Category Archives: Reenacting

Making an Impression

15 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by in History, Living History, Reenacting, Research

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Trade card for Dorothy Mercier, Printseller and Stationer; Etching with engraved lettering below. Print by Jean Baptiste Chatelain after Gravelot. 1745-1770. British Museum, D,2.3396

Dorothy Mercier: widow of an artist (and a painter herself), Mercier went into business after the death of her husband, Philip, first as a printseller and stationer, and later as a purveyor of artists’ supplies. Some of what she sold is listed below the vignette of a shop, and includes ‘all Sorts of Papers for Drawing, &c./ The best Black Lead Pencils, Black, Red & White Chalk./ Variety of Water-Colours, and Camels Hair Pencils./…English, Dutch, & French Drawing Paper, Abortive Vellum for Drawing,/ Writing Vellum, the Silk Paper for Drawing.’ She also sold “Continental prints” and “paintings of flowers in her own hand,” a pursuit considered suitable for ladies in the mid-18th century.

Evidence of widows taking over a husband’s print shop in the American colonies in the 18th century is harder to come by–there seems to be less specialization of retail sales in the colonies, certainly compared to London, which is one factor–though printers’ widows did assume their trade in Newport and Williamsburg, among other places. If we imagine a print shop in the colonies, what would we find for sale?

Nicholas Brooks’ ad from the Pennsylvania Packet of June 21, 1773 provides an answer:

Mrs. Yates in the character of Electra; Venus blinding Cupid by Strange (that’s a print by Robert Strange after Titian, no matter what glorious oddity you may imagine), and portraits of George Whitefield, John Wesley, and other religious luminaries. Whitefield and Wesley were popular Methodist ministers: Whitefield, the peripatetic evangelist, was the primary force behind the Great Awakening, and Wesley, despite his loyalty to King and Church, was an inspiration to the Revolutionary movement in America.

John Wesley after Nathaniel Hone
mezzotint, published 1770
© National Portrait Gallery, London NPG D4740

This print of Wesley is one I have seen in person, in a period frame, with a period backboard inscribed “Capt. Wm Noyes 1st Conts” and to be fair, it is one I have spent some time researching, so the titles in that Nicholas Brooks ad– which I was reading for another purpose altogether– were exciting to find. When I think about visual or print culture in the Revolutionary era, I try to imagine the ways in which people encountered imagery, and how they understood it. Wesley– and print shops– are one way I begin to fill in a picture of the past.

Compare and Contrast

28 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in Clothing, Events, Living History, Reenacting

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2016’s 1770
2018’s 1770

Boston Massacre planning is underway for everyone involved at every level, including me.

I’ve made changes to what I plan to wear, in part because I have a newer gown that fits better and keeps me warmer, and because I have learned more, and looked at more, in the intervening time. Since 2016, I’ve made/upgraded a quilted petticoat (in a bronze silk, a color documented to Rhode Island quilted ‘coats), settled in to wearing my cap tied under my chin, and made both a new apron and a new bonnet.

2017’s 1777
2018’s 1770

Cap and bonnet shape and shoes help make time period distinctions between 1777 and 1770; if I could find the wool I made the gown from, I would add the cuffs it desperately needs. The heeled shoes skew earlier than 1770, but they are the only heeled shoes I have….if the weather is wretched, I will wear the flats for safety and comfort.

2016’s Bonnet
2018’s Bonnet

The bonnet, which I affectionately call “Lampshade,” is meant to have the shape of pre-1770 bonnets as seen in Sandby’s illustrations, and which I have been working on for a while.

Martha Collins, Thomas Sandby’s Cook. watercolor on paper by Paul Sandby, 1770-1780. RCIN 914339

I know from reading the standards that the understanding of mitt material has evolved, and my time this morning looking for an elusive apron shape raises questions for me as well. Here’s Martha Collins, painted by Paul Sandby. What’s that black thing on her arm? A mitt? An arm warmer? Is it knit, or woven? There’s always more to figure out, and more to make.

Cuffs on my gown don’t seem like a big enough deal to warrant buying wool for a whole new gown (with only six weeks to go), so my choices are live with no cuffs, alter the red gown of 2016’s event to fit properly, or initiate an extensive search for the scraps left over from the green gown…which may or may not be buried in storage. Tick tock.

Squirrel!

28 Tuesday Nov 2017

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

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It’s astonishing to me, in a way, that I haven’t posted about this before, but shockingly, I have not. Remember the need to keep warm in Princeton? Tested on at Ti? A compromise?

I updated that garment and wore a nearly-completed version at Ti last February but never wrote about the new version: the Squirrel Waistcoat.

Wool hand-quilted to a wool backing and lined with wool, I wore this almost finished at Fort Ti last February, and found it comfortable and cozy. I had imagined its state to be far worse than it was: with a lining in need of piecing, mangled seams, your worst nightmare come true. But no: all it really needed was some binding adjustment, not surprising considering that I stitched the binding by candlelight while chattering away with friends over cider.

The back pieces weren’t bound at all, but because I’d imagined this needed so much more work than it did, I put it aside until now, when I know I will want it for a weekend in Trenton, and another at Ti in December. All it took was a little time, and accepting that the bindings will not match.

This wasn’t a long, involved project, really, though I spent lunch hours and evenings working on it last January and February. It is, as so many things are, about patience. Patience and good needles.

The construction was based on the quilted waistcoat I made two years ago, with a pattern derived from Sharon Burnston’s research, using fitting adjustments I’d made to an earlier jacket pattern (long since abandoned due to living in New England).

I don’t fully remember how it fits best, over or under my stays, but I’ll get a couple of opportunities to test drive the layers in the next two weeks. And in the meantime? Squirrel!

We Have Data

26 Thursday Oct 2017

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

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My assistant misunderstood the exercise, and is disappointed that we will not be turning the government over to him.

Data Cat says it’s clear: Cats Rule.

What is clear is that 501 people from around the world (really: people responded from the US, Canada, Australia, Europe, Great Britain) were interested enough to see what we could find out by asking questions about what, how, and why we make and wear these funny clothes. I’m immensely grateful that Google tools are easy to use, as I can present Graphs Without Tears:

Here’s how that breaks down:
Strongly disagree: 1.8%
Disagree: 0.6 %
Neutral: 3%
Agree: 30.9%
Strongly agree: 63.7%

That is, 94.6% of respondents agree that they try to make the most period-correct clothing they can. The “strongly disagree” folks (9 of them) are interesting to me, because it’s a position that’s foreign to me. (This is why recording your email was an option, so I could clarify the data.)

Next, let’s look at Authenticity:

Here’s how that breaks down:
Strongly disagree: 2.6%
Disagree:.2 %
Neutral:1%
Agree:32.3%
Strongly agree:63.9%

And on the use of Primary Sources:

Yes: 94.4%
No: 5.6 %

When I dug into what sources people use, and consider “primary sources,” I realized I have more questions to ask, and there are some folks who could use some research help. Not handed to them on a plate or in a slideshow, but in terms of process, and in recognizing primary versus secondary sources, and how they can be used together for maximum understanding.

Then I asked, Why is documentation important to you? 

Those responses will also inform another round of questions. Many were very revealing of thought processes and approaches; some made me a little sad. A couple of people said, essentially, I don’t want other reenactors to laugh at me.  I think we can do better than that, right? Let’s try empathy on for size, and be as helpful as we can in guiding people to an understanding of what they want to do, and how best to go about it.

Because the answers varied in length, I started reading them to discern the essence of the response, and I came up with five categories; the sixth slice represents the answers left blank.

Accuracy: 73.4%
Immersion: 11.6%
Learning: 6.1%
Respect (of ancestors, history): 4.0%
Personal (fun; satisfaction): 0.5%
No answer: 4.5%

Accuracy is the main reason documentation matters to people, and they gave good answers for why accuracy mattered.

I want to have the resource itself, rather than someone else’s interpretation of it. If everyone bases their impression off of somebody else, rather than going to the source first, it becomes a game of telephone.

It’s like medical documentation. If it’s not written down, it didn’t happen. There’s enough open source imagery and documents on the internet, let alone physical ones or surviving garments, that there really is no excuse for wild supposition.

Because everything else is unsubstantiated conjecture or hearsay and feels inauthentic to me and to those around me.

Because I use my impression to communicate about history, and history is grounded in factual, accurate information.

Documentation is the truth behind the fiction of a living history impression.

Immersion had interesting answers, too:

I want to accurately portray my impression for the public. As an added bonus, wearing the correct clothing and using period correct items, helps me connect with the people I portray on a personal level.

Because the point of living history (to me) is to recreate the past enough to learn from the visceral experience of *living* it, so it needs to be pretty accurate! Documentation is how I can know if what I’m doing is accurate (or close to accurate).

It tells us a lot about the larger picture of what was going on: trade, manufacturing, diplomacy, economics

Learning:
Because if we’re teaching people history, teaching them something that’s wrong is a disservice and an embarrassment on our part. We have the ability to learn what’s correct.

Researching and documenting my impression is why I am proud to put on my clothes. I enjoy the challenge and detective work that comes before I ever cut into any fabric.

Respect:
We owe it to our ancestors to tell their stories as accurately as possible.

For the class of person I represent, documentation can be very difficult to get at. Some documentation indicates that the garment(s) in question possibly existed, 3 pieces of documentation is ideal, but 2 will sometimes do, depending on my instincts about something. I have regretted only going for two in the past because my intention is generally to represent something very common. Documentation is important because it shows respect for the historical people I am trying to represent, it shows respect for my own work and time and it shows respect to the hobby (which, in historical circles, is often far more important than people give it credit for).

There’s a lot to think about in considering what you all think about, and I am really grateful for your help! As I look at the answers over the next days/weeks, I’ll let you know what else I see, and once I figure out how to ask the next round, there will be more questions! Thanks again! (And if you didn’t get to participate this time, no worries: you can join in next time; the easiest way is to follow the Kitty Calash FB page, but I’ll also post a link here.)

Taking the Census. oil on canvas, 1854. Francis William Edmonds. Gift of Diane, Daniel, and Mathew Wolf, in honor of John K. Howat and Lewis I. Sharp, 2006 2006.457 Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Clear and Present Danger

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Living History, personal, Philosophy, Reenacting

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A Female Philosopher in Extasy at Solving a Problem. London, England; about 1770 Mezzotint and engraving with watercolor on laid paper
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Scandal and outrage rock the reenacting world as reading comprehension lags and The Gentle Author is accused of presentism– or, at least, that’s the most reasonable translation I have for comments made about me last night on social media, including:

Yeah- she’s got great stuff. But I feel awful that she fell into a modern-think trap.

and, my favorite,

I’d say its a post modern Critical Theory think trap. Frankfort [sic] School is gushing from the pores.

Let’s take this apart, shall we? The Frankfurt School (not this place) was a social and political movement based in Frankfurt am Main in the immediate post-World War I years. After 1933, the school, formally known as the Institute for Social Research, moved to Columbia University in New York city. Being insulted by association with the likes of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno is a new experience for me; I’m more usually associated with the ideas of Mary Daly and Jacques Derrida but I’ll take backhanded intellectual flattery where I can get it. (Also, thanks for thinking of me, but Kitty does not require your pity.)

More seriously, the postings last night (which happened while I was in class and have been deleted) brought to mind two powerful issues in living history and the reenacting community: Presentism and Feminism (with its unholy shadow, mansplaining).

Let’s go over these:

Presentism: uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes, especially the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts.

Feminism: The radical notion that women are people. the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.

My recent post about MoAR’s Occupied Philadelphia event was accused of presentism, or “falling into a modern-think trap” and a “Critical Theory trap.” Here’s how that post came about:

Images were posted to Facebook, and I was tagged in one that showed me in the midst of a crowd that included members of the 17th Regiment of Infantry, one of the forces that occupied Philadelphia in 1777. My cousin, ever the wag, commented:

click to enlarge in a new window

“I suppose you hang out with Confederates, too,” had some bite. What surprised me was my well-educated and thoughtful cousin’s facile conflation of Confederates and British. Is the world that easily black-and-white, good-and-bad, Manichaen? Not usually, and certainly not usually to my cousin. Explanations seemed in order. Why had I done what I did, and what did I do? What was Occupied Philadelphia about?*

To me, it offered the chance for some complicated interpretation that’s more readily accessible via living history than by exhibit panel, or at least significantly more engaging than text. How do you elucidate the complexity of the American Revolution? How do you get people to think about the past in the past’s terms? How do you get them to query and interrogate their accepted understandings of history?

Apparently that position towards living history– that it is complicated, worthy of criticism, can be used to create a complicated look at the past, and can be understood through cultural criticism– is deserving of the dog-whistle scorn of men hiding behind false names on social media. It elicits from them suggestions for interpretation that include impressions already being done, and referenced in the original post. It elicits suggestions based on 1811 paintings of Philadelphia, because of course, nothing helps illuminate 1777 Philadelphia like a genre painting made 34 years later.

If anything, I was suggesting that complicated interpretations (that is, showing how an “occupying force” might be “good” for the population) can further an understanding of the past that helps us understand the present. Isn’t that the mission of most history organizations? Understanding the past to illuminate the present and shape the future? It’s unsettling to realize so immediately how people who practice history use it to reinforce the status quo, and use misreadings of interpretation to further their own sense of superiority.

That’s where feminism comes in: suggesting “new” roles for women in living history (Laundry? How ’bout being a Quaker?) on a page dedicated to women’s history is a dizzying feat of sexist thinking. It is particularly delightful given that the Gentle Author and her associate, Our Girl History, are among the people who have suggested new roles for women, and have organized events that included suggested roles, and in fact required them. But please, tell me what to do. Belittle me by association with some of the leading critics of the 20th century. Because when you do, you reveal yourself not only to me, but to others.

Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. Oil on canvas by Charles Jervas.

As Our Girl History wrote recently, women’s voices in living history are too often silenced in the present by excuse of the past. That anti-feminist approach was on view last night, and continues to be the default setting for many men in living history. It reflects a persistent bias against intelligent, educated women, like the Female Philosopher.  It reflects a persistent position that women should “know their place:”

The greatest sin a woman could commit was to participate in any sort of public life, be it theatre, politics, or social causes – this made her immediately ‘difficult’

–Margaret Perry on “difficult” women in the long 18th century.)

It will not remain a viable position for long.

 

*Brits-as-Nazis is not my origination, but the distillation of a comment made about the dedication of a monument at Guilford courthouse and subsequently reported to me. Despite a commenter’s attempt to attribute the equation to me, it is not mine, as should have been clear from “in certain circles.” Not my circles, not my monkeys.