Tag: Reenacting

Still More Sacques

On By kittycalashIn A Silk Sacque
1770-1780, Colonial Williamsburh 1999-247,A-C
ca. 1770 Colonial Williamsburg, 1993-330,A
ca. 1755 (Silk), dress remodeled ca. 1770. Colonial Williamsburg 1990-12,1
ca. 1750, altered ca. 1775, Colonial Williamsburg 1989-330,1
ca. 1775, remade late 19th century, Colonial Williamsburg, 1955-428,1
1770-1780, Colonial Williamsburg CW 1991-472, A-C

I’m particularly interested in remodeled gowns, not that I have the patience to make a ca. 1750 or 1760 gown and then re-make it, even though I suppose it would be the path to the greatest authenticity. In figuring out “what next” now that the pleats are stitched down and secured to the lining, and the front panels cut, and one even pinned, awaiting a seam, I looked at the sack/sacque in Costume Close Up. It’s both tiny and a polonaise, so it’s not the best example for me to follow, but when you’re trying to understand construction before you totally screw up  take the next steps, you look at whatever details you can.

That led me back to Colonial Williamsburg’s collections database, which I try to avoid because they don’t have stable permalinks to their records. However, they have good cataloging and an amazing collection, so it’s hard not to end up back there.

I feel a little more confident in thinking of a ca. 1770- 1775 gown with a compère front. A compère front is a false stomacher, where there are two halves sewn to either side of the opening in the bodice. The sides then button closed. Button, and not pin, people: sweet. I will gladly trade you a week of sewing buttonholes for a wardrobe failure today (Of course, I’m not sure whether a compère front is accurate for a ball gown, but I very much want to avoid a pin explosion at a public gathering.)

Trim is another tricky area: in my regular, 21st century life, I am not someone who wears ruffles and lace or even many colors other than black, brown, grey and red. When I chose the cross-barred fabric, it was a choice really grounded in who I am, and in my love of things architectural, bold, and elegant. (Thanks to my Dad and my education, I now wonder, can one make a Miesian sacque? Let’s find out.)

Serpentine trim, no matter how appropriate and accurate, is not for me. I like the simple trim on the purple gown (padded furbelows), and will probably replicate linear, and not serpentine, trim.

Sacque Rationalizations

On By kittycalashIn A Silk Sacque1 Comment

Before I get any farther along in the process of making a sacque (and I have not made much progress) I thought I should start to really look at gowns, and try to understand them.

Not only do I need to understand how they’re made, I want to understand how they change over time, and what’s appropriate for different time periods and situations. This will, or could, have some bearing on what I make for the gentleman accompanying me to the celebrations for which this gown is being made. If I start from Mr S, whose best coat right now is the 1777 Saratoga private’s coat, then I ought to have nothing better than a second-hand sacque several years out of date, and that is reaching indeed.

SacqueBySacque_back
What good fortune it is that the LACMA dress seems to be a gown in flux! This is the brown silk cross-barred gown with an assigned date of ca. 1760, which seems to have been abandoned in mid-alterations. Trim down the rights and left fronts ends abruptly at the waist, and two halves of what might have been a compère front lack any trim but boast plenty of holes. The front skirts come close together, but it’s hard to tell if they are meant to nearly close, or if the gown is fitted to a mannequin that’s too small and not adequately padded out.

Replicating a gown in mid-alterations would be interesting, but not what you’d wear to a ball, so I kept looking. In Hamburg there is another cross-barred sacque-back gown from about this era. There are similarities and differences, and never as much information as you’d like to have. Who owned and wore these? Who made them? When and where were they worn? We’ll never know, but at least with two similar gowns one can fill in some details for another, or help us understand them both.

The serpentine trim on the pink gown in Hamburg makes clear how unfinished or mid-alteration the brown gown in LA really is despite the visual interest created by the fabric itself.

Sacque_by_SacqueFront

So, what to do for my gown? And when will it be from? LACMA is hedging their bets with ca. 1760. I think Hamburg is pushing it a bit late with ca. 1775, but a ca. 1770 date for a gown based on the two seems reasonable. That would mean that the coat Mr S wears should also be ca. 1770, or newer than his green linen coat and older than his Saratoga coat. And luckily, I already have a plan, some fabric, and a pattern as a place to start.

While the ball itself has no date per se, it is in celebration of Washington’s Birthday, which puts it after 1775 at the earliest (think transfer of command of the Continental Army in Cambridge). Does that make a ca. 1770 gown too early? It would depend, I think on how one imagined the ball and oneself. If you’re a frugal woman who has lost much in the war, you’ll remake your gown; should the flounces become the shirred cuffs of later gowns? Could the kind-of compère front of the LACMA gown be a stomacher cut in half and stitched to the sides, with the pin hole indicating where trim had been removed from a once-was stomacher? Is it reasonable to make a compère front for a ca. 1770 gown? I want one mostly to avoid the stomacher angst I always seem to have, and in a way it marks a place between stomacher-front and front-closing gowns.

These unprovenanced gowns stand without the particular context and personality of their owners; the fun and the challenge for us, as costumers and reenactors, is in trying to bring our personalities to the fact-based garments we create.

Documenting Mr S

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events7 Comments

The guys are usually easy: they wear what the sergeant tells ’em to wear, and they like it, because that’s what soldiers do.

Mr S in Cambridge

Sergeant’s not a sergeant in quite the same way in 1774-1775: he’s a militia sergeant, and while we can still get up to tricks that get us yelled at, the clothing we wear is more personal. Mr S’s clothes seemed, at first, to be completely undocumentable.

Really? Yes, I have been known to have some anxiety issues over small matters. So I calmed down, re-read the standards, and looked again.

The shirt is checked linen, see here for details. The stockings, which will be replaced by hand-knit blue stockings, are also documented to Rhode Island.  But wait! That’s 1777, can it count for 1775? How long do stockings last, anyway?

I’ll own up to having been described as “literal and precise,” and I’m taking that comment to heart. Reader: literal is where one gets into trouble when one is precise. Literal interpretations can lead you, almost hubristically, into creating replicas of runaway ads  or extant garments that don’t reflect who you are, or what time you are portraying, not really.

bluestockings_whitebreeches
Boston Post Boy, 7/25/1774

But not to worry, I dug up the blue stockings. This is from the Boston Post Boy, July 25, 1774. “White Linen Breeches, blue yarn stockings.” This is not too bad: Mr S has got his basic extremities covered now. It’s hard not to be distracted by the Cotton Shirt with Linen Sleeves, which reminds me of women’s shifts with finer sleeves, or sleeves to pin on.

browncamblet Waistcoat 7-4-1772 providence
Providence Gazette, 7/4/1772.

Keeping focused, let’s get Mr S more fully dressed, more proper, and warmer, since this is late August. You can’t see his waistcoat under the green jacket, but here you can. I know this broadcloth fabric, and its color, are from the acceptable palette for the last quarter of the 18th century, but can I find one in Providence or Massachusetts? Just about. The waistcoat described in this ad is camblet. There’s no goat or camel in Mr S’s camel-colored waistcoat, but I think we’ll call it found and be grateful that Mr S has not taken any action despite the numerous photos I have posted of him in various “poofy shirts” and “funny outfits,” as some of my friends describe them.

What’s left? There’s John Appleton’s ad in the Essex Gazette of May 17, 1774 for “blue, green and cloth colored bandannoes,” which pretty much takes care of the neck cloth; we’ve a brownish one, and a blue one; the Young Mr likes the orangey one, but I think we have those documented.

1774_greenJacket
Essex Gazette, 12/6/1774
1774_Prov_greenJacket
Providence Gazette, 1/29/1774

The green jacket, that’s what’s left. In the Essex Gazette of December 6, 1774, we find a “green jacket, light breeches, and yard Stockings,” much like what Mr S is wearing.  Nice! Multiple sources of documentation for items are always welcome chez Calash.

And, knowing that, you will not be surprised that I have found another jacket, closer to home. In the Providence Gazette of January 29, 1774, the man with the “proper hair mole” runs away in a green jacket. He’s also got leather breeches, and they’re on my wish list, though other things must come first, given their expense–things like tires, and allergy drops for the Young Mr.

Tentage

On By kittycalashIn Events, Living History, making things, Museums, Research
Scene of the Camp on Hampton Green, 1781
Scene of the Camp on Hampton Green, 1781

Like many other reenactors/living historians/suckers for wool in summer, I’ve been following the First Oval Office project with interest and envy. Imagine my delight upon finding this blog by Tyler Rudd Putman, who is working on that and many other projects of interest.
The common tent project l is one that I really do hope to take on someday, though I doubt I can ever achieve a tent of this level of quality. (Reader, I cannot weave.) But I can aspire, at the least, and I see that a hand-sewn tent is something even I can achieve. It won’t get done by me in just one day, but over the course of several weeks I could get one done as long as I cleared the downstairs of all our furniture, and put up with a cat sewn into a seam. (My assistant has been lying down on the job, melting in the heat.)

The Howling Assistant Lies Down on the Job

I’ve been thinking about tents since the after-dark hilarity at Monmouth setting up an unknown tent in the dark with a brittle pole that had to be repaired with string from a pasty wrapper, and the later perhaps over-zealous cleaning by Mr S of the tent abused by a cat and identified on the NJ turnpike’s extended play of “What the Hell’s that Smell?”

I’m not sure why we’re allowed to remain in our regiments, really, I am not. But I suspect that an ability to produce Chesire Pork pie is a factor in our favor.

We’ll be setting up tents at OSV in just about a week, broken pole and all, and looking ahead to that, I give you the following links for further reading on tents.

John U. Rees on tents in both armies of the Revolution.

How to fold a tent.

Period (British) images.

Even more documentaton: scrolling down, Rhode Islan had a return of 147 tents in May, 1781– that’s about 882 soldiers, at 6 men per tent, a max of 1029 at 7 men per tent. (At least one is always on duty, so there would not be more than 5 or 6 sleeping at any one time).

Amazing and image-rich essay, The Tent Article

Lochee, Essay on Castremetation, which I read and forget by the time it is dark and some man is trying to reason with me about how a camp should be arranged, when all I want to do is sleep. With that in mind, a brush arbor is starting to look good…