Category Archives: Museums

Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do

07 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by in Clothing, History, Museums, Research

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Bodice, painted Indian cotton, 1780-1795 RIHS 1990.36.27

Bodice, painted Indian cotton, 1780-1795
RIHS 1990.36.27

I’ve fallen behind again, as I spent considerable early morning time this past week working on a short presentation for a program in Worcester this past weekend. If you are among the people who do not wake at 4:00 AM panicking about the organization of your thoughts, or whom, exactly, might have worn a heavily-remade bodice, you are lucky indeed.

But I managed to present without falling all over myself, putting out someone’s eye, or causing mayhem and self-embarassment, so, phew! (I do this so much less often than I used to that my anticipatory anxiety is always high.)

Above you can see one of the items I talked about: a re-worked bodice from the collection of the Rhode Island Historical Society.

Sleeves, removed from bodice 1990.36.27. RIHS 1990.36.25A-B

Sleeves, removed from bodice 1990.36.27.
RIHS 1990.36.25A-B

I think, once upon a time, that bodice was part of a pieced-back closed-front gown with a matching petticoat.

And then I think someone decided (quite rightly) that the style was too passé for 1795, and altered the gown significantly.

Not only is there evidence of new sleeves being fitted into the gown’s armscyes, we have the sleeves-that-used-to-be. And my dear! No one is wearing sleeves like that this season!

I find these garments in limbo really fascinating. Was that bodice finished and worn with a matching petticoat? (Yes, there’s a panel of that left, too; what a lovely hem!)

Skirt panel, painted Indian cotton. RIHS 1990.36.33

Skirt panel, painted Indian cotton.
RIHS 1990.36.33

Who wore the gown? Was the woman who wore it originally the same woman who wore it altered? I can only guess at this point, and may never find the smoking diary or mantua-maker’s bill. The alterations are not as finely done as the original gown, so I think there are two hands at work here– whose were those hands? There’s always more to think about and learn.

In case you’re wondering, thanks to the Met, we can see what the gown probably looked like in its first incarnation, and then what the alterations were meant to achieve. (Link to the gown on the left; link to the gown on the right.)

Robe a l’anglaise, 1785-1795 MMA 2009.300.647
Gown and petticoat, 1790-1794 MMA C.I.45.6a,b

Frivolous Friday

28 Friday Mar 2014

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Robe à la Française 1778–85 French linen, silk Purchase, Irene Lewisohn Bequest, 1965 MMA C.I.65.13.2a–c

Robe à la Française
1778–85
French linen, silk
Purchase, Irene Lewisohn Bequest, 1965 MMA C.I.65.13.2a–c

Yes, I give up. It has been a long week, I am tired of winter and tired of snow and packing books and carpets torn up and tired of bad communication. Fresh content? I am fresh out.

I spent Thursday beating my head against research into the Brown family textile collection, and Providence textiles in general, for a program I seem to part of next Saturday. I hope I’m prepared, but along the way to getting ready, I spent some time in many museum databases beyond our own.

The Met, as always, rocks the party and brings their largesse to us all with their online publications.

Get thee to their website, content-hungry pilgrim, and enjoy the downloadable fun. (Some of you already know this, but I keep losing the right link, so here it is again.)

The Society of Friends

09 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Clothing, Events, History, Museums

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Courtesy Newport Historical Society

Courtesy Newport Historical Society

Last Friday, I joined my friends in Newport for a program at the Newport Historical Society.

We stood in the Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House behind the NHS’s headquarters building and read excerpts of letters from the Williams Collection.

This is a simple, elegant concept for a program, and works incredibly well if the correspondence have the gift for expression that these people did. Even quotidian details–the price someone wants to get for their dining set, the likelihood of moving one’s mother, who must be carried ‘as carefully as a box of China’–take on humor when read aloud.

Courtesy Newport Historical Society

Courtesy Newport Historical Society

The best letter might well have been the last one, read by Sew 18th  Century. The latest of the selection, the writer described a visit to Newport around 1844, arriving at the dock to the bustle of wagons, walking streets and finding a barber who knew the old fish hawker, the enormous jaw bone of a whale on a street corner, and even lifting the latch to walk inside the Seventh Day Baptist Meeting House where we were standing.

It was a lovely way to end the program, resonant with details the audience could connect with.

My dress turned out all right, and I managed to get it on and keep it on, which seemed a small miracle requiring only two pins.

When I tried it on at home, the front panel didn’t wrinkle, so I think I pulled it too tightly around me on Friday. I kept my bonnet on because I didn’t have time to make a new cap, so made do with the housekeeper’s cap from last fall. The chemisette was made by Cassidy, and saved me from the migratory ‘charms’ of a kerchief. The ‘shawl’ was a gift  Christmas from my mother, who rightly saw it as a scarf, but those who wish to keep warm do not quibble when they cannot find exactly what they want. Before I wear the dress again, I have to attend to interior seams of the skirt and scoot the cuffs down to lengthen the sleeves. Four yards of 48-inch wide silk was just enough, but needs a little tweaking when you’re a tall as I am.

Criss Cross

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

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Dolly Eyland, by Alexander Keith, 1808. (c) The New Art Gallery Walsall; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Dolly Eyland, by Alexander Keith, 1808. (c) The New Art Gallery Walsall; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

I like Dolly. The colors, the textures, the style of her gown, shawl and cap all please me. She’s rocking some serious class for a woman headed towards a certain age. And she’s wearing a cross-front gown, which is what I settled on for my Quaker costume. 

Taffeta dress, ca.1800-1810, Originally found on Villa Rosemaine site, where it does not appear now.

The trouble with making a gown based on an artistic sketch in a book is that you don’t have the most complete sense of what that garment looks like, or how it goes together.

Not to worry, I went ahead anyway, because this is as close to Everest as I will ever get.

But I wanted comparable garments to help guide me. Ages ago I found the gown at left on a French costume site. That’s helpful, in that it explains the trickiness of assembling and wearing this style of garment. Three pieces coming together in the front may be one piece too many. 

In making up my pattern, I used the pattern for the Spencer as a starting place because I knew that the set of the sleeves and arm scye were what I wanted. No reason to re-invent that process!

That left me with the luxury of concentrating on the neckline.

That took a few goes with the tracing paper and muslin:  I did lose count after a while. There may have been tears, there definitely was swearing. Mr S at one point made jokes about this process appearing on the Discovery Channel’s “How it’s Made” as “the Quaker dress.” He’s really very patient, and I do understand the selective deafness he’s had to develop as a defense against the dark arts of sewing historic clothing.

Thank you, Cassidy, for the chemisette!

Eventually, I had a decent lining and even some silk bodice fronts. I fiddled with the fronts, and settled on gathers instead of pleats, but couldn’t quite figure out where the casing went. Some days I can process drawings into objects, some days I can’t. I’d just about reached the point of cutting it all up into the gown I always make when I discovered that the excellent women of the 19th US had patterned the gown from the drawing, too. (If you don’t already use this site, I highly recommend it. Excellent work.) Those pattern pieces look like my pattern pieces, so I decided it was worth carrying on with what I have.

The Difference is…

28 Friday Feb 2014

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I make this look good.

Robe à la Polonaise ca. 1775 British silk Length at CB: 56 in. (142.2 cm) Purchase, Judith and Gerson Leiber Fund, 1981 MMA 1981.314.1

Scrolling through Pinterest lately, I was struck by how different two presentations can make one gown look.

Above, a lovely Ikat-type silk gown with en fourreau back and trim, center front closing and probably a little closer to 1778 or 1780 than 1775.

It’s presented on a mannequin that supports the gown for photography and allows us to see it clearly, from the trim at the neck to the pleats down the back and the pleasant fullness of the skirt.

The gown is shown, we get the details.

And then, in another image, another view.

Robe à la Polonaise ca. 1775 British silk Length at CB: 56 in. Purchase, Judith and Gerson Leiber Fund, 1981 MMA 1981.314.1

In this image, the gown (and its companion) have been styled and accessorized, fichus, hats, ribbons, sashes. The skirt is more fully and completely supported, showing off the silk to even better effect. We lose the trim and pleating details, but the gown is much more attractive in this view.

This is not meant to criticize the images or the handling of the costumes, but to point out that you have to look past the plain record shots in museum databases, and see the gown as it would have been worn. Working with database images, and re-creating garments from those images, requires a leap of imagination.

The more you look (at database photos, exhibition photos, extant garments, fashion plates, other re-creations) the better you will be able to imagine the garment as it might have been, and to make it yourself.

To be fair, original garments cannot always be mounted in stylish and appropriate fashion, but they can still tell us something. The more you look, the more you’ll see.