Tag: Rhode Island

Mourning Embroideries

On By kittycalashIn History, Museums

As a rule, I dislike samplers. Sacrilege, I know, but the rows of letters and numbers and tidy stitches seem to me like running in place, instead of running to get somewhere.

But I do like pictorial embroideries, and on this day, posting about a frothy bonnet in a painting in a Sotheby’s catalog seemed…well, too trivial. So instead, here’s a fantastic mourning picture from the Met. By Charlotte Brown, of Rhode Island, it memorializes Salome Brown and her husband Moses Brown, though not the Moses Brown.

Just because I’m not a fan doesn’t mean I don’t recognize types. In a google image search, I found this item, and knew immediately it was Rhode Island. Made in 1808, it lives at RISD, and a textile designer has done wonderful things based on it. Both RISD’s and the Met’s have the weeping woman, the weeping willow, the urn/cenotaph feature, the pastoral landscape.

But wait…the provenance of the Met’s picture is minimal: “Once property of the late Florence Maine, antiques dealer of Ridgefield and Wilton Connecticut. (Advertisement of embroidery in August 1953 Antiques magazine.)” So I started searching for Moses Brown and Salome Brown in the Rhode Island Historical Cemeteries Database, and I came up empty.

Yes, there are Moses Browns. There is no Salome Brown. But I can’t find a Moses with these dates. That doesn’t mean he didn’t exist, or that this isn’t a Rhode Island sampler; not every cemetery has been transcribed and not every headstone survived.  There is one Charlotte Brown with a date worth considering, and she is the daughter of Thomas and Rebecca Brown, and would have been 7 when this was made. Not impossible, but I’m not fully sold yet. I now have more questions about the one at the Met, and about the people memorialized. Those questions may well be answered in an accession file at the Met, but sitting on the public side of the catalog record, I have questions that only research can answer, and that I hope will one day be done as part of the Sampler Archive Project. 

For now, I think I’ll enjoy a sense of visual literacy in Rhode Island imagery, the lasting beauty of these memorials, and let it go at that.

Shake Your Tail Feathers

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Events

Men’s 18th century coats amaze and delight me. On some of the earlier fine suits, the pleats are exuberant but controlled, layers of fabric tucked together in the skirt.

You could argue they’re feminizing, and somewhere I read that men’s suits have evolved in cut and design to make the male body less threatening. You could argue that they have the formal appeal and function of a peacock’s tail, signaling financial health and status.

This is perhaps most true of the tails on court coats, fancy and fine yet restrained, conservative, and non-threatening. After all, you cannot exceed your rank.

Fortunately for me, I need only construct a simple linen coat by tomorrow. The back seam was sewn this morning, and I started on the pleats. The pattern lines did not clearly mark the peaks and valleys, so I’ve played with it four times.

This evening, Costume Close Up will be my guide, and with any luck, a coat will be “done enough” for an event twelve hours from how. The coat may not be lined in 12 hours, but it will be wearable enough for an evening march that recreates part of the Gaspee incident of 240 years ago tomorrow.  I’ve only known since Wednesday night that I was needed, but with any luck, some of the Second Helping Regiment will come and help.

Vogue for the Lower Sorts

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, Reenacting

How does a reenactor know what to wear? There’s a wide range of choices for any decade, so how do you know what’s right?

Well, you don’t, not without documentation. This is where it can be nice to be a soldier. There’s griping in my house about “plain old white linen grumble frocks grumble waistcoat grumble” but really, the man and boy know who they are and what to put on. (Doesn’t stop them wanting regimentals, and I know they’re casting sidelong covetous glances at British coats.)

What about the women? The range is vast, from Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard

to the  Oyster Seller.

Both are ca. 1775, though the original Oyster Seller was probably earlier, but here’s the thing: how differently would she have dressed in 1775 than she would have in 1765?

It’s a point taken up, to a degree, in The Dress of the People, which I devoured in the orthopedist’s waiting room yesterday.

So if you know you’re not Alice Delancey Izard, but you’re not really an oyster seller, either, what do you do?

You check the ads.

I search runaway ads for Rhode Island to check my choices. That’s how I came to make a blue wool cloak, because I found Lucy, who ran away in December 1776 in a “blue Baize cloak.” There was Polly Young, who ran away in June, 1777, in a “black skirt petticoat and a short calico gown with long sleeves.” What did that short gown look like? I wish I knew. But it does place short gowns in Rhode Island (Lucy wore a short striped Dark Flannel gown when she ran away). Now, if only we knew what “short gown” meant in New England.