Category Archives: History

In Tents Tuesday*

06 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by in History, Living History, Making Things, Reenacting, Research

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You know The Tent Article, don’t know? You do, if you’re camping 18th century private soldier style in your hand-sewn coat.

Scene of the Camp on Hampton Green, 1781

Scene of the Camp on Hampton Green, 1781

The Tent Article (hereafter The Document) pulls together documentation and research assembled by a team of living history enthusiasts dedicated to replicating the 18th century enlisted army experience in an accurate manner. Though the PowerPoint format affects the overall length, be warned: we are talking 300+ pages here.

No strangers to the pursuit of the accurate and never ones to shy away from an arduous task involving pointy objects and string, the 10th Mass assembled on Saturday afternoon for a round of tent sewing.

I first read The Tent Article in 2012, and was promptly ashamed of our hand-me-down tent which had everything to recommend it in terms of price, but wanted in terms of accuracy. In response, I began making 1/8″ scale models of tents to figure out how much linen I would need to buy in order to make a truly correct tent. Finally, all that edumacation in art and architecture had utility! Alas: distractions arose, cost overwhelmed, our then-primary regiment scoffed, and I abandoned hand-sewn tent plans.

Fast forward to Tyler Putnam’s blogging on The First Oval Office project, and I was once again intrigued. I began calculating how much vacation time I might need to complete a tent by hand in our living room. Well, thank goodness for finding fellow travelers, because lo and behold! The 10th Mass had tents in want of sewing, so I could learn a great deal without filling our home with excessive yardage.

“Sails.”

Progress was made last August in Newport, where the tents masqueraded as sails, but the canvas languished unsewn until last Saturday, when we duly assembled in Hopkinton and unfurled the vast expanse of linen. It was suggested that I might know some people with access to sail lofts (!), but in about 4 hours, a number of us managed to finish the final foot of backstitching and to flat-fell a little more than 60 feet of tent seams.

It's a vast expanse of linen.

It’s a vast expanse of linen.

The Document was consulted to make sure we were proceeding correctly, though the iPad misbehaved and forwarded us many pages to grommets. (I’m looking forward to those, as I enjoy sewing eyelets– and have just earned myself the dubious honor of sewing at least half of them, I’m sure.) We checked the images, threaded our needles, and off we went.

A few inches (feet) of felling had to be unstitched and resewn, but heavy linen is wily and some stitchers were newer to the process than others. But by the close of day, all seams were felled, needles packed, and tentage folded.

Next up, per The Document, are mud flaps. This should get interesting, as math in front of an audience usually is.

 

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I promised a pun, so here’s the worst. Somehow we got on to unfortunate reenactorisms, which collided with Star Wars, and brought us to the realization that what we needed were light sabres… ’cause it’s the 10th Massachusetts Regiment Light Infantry Company. We were punished for this hilarity by having to drive home on untreated roads into snow that looked like we were trying to take the Millenium Falcon to hyperspeed.

 

*It really happened on Saturday.

Whimsical Whiskered Wednesday

26 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by in History, Museums, Research

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A quintetto. Musical Amateurs. Hand colored etching by Piercy Roberts, after George Moutard Woodward, 1803. British Museum1981,U.199

A quintetto. Musical Amateurs. Hand colored etching by Piercy Roberts, after George Moutard Woodward, 1803. British Museum1981,U.199

E’en Age itself is cheard with Music. It wakes a glad Remembrance of our Youth, Calls back past Joy’s and warms us into Transport. Vide Rowe read the lines at the top of this engraving, and while I’m fairly confident the Rowe referred to is Nicholas Rowe, I have not connected the quote to him.

Instead, you’re treated to the image that struck me as I searched for 1820s maids at the British Museum. Happily, my household is one cat and one cockatoo short of this reality, but it pretty much sums up breakfast time Chez Calash, when I am too slow with the breakfast portions, and the beasts begin to sing.

Happy Thanksgiving, American readers. I’m taking a short break from museum thinking to wrangle our dinner to the table, attempt to finish a gown, and catch up on some sleep.

Preservation or Petrification?

22 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by in History, Living History, Museums, Philosophy

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For almost ten years, I’ve been working on the re-interpretation and re-presentation of the HHM that is part of my employer’s stable of properties. We’ve had mixed results: guides who refuse to look me in the face, guides who quit because a piano got moved, guides who hissed “hedonism!” at the site of a lounging mannequin, and guides who were made incredibly sad by the representation of a sick (dying) child.

James, recovering from a party the night before

James, recovering from a party the night before, angered some guides (2007)

Me, I consider all those things successes.
The people who had to deal directly with that fall out, maybe not so much.

Change is hard and scary, and every one has a different tolerance for risk. As you have probably guessed, mine’s fairly high. I blog, I go out into the world in some pretty funny clothes, and inhabit characters I am not. I expect to fail regularly: it’s a reliable way of learning.

Change is hard to maintain, it’s hard to continually evolve and push an interpretation forward. It takes time, focus, and money; it takes cross-disciplinary collaboration and communication between curators, educators, and docents or guides.

Taking risks in spaces full of very expensive furniture is particularly daunting, but especially rewarding when you see how a house looks, inhabited and, to a degree, used.

Alice receives the mantua maker's letter

They’re sitting in real, accessioned chairs. (2014)

The job of museums is to preserve, but we sometimes seem determined to petrify, to freeze a perfect moment in amber, to freeze our visitors with fear of touching, photographing, asking, and to freeze and understanding, all in a fluid world.

If we reject the beautiful and untouchable past to embrace the messy human past, we can juxtapose the fine mahogany-furnished rooms of the merchant elite with the work to create those rooms and make the picture more whole by including slaves, servants, workmen and tradesmen.

More of us would have been working than lounging

More of us would have been working than lounging (2006)

Most of us would not have lived the way the merchants did: to a degree, our historic house visits are backwardly aspirational, as we wish for nostalgia that is more false than most nostalgia.

I am not advocating favoring the smelly past, or descriptions of unpleasantness, over exultations about carvings and upholstery—except that I am—because I see these pendulum swings as a part of the process of creating more complete and honest representations and recreations of the past, in museums, at historic sites, and in living history presentations.

It’s past time for me to work again on re-imagining the house under my care: I acknowledge that. Synthesizing what I learn in living history with the work I do in museums, and vice-versa, will improve and enhance the public experience of history inside and out.

Pushing Interpretation Forward

18 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Events, History, Living History, Museums, Philosophy, Reenacting

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Dare I say progressing?

servant mannequin in 18th century room

That’s no ghost, that’s my kid

In the past decade, museums, particularly historic house museums, have been challenged to refresh and reinvent their interpretations and presentations. The most notable challenge has come from the Anarchist Guide to Historic House Museums (AGHHM), and the Historic House Trust of New York’s executive director, Franklin Vagnone.

I re-read a number of Vagnone and Deborah Ryan’s papers recently (including this one), thinking not just about What Cheer Day in a historic house, but about reenacting, living history, and costumed interpretation.

To make a historic house museum (HHM) seem more inhabited and real takes a lot of stuff: clothes, dishes, shoes, stockings, toys— all the stuff that surrounds us now, but correct for the time of the HHM, and arranged in a plausible manner, not like a sitcom set, where chairs before a fireplace face the visitor and not the hearth.

Man with cards, glasses and pipe in 18th century room

Stuff makes a house

To a degree, this is set-dressing, but set-dressing for a still-life, or real life, if the habitation will be by costumed interpreters. It has to be accurate to be authentic, whether it’s a HHM or a living history event that is striving to create a moment, or series of moments, in time– immersive moments.

We cannot step into the past unless we believe the representation we’re seeing, and that’s true no matter where we are: that’s why fabric matters, sewing techniques matter, tent pins and kettles and canteens matter. The world is made up of tiny details that we do actually notice without even knowing it: we see more than we realize, faster than we think. We’ll trip on the different, and stop.

A variety of coats can tell a variety of stories

A variety of coats can tell a variety of stories

But what we want to do, as interpreters, is to have the visitor catch the right difference: not the one about which canteen and why, but the larger interpretive point. In one hypothetical example, wooden canteens are a way to talk about defense contracting and supplying the American army, just as over-dyed captured coats are a way to talk about the American Revolution as an international, and not just a civil, war.

An encampment is, in a way, a neighborhood of HHMs turned inside out, with each regiment a separate family within the larger neighborhood. Each regiment tells a story about itself and its history, and is a lens through which visitors see the larger story.

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That’s why accuracy matters: you don’t want to debunk Ye Olde Colonial craft in camp, or cotton-poly polonaises (poly-naises?) worn by purported women on the ration: you want to focus on the larger interpretive point. When not everyone plays by the same rules, it is better to focus on your own accuracy and authenticity and to ignore Ye Olde Annoyances.

Tell the larger story, the story of your own regiment’s people: that’s your interpretive goal.

A Matter of Interpretation

17 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by in Events, History, Living History, Museums, personal, Philosophy, Reenacting

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On the way to Southbridge, Mr S and I were discussing the last “big” event for the year, and whether or not we wanted to go. It’s an annual event grounded in ceremony, and somewhat repetitive.

The landing of the British forces in the Jerseys on the 20th of November 1776 under the command of the Rt. Honl. Lieut. Genl. Earl Cornwallis. Watercolor, attributed to Thomas Davies. NYPL

Mr S would like to go if he had the proper wool coat– it will be easy enough to make, once he gets a kit– but which he does not now have. I find it’s usually a day alone wishing I was across the river in a museum or fabric shop. In the end, it’s a long drive to a day spent in the cold and wind followed by a dash home in the dark, with Sunday spent catching up on chores and cleaning muskets, and now with an added measure of homework stress.

I have painted this as a grimmer day than it usually is, but considering that it’s been 7 months since we had any non-medical time off from work, squeezing this into a busy and stressful schedule is not as appealing as it once was. In part, I think it is because there is a lost opportunity in the interpretation, which is surely limited by the size and nature of the site, and by the loss of the historic fabric of the area.

Nestled in a densely settled and very urban area, the park site has a block house, hut, and fortification as well as a museum. Sutlers and others set up in the museum for the day, including some demonstrations of women’s work…like spinning. Spending the day inside spinning is not for me: not only can I not spin, I cannot imagine fleeing the British with a spinning wheel, which is an annoying contraption to move even with assistance, plenty of time, and a Subaru.

The Young Mr hides

But more than my impatience with Ye Olde Colonial Spinning Wheel at too many military camps this past year, I think what stops me from wanting to go is the repetitive formality of the interpretation, with the the march to the monument and the post-prandial “battle” for the blockhouse, with the Americans sometimes winning, despite the fact that the fall of this site marked the beginning of Washington’s retreat to Pennsylvania, and despite the fact that three days earlier, when the companion fort across the river fell to the British and Hessian troops, nearly 3,000 Americans were taken prisoner in 1776, and of those, only 800 survived. In what way is this ritualistic commemorative event remotely authentic? And if the only way people get the actual history and importance of the event is through the event narration or museum exhibit, hasn’t the reenactment or living history portion then failed?

Ritualistic, commemorative.

The more I think about interpretation and presentation, the more Ye Olde Colonial things annoy me and the more important I think it is to be accurate and correct.

Forcing a passage of the Hudson River, 9 October 1776. oil on canvas by Thomas Mitchell from an original by Dominic Serres the Elder. Royal Museums Greenwich

That does not mean that I expect a naval engagement (though a girl can dream) or a cross-Hudson rowing affair, but I do think it could be interesting to see troops at a fort packing up and evacuating the site, with the confusion that could result. But it’s not my circus, and not my monkeys, and in any event, I shall probably stay home to make sure that homework and housework alike are done in this current century.