Search results for: cleaning

An Experiment in Housecleaning

16 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by in Events, Museums, Reenacting

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Eighteenth and 21st centuries meet at the John Brown House Museum when RIHS Director of Collections Kirsten Hammerstrom and Registrar Dana Signe Munroe get the museum ready for spring in the 18th century manner. Dressed in period-appropriate clothing, we will discover what it takes to make the John Brown House ready for spring. With buckets, cloths, and brooms, we will start with the formal parlor and demonstrate for visitors domestic work described in Hannah Glass’s “The Servants Directory, Improved, or, House-Keepers Companion,” published in 1762 and Susannah Whatman’s Housekeeping Book (1776-1800).

20120313-193805.jpgTo prepare for this day’s event, in addition to researching historic housekeeping methods and the Brown family servants, we have been hand-sewing clothing suitable for servants in the 1795-1803 period. Although we do not know exactly who worked for the Browns at the cusp of the 19th century, we do know that they, like other wealthy Rhode Island families, employed servants and owned slaves. In this program, we will not interpret specific servants, but instead explore the work and methods that servants or slaves would have used, wearing clothing typical of the period.

The house may seem insurmountably large, a vast Sahara of dust and dirt, to a woman wearing jeans and equipped with a vacuum cleaner. Taking on spring cleaning in late 18th century stays and long dress and petticoat, knowing that we will climb ladders (fortunately modern) to reach woodwork, will be daunting. But the experience will provide us with first-hand knowledge of what a day was like for a house maid who followed Hannah Glass’s exhortation to “Be up very early in a morning, as indeed you are first wanted; lace on your stays, and pin your things very tight about you, or you never can do work well. Be sure always to have very clean feet, that you may not dirty your rooms, and learn to walk softly, that you may not disturb the family.”

The methods outlined in these period books are surprisingly similar to today’s conservation cleaning methods outlined in the Manual of Housekeeping published in by the National Trust of Britain in 2006. Fortunately, recently completed construction has provided us with a house full of dust ready for cleaning. Join us on Saturday, April 21, from 10 to 4:00. The program is free with the regular house tours at 10:30, 12:00, 1:30 and 3:00.

Follow dress making progress and research updates, as well as a report of the day’s findings, here on the blog using the housecleaning tag.

~Kitty Calash

Virginia Cloth in Maryland

01 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by in Living History

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Did I really need another English gown? Well….that cinnamon Virginia cloth, though. Reader, I saw it and I bought it, because: Paul Sandby. The color of the cloth struck me as being about as close as I am likely to get to this image, and since I own a yellow petticoat and suitable accessories, it seemed nearly a necessity.

At this point, I’ve made enough gowns that I can pretty much fit the shoulder and sleeve myself (especially since I sprang for the new dress form). I’ve lengthened the sleeve, and tweaked the shoulder strap to compensate for the curve in the original (a straight-cut piece works better for me). Future sleeves will need to be made a little wider across the bicep, as I have gained some muscle.

In progress
out in the world (photo by Denise Wolff)

The fabric pleats well, though the edge has a tendency to fray a bit, as I learned when I made the first gown I ever really liked. But these fabrics have much to recommend them in color and weight, bridging seasons and locations–the weather in the South being rather different from that in New England. That gown was good for cleaning in Trenton and hiking in Rhode Island, but really needs to be taken apart and remade (at some future date).

As I made this gown, I thought about what I told The Giant when he said, “I wish I was a better writer.” It’s butt in chair that makes you a better writer, and a better seamstress, or a better tailor, and better at just about anything other than an active sport. Practice, and patience, are what it takes to improve. The first things I made were not nearly as nice as the things I can make now, many gowns, dresses, coats, caps, and bonnets later. Sewing is a discipline and a craft, and perseverance pays off.

The Fort Frederick Market Fair is the place to wear new clothes and shop for curiosities, I took the opportunity to wear the new gown with some older favorites, including the best neck handkerchief I’ve ever had (hand woven by a friend), and a hat made ages ago that is finally achieving a salty patina suitable for someone of my usual station. That’s one of the best parts of perseverance: putting old and new together for a new and different look.

“shop medicines, ointments, and salves”

23 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by in Living History, material culture

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Part three of a series
So what did Elizabeth Weed prepare and sell? What remedies were used and preferred in 1777 Philadelphia? And where to look?

The ad is explicit: “The Syrup and Power for the flux, the Syrup of Balsam for coughs and colds, the Royal Balsam, the Bitter Tincture, the Essence of Tar, etc.”

Margaret Hill Morris used William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine as one of her references, but receipts for cures can be found in The Compleat English Housewife, and Hannah Glasse as well. I’ve held a fascination with tooth cleaning and hygiene for some time, so this project was a natural outgrowth of those interests.

Fortunately, ingredients were pretty easy to come by (many already in my kitchen), and a sacrificial pan had been created making wax blocks for sewing kits. We started experiments in earnest October 6th, after coming home from the Draken Harald Harfårge. We did not fully anticipate how much one of the decoctions would smell like the Draken.

Tar Water was particularly intriguing, since it had been prescribed to John Francis, son of Ann Willing Francis (and eventual husband of Abigail Brown). Francis suffered from poor health, and he and his wife, and mother, all recorded the use of “tar water” in diaries and letters. Eventually I found a receipt that cured me of the notion of drinking tar itself: Tar, two pounds; water, one gallon. After standing to settle for two days, pour off the water for use. 

Well, there it is: water infused with essence of tar, which turns out to be “best Norway Tar,” or pine tar. Decanted, it smells like ships’ ropes coated to protect them from sea water.

So there are recipes to follow (even some of Elizabeth Weed’s own, recorded in the back of Thomas Nevell’s day book); but what does a shop look like? What bottles, pots, jars, and labels are used? The backgrounds of satirical engravings provide some guidance (and some hilarity).

In the background of the print at left, we can see some of the furniture and equipment of the pharmacists’ trade. Wooden pharmacy chests with drawers for ingredients; glass bottles above, with round-topped stoppers; above that, ovoid storage jars, possibly Delftware, for the storage of additional dry materials. A large mortar and pestle sits on the counter in front of the drawers.

Smaller, labeled bottles sit on the table of the Village Doctress, along with an ointment pot (gallipot), as well as scissors and an hourglass. These similar, but simpler, tools help us recognize the lower status of the “doctress” relative to male doctors (as do the way she’s depicted, hunched over her patient, in lappet cap and black neck handkerchief or mantelet, placing her as widowed and aged). With the inheritance of her late husband’s medicines and goods, where does Elizabeth Weed fit between the doctor and the doctress? While it is impossible to say with certainly, it’s likely her material surroundings, and the equipment she had to use, was closer to the well-kitted pharmacy of the “Quaker doctor” print than to the “Village Doctress.”

In Defense of Bad History

19 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by in Events, Living History, Reenacting

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A City Shower. Oil on canvas by Edward Penny, 1764. Museum of London

Not inaccurate or badly researched history, of course, but the “Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know” kind of history.

Without wading into the murky waters of canceled reenactments (not my time periods– yet!) and the politicization of historical facts, I advocate the recreation of the “bad” people of history. Not the Hitlers and Himmlers and Stalins and Amins, but the everyday bad. The lazy. The feckless. The annoyed. The I’m-just-now-waking-up-to-the-bad-choice-I-made.

The Female Orators. Printed for Jno. Smith, No. 35 Cheapside, & Robt. Sayer, No. 53 Fleet Street, as the act directs, Novr. 20, 1768.

I think about these people– the ones who slack off while working, the ones who steal shirts, assault officers, throw bones out of barracks doors— periodically, especially when an event is being planned. It’s not that I don’t want to work, mind you: I enjoy working, even the cleaning and scrubbing of history. But it strikes me, especially in summer, that we approach the recreation of history with such excellent intentions. We will Do Our Best. We will Lend A Hand. We will be Always Cheerful.

Why? Why do we not represent the people who shirked? Why do we not represent the people who resented being told what to do, and when? Why do we not take into account our industrialized notions of labor (shifts, clocks, production levels( when we step backwards into a period where there was no factory whistle to set the pace?

painting of a shabbyily dressed family in a decaying room

The Miseries of Idleness. Oil on canvas by George Morland ca 1788. National Gallery of Scotland, NG 1836. Presented by Alexander and Lady Margaret Shaw, later Lord and Lady Craigmyle 1935

Granted, within a military environment, there are rules, regulations, clocks, and enforcers. But I cannot help thinking that the pace of labor, the speed and drive with which people tackled tasks, was different one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, years ago. Of course there were strivers and doers: the American army in the Revolution was populated by adherents to piety and discipline. But it’s clear from the orderly books that there were miscreants and slackers, too.

painting of a well dressed family in a cozy farm house kitchen

The Comforts of Industry. Oil on canvas by George Morland, before 1790. National Gallery of Scotland, NG 1835. Presented by Alexander and Lady Margaret Shaw, later Lord and Lady Craigmyle 1935

And I’m not saying everyone should be a slacker, but you know as well as I do that every workplace today has a slacker or two: the long-term federal employee who watches football at work; the retail clerk whose breaks last a little longer every time; the shelver in the library who catches a nap whilst shelf reading. There are consequences (usually) for those (in)actions, and that’s kind of the point. The slattern and the slacker of history throw into higher relief the purpose of the discipline an army (or housekeeper or master cabinet maker) is trying to maintain. When we all strive to do our best, we lose the depth of interpretation that doing “bad” history can provide.

Ceci n’est pas une assiette

04 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in Collecting, material culture, personal

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Historic American Buildings Survey, George F.A. Palmer, Photographer, 1937 DETAIL OF PARLOR FIREPLACE. – Jeremiah Dexter House, 957 North Main Street, Providence, Providence County, RI

Last weekend, Drunk Tailor and I delivered the Giant to his new life as a college student back in New England, and paid a call on of my oldest friends, a 96-year-old former OSS agent and descendent of the Dexter family. My eldest friend had something she wanted to give me: a souvenir of the Dexter House, in recognition of the hours I’d spent working with her identifying and organizing several hundred years of family papers.

In the photo at left, the coffee pot on the mantle is now in a museum collection, as are the miniatures, the bellows, and the pipe box (which is now on display in a historic house museum). What my eldest friend gave me is not in the image of the house, but resembles the plate to the left of the fireplace: a Staffordshire transferware “Village Church” pattern plate with a wild rose border, ca 1825.

Transferware soup plate ca. 1825. Unknown maker, Staffordshire, England.

I’m a fan of blue and white china, and while I prefer earlier Canton ware, this plate is more special to me than the ones I’ve bought at auction or in New Bedford antique shops: because of course it’s not a plate, it’s memory, or an emotion, made solid.

Drunk Tailor and I spent an early Sunday afternoon on my friend’s porch listening to stories about her children, in particular about her daughter Mary, now an artist living in Mexico. Is it a comfort or an annoyance to learn that schools have been misjudging children since schools were invented, trying hard to fit round pegs into square holes? Mary, always more interested in drawing than in lectures, once left a classroom when the teacher said, “If anyone doesn’t want to hear this lesson, then they can leave now.” Out Mary went, three other girls following her out to play on a beautiful spring afternoon.

That story, and many others, aren’t apparent in the plate with its crazed face and discoloration. Only my memories (and anything I write down and keep with the plate) make the associations. But it is always the stories about the objects that make them important (even big-ticket dec arts items, like Plunkett Fleason easy chairs.)

Last night, before Drunk Tailor and I watched The Maltese Falcon, we watched Adam Savage’s TED talk on his obsession with objects. The TED talk is worth a watch for anyone interested in material culture and objects. Our human fascination with things goes beyond the shiny surface of new things (tabernacle mirrors or iPhones) as they become repositories of memory, symbols of feelings or moments.

War correspondents and personnel of the Office of Strategic Services, leaving from the Railhead, Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia, enroute overseas. NARA. National Archives Identifier: 542171 Local Identifier: 336-H-17(E8671)
Creator: War Department. Army Service Forces. Office of the Chief of Transportation. 3/12/1943-6/11/1946

This: In my desk drawer, I have a buckeye Drunk Tailor picked up and handed to me in a garden in New Jersey. It’s useless: inedible, too light to be a paperweight, but it reminds me of that November afternoon, the soft green of the garden, and how shy I felt. Anyone cleaning out my desk would toss that bit of organic matter, even as I keep it as a talisman of one of our first dates: the places, the smells, and the feelings.

And this, too: My friend is 96. I may never see her again, though when I left her, she was healthy and cheerful, making plans for the fall with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren coming to visit. Given my reticence and her old-fashioned New England reserve, I may never be able to tell her how much she means to me (I try), or how interesting I think she is. (“I’m not interesting, dear, I just worked hard,” is what she says when I try to convince her to donate her personal papers to an archive.) But I have a plate that was in a house that had a great deal of meaning to her, and my best guess is that her gift of that plate to me means she knows how much I like and admire her. It reminds me of her, and reminds me of how little time there is before all that’s left is the plate and my memories.