-like foxes, not so much. Origins debatable, ethics questionable, the late mammals tempted the tourist trade in St. Johnsbury, where we stopped as we headed south for home.

12

We influence our landscape more than we credit: from changes in the land wrought by farming to climate change to the differences in what we cast off and what we collect, the visible human influence is undeniable. Material culture can be about place as much as it is about thing.

Indocent Exposure

On By kittycalashIn Events, Fail, History, Living History, Reenacting, Thanks2 Comments

IMG_7288 Or, Confusion into Confusion.

Docents and volunteers: the backbone of any non-profit organization, right?

Well…sort of. I’ve worked with docents for more than a decade, and along the way I’ve learned what does and doesn’t work. What does work is intensive engagement and participation, though the occasional shock to the system can be necessary and useful. For special events, though, and in cases of turf, diplomatic relations must be opened with the enemy early and often.

That is not to fault the organizers of the “Order Out of Confusion” event this past weekend, for I was one of the people organizing the civilian, non-marching end of things, and due to turbulence in my own life, I failed to plan adequately in the arena of Docent Relations.

IMG_7296

We had a Retaliator, a Pine Robber, a Quaker, and a Slave-Owning Patriot. We managed a debate or two over slavery. We begged people to take the Quaker home with them. But we did not occupy the house, for the house was occupied by red-shirted volunteers who gave at least some of us the five cent Condescension Tour punctuated with, “But I suppose you’re not interested in that.”

IMG_7298

Actually, that look was one of sheer disbelief, sir, at the farm implements in a bedroom, the tidy piles of perfectly formed ashen coals under the cookware in the fireplace, and the roomful of flax accented with a snake charmer’s basket. In my line of work, I enjoy house tours, but find they generally go better when tour guides don’t point out all the flaws to me. Complaining about the state (which owns the site) and onerous regulations that make repairs expensive will also increase my look of horror and disbelief. But really, if you want full-on horror, kindly inform the Quaker that Japanese POW camps “really weren’t that bad” because we are thriving on confusion today.

IMG_7297

The volunteers were thrilled by the marchers, and were clearly very positive about the event. They love Craig House, and the battlefield, but that sense of pride and ownership made it impossible for them to share the house with us, or to see us as anything but invaders– an Army of Occupation in our own right.

It’s my fault that I’m not an agile enough negotiator to convince recalcitrant octogenarians that my friends and I are safe to play with and will respect the house, and it’s my fault that I didn’t put in place all the lessons I’ve learned in the past decade. Then again, I don’t know that I would have had time to travel for meetings with the volunteers to generate buy in and support, given the maelstrom that was my life this past spring.

IMG_7289

But it’s a lesson well-learned: interpreters will read voraciously, acquire tons of material, and turn that research into appropriately-dressed characters making interpretive points, but unless you work with the site and its volunteers or staff to create agreement about presentation, you’ll get about half the value of the work you put into the planning.

Many heartfelt thanks to everyone who participated, and to the organizers for letting me try out my interpretive model. Next time, I know I have to work with the site staff and volunteers to make sure that execution matches vision.