I’ll be a maid in Newport again this February, and for that event, I’ve made the skritchy rust brown gown.
Not quite finished, it still requires hemming and something to finish the sleeves, but in three days, I got pretty far, considering.
This back-closing bodice with bust darts was pretty awful to fit– strange relationships developed between the bodice neckline and a waistband now discarded and on its way to Johnston.
The back closes with a drawstring at neck and waist, as simple as possible. Mr S and I discovered that fitting a bodice back was deleterious to our relationship, so drawstrings won over buttons. I can tie the lower string, but not the upper– annoying, as I was trying to make a gown that was easy enough to put on solo at 4:30 AM. Vanity won over a pinned apron front gown, though I know they exist in Rhode Island collections. The skritchy rust-brown cotton pays homage to that extant garment, which is a rough homespun brown wool. I may not be stylin’ extant, but I’ll be itching correctly.
but that’s fine, actually. I like to get dirty. The red Virginia cloth dress is now clay-splashed, and while it was made especially for the “People of 1763” event, it may no longer work. Fine for cherry-sellers, fine for hand-bill hawkers, it will not do for a lady’s maid, and I don’t especially want to clean it. Hope I can get my stays wrangled back into shape and that my cross-barred gown fits…but if not, I’ll be a recently promoted lady’s maid.
From the back.
My other upcoming role as a maid will be at the John Brown House Museum, on October 5. This has required quite a bit of thinking and stewing about appropriate clothing and realistic background. I finally settled on a black-and-brown combination of petticoat and open robe, with the style of the open robe based on Paul Sandby drawings and extant garments, but determined by the scant three and a quarter yards of brown worsted that I was able to find.
Winter, 1795. The British Museum, 2010,7081.509
The bodice back is based on the 1795-97 cross-front gown from Museum of Costume in Bath shown in The Cut of Women’s Clothes. The front is meant to be transitional: a little bit of gathering at the neck, but not a great deal, with the edges still pinning closed. The sleeves are long and slim, and will button at the wrist once I’ve gotten the length worked out.
The skirt will pleat, with fullness centered on the back triangle and decreasing to the front. For the black petticoat, I used the double inverted box pleat of the 1790s open robe in Costume in Detail. As you might imagine or just plain hope, they work! I’ve also made a small pad to help lift the skirt in the back and create the right profile; I’m thinking of adding buttons and loops so that it can migrate from gown to gown.
Part two of a series Mrs Garnett, Housekeeper, oil on canvas by Thomas Barber. NTPL Ref. No. 42286
I’m minding my own business checking out my friends’ business on Facebook, when Mrs Garnett appears on Joanna Waugh’s blog. Mrs Garnett had been rattling around in my head as “Wait, there’s that housekeeper painting, and she’s got, like, this great bonnet…” which is the art historical equivalent to an ear worm.
Yes, the Kedleston Hall housekeeper. A bit grand for Mr and Mrs Brown, if you compare a fine mansion in Providence to a English County House with a Collection and its Own Catalog, but not too grand if you compare John Brown’s House to Jeremiah Dexter’s, or Stephen Hopkins’.
We are talking about a man who asked his son-in-law to fetch back marble busts from Versailles, during the time of the French Revolution when the scent of blood was, literally, in the air. Mr Brown had pretensions.
This is tough to hang on to because I see that house every week and it is now so familiar that I don’t see it: it’s background. This is both good and dangerous: I need to hold on to the magic and mystery of the overwhelming high style decorative arts of the house, while also feeling ownership and pride in that house. The catch is that the meaning is so different to me now than it would have been to me then. Though to be honest, being a curator is not so different from being a housekeeper. Curator has its roots in the Latin “cura,” to care, and in that root lies the similarity of roles.
So I will care for the house, and care how I represent it: those are keys, I think, that, as Sharon Burnston says, point to a solid, sober-colored worsted. She referred me to the Francis Wheatley “Cries of London” series, which you may recall from earlier posts.
Again, it is hard to shake the familiarity with the street vendor/woman of the army/runaway apprentice chaser I am accustomed to being. But I think the solution to my desire for playfulness lies in thinking closer to 1800 in style, and in a contrasting petticoat. Also, a bonnet. You can never have too many bonnets.
But this is academic, in a way, until I get my fabric samples. I shall will myself to patience, and instead keep sewing the Wasmus Coat for Saratoga. Yes, I realize my idea of a brown gown and pale blue petticoat will replicate the contrast of the coat body and facings. But I do really love those coats!
Mabel Ruggles Canfield. Oil on canvas by Ralph Earl, 1796. Litchfield Historical Society, 1917.4.4
In three weeks, I start a three week cycle of events in different decades: Saratoga in 1777 will be followed by Boston in 1763, followed by Providence in 1800. This causes a kind of temporal whiplash, though I know well enough what I should wear for 1777 and 1763, and Mr S’s brown coat will cut out this week so I can begin to sew on Saturday.
Providence in 1800 worries me more, but last Saturday’s conversation with Sharon helped immensely, especially when she said, Think Ralph Earl. So simple, I was embarrassed not to have remembered one of my favorite painters.
I need to think below Ralph Earl’s sitter’s station, but as Mrs Brown’s housekeeper or bossiest maid, these portraits represent the type of people I see, people who live in Providence but aren’t the Browns. Ralph Earl’s world of Connecticut merchants and ministers is much like the world I would see. How much more cosmopolitan was Providence than Stonington or New London? They’re all ports, and Providence is busier, but I think that Ralph Earl is a safe bet for understanding the visual context of the southern New England in the 1790s and the styles people wore.
It is especially helpful because he painted women of about the right age. Mrs Canfield at the top of te page was born in 1760, so she’s just a little younger than my character.
Oiver Ellsworth and Abigail Wolcott Ellsworth. Oil on canvas by Ralph Earl, 1792. Wadsworth Atheneum, 1903.7
Mrs Ellsworth was born in 1756, so she’s a little bit older. Different ages, different styles (yes, styles have also changed between 1792 and 1796). But some constants: long, slim sleeves. White caps and handkerchiefs, layered at the neck. Silk–though that won’t be me–in solid, slightly muted colors.
There’s another Connecticut painter worth looking at: John Brewster, Jr. In this New Republic period, I think it’s really critical to look to American sources for clues to how people projected themselves, how they were seen and wanted to be seen. This is pretty high-falutin’ stuff for a maid, but I’m presuming that I know how to read (because John Brown and his brothers placed an emphasis on education in their own families, and on public education). And if I know how to read, and I work in a house with books and political discussions, chances are good that even in the late 18th century, I have eavesdropped on the discussions and I have read at least the newspapers. I’m living in a certain atmosphere, and how I dress and what I think about will reflect the world around me.
John Brewster and Ruth Avery Brewster. Oil on canvas by John Brewster, Jr. ca. 1795-1800. Old Sturbridge Village.
Dr. John Brewster, seen here with his second wife, Ruth, descended from William Brewster. His wife, Ruth, is obviously literate. These people are signaling education and sensibility to us: sober, well to do, respectable. Brewster is not as good a painter as Ralph Earl, so fabric is harder to read. What is her gown made of? Could be fine wool, could be silk: hard to tell. But see that little edge of shift peeking below that three-quarter sleeve? That’s old school for 1795. But I like the neckline and the color. Burnley & Trowbridge have a light-weight wool that color…
Mother with Son (Lucy Knapp Mygatt and Son, George), 1799. Oil on canvas by John Brewster, Jr. Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University
Brewster’s portrait of Lucy Knapp Mygatt and her son, painted in 1799, does, I think, help push the date for the Brewster double portrait earlier: by 1799, the painter in more accomplished and bolder in the full-length portrait. He’s also learned to render fabric somewhat more convincingly.
Long sleeves, white cap and kerchief, high waistline: the styles are consistent, but as you move through the subtleties of class, the expression of the style shifts. Front-closing round gown with a waistline that’s high, but lower than what I’ve made in the past, with long sleeves: settled. Now all I need to decide upon is fabric: probably a lightweight, dark-colored wool, though I haven’t found exactly what I want yet.
I play the maid a lot, or one the lower sort, both at home and abroad.
Kirsten Hammerstrom 
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