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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: difficult interpretations

The Crisis of Costuming

08 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by kittycalash in History, Living History, material culture, Reenacting, Research

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

difficult interpretations, history, interpretation, Research, slavery

John Potter and family. Overmantle painting ca 1740. Collection of Newport Historical Society.

There has been a lot of good work done recently as people consider the past and our relationship to it. Costumers are increasingly uncomfortable with uncontextualized depictions of historical dress and have had to come to terms with the truths of how the money that bought the pretty dresses was made. Obviously, dressing in trimmed silks and paste jewels is expensive, and in the North American colonies (and many other places) in the 18th and 19th centuries, the money that bought those goods was made on the backs of enslaved people.

Mary and Elizabeth Royall. Oil on Canvas by John Singleton Copley, about 1758. MFA Boston, Julia Knight Fox Fund, 25.49

But there’s an even harder truth waiting for us: even the ordinary clothes and everyday goods were often paid for with money made on the “free” labor of unfree men, women, and children. Not only did more people than we want to admit own other human beings, more people than we credit invested in slave trading voyages. And even if they didn’t directly invest in the voyages, they were often engaged in trade that intersected with the slave trade, or supported the plantations where captive people labored by indirectly feeding and clothing them.

The very hard truth is that it is even possible for tenant farmers in late-18th century Rhode Island to have supported and profited from slavery as the edible crops they grew were sold to feed those enslaved on rice, indigo, and cotton plantations in the south. Dairying– cheese making–was a means of making dairy protein stable and transportable, and vegetables like onions expanded diets.

John Brown’s china ca 1790. The China trade was funded by the earlier slave trade.

Chattel slavery made the world we inhabit–both now and when we put on the clothes of the past–no matter what class level we represent. Some would argue that we should no longer put on those clothes. I sit in a place of privilege as a white woman and one who has never engaged in Civil War living history or costuming, a period that is particularly fraught. But even interpreting a 1910s suffragist means you must confront the demons that are not past: racism, Jim Crow, voter suppression, and the truths of how the leaders of the women’s suffrage movement treated Black women. We are always complicit.

Elizabeth Freeman (“Mumbet”). Miniature portrait, watercolor on ivory by Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick, 1811. Massachusetts Historical Society Artwork 03.147

But I think that means we can, and even should, continue to interpret the past through all the clothes. Telling all the stories more fully helps us move forward. All of us must own the truths of how we reached this place in American history. All of us must own who we might or might not have been. We share a history and a culture, even when many are excluded. That exclusion is part of the story. For a time it needs to be the main story, as we as a nation, as interpreters of the past, see the world anew, listen to voices that have gone unheard.

It will be a long time before any of us are able to resume the work we did before, interacting directly with the public, but that gives us a chance to rethink what we do, and how we do it. For some, abandoning the costumes of a problematic past may be the answer. For others, considering more fully the characters we represent may offer a way to carry on.

Alice, d. 1802. Engraved from an original sent from America, by Mackenzie, [London] : Pub. Jan. 1. 1803, by T. Hurst, Paternoster-Row. (1804?) The Library Company of Philadelphia

I have thought a fair bit about the 2019 Occupied Philadelphia event. Once again, I portrayed Elizabeth Weed, the widowed pharmacist with a sickly son who went on to marry Thomas Nevell, architect and builder. Elizabeth owned a business and a house, but did she own people? A visitor to that event asked me, “Did you own slaves?” and I had to think about it. It wasn’t a question I had asked myself before, and that’s a clear failure since I had done research on the nature of labor in mid-18th century Philadelphia as indentures gave way to enslavement. I don’t think Elizabeth Weed owned anyone; I can find no evidence, but I need to look again, and more deeply.

Rebecca Flower Young, though, is another story. By the time she lived in Baltimore with her daughter, who made the Star-Spangled Banner now at the Smithsonian, her daughter had a 13 year old African American or African indentured servant. The young woman’s name is lost to time, but the fact of her existence and the trajectory of Young’s life make me wonder about her time in Philadelphia. As an Army contractor, she had women sewing for her, and she probably sewed herself. The labor of the indentured servant girl in Baltimore allowed Mary Pickersgill to concentrate on working for money. While the Smithsonian may describe the indentured girl as “helping Pickersgill make the flag,” chances are that her housework– tending fires, cooking meals, cleaning the house, permitted Pickersgill, her nieces, and her mother to do the sewing and cutting. Similar work was necessary to support Rebecca Young’s enterprise in 1780s Philadelphia. Who performed it? Were they paid, or unpaid?

If (when) I can once again put on the stays, petticoats, and gowns that allow me to interpret Rebecca and Elizabeth, my work must include a discussion of the labor that supported their work, and who performed that labor. I will have to challenge the public to imagine a more complete history of the United States, one that is both starker and more nuanced. The country was built and flourished on the labor of unwilling captives, which we have concealed behind myths about the founding heroes and heroines. Only when we admit those truths can we truly begin to portray the past, inhabit those clothes, and engage with the public.

About the Images:

This overmantle painting shows a wealthy Rhode Island planter family with their African slave, a rare depiction of the realities of New England life. John Potter was a wealthy South Kingstown, Rhode Island planter, notorious for his counterfeiting activities of 1742. Many of the people enslaved in Rhode Island were forced to work on the large farms in what is now Washington County.

Mary and Elizabeth Royall were daughters of Isaac Royall, who owned the largest number of enslaved people in Massachusetts. The Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, MA (just north of Boston), interprets the lives of the family and those they enslaved.

John Brown‘s dinner set of Chinese export porcelain in emblematic of his wealth, which was derived from many sources, including the slave trade. The China Trade decorated his brick mansion house in Providence, but war profiteering, distilling, and the slave trade built it. He was an unapologetic– indeed, an enthusiastic– defender of the slave trade as a source of revenue for the New Republic.

Elizabeth Freeman (“Mumbet”), born into enslavement in 1742, was the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, in Freeman’s favor, found slavery to be inconsistent with the 1780 Massachusetts State Constitution.

Alice, known variously as Black Alice and Alice of Dunk’s Ferry, was a native of Philadelphia and a slave, born to parents who had come from Barbados. She is said to have been 116 at the time of her death in 1802. In extreme old age Alice received many visitors who enjoyed hearing stories about early Philadelphia and its famous first settlers, including William Penn and Thomas Logan. Alice was also a lifelong worshiper at Christ Church in Philadelphia. “Being a sensible intelligent woman, and having a good memory, which she retained to the last, she would often make judicious remarks on the population and improvements of the city and country; hence her conversation became peculiarly interesting, especially to the immediate descendents of the first settlers, of whose ancestors she often related acceptable anecdotes.” from Thomas, Isaiah. Eccentric biography; or, Memoirs of remarkable female characters, ancient and modern (Worcester, 1804), plate preceding p. vii. and p 9.

Further Reading:
Many of these are available in paperback; check in the university press sites as many are offering discounts right now that make them competitive with Amazon, while supporting them directly. Inter-library Loan is also an excellent and often free option; check with your local library.

Anderson, Jennifer L. Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2012.

Dunbar, Erica Armstrong. Never Caught:The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. New York: Simn and Schuster, 2017.

Clark-Pujara, Christy Mikel. Slavery, emancipation and Black freedom in Rhode Island, 1652-1842. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Iowa, 2009

Clark-Pujara, Christy. Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island. New York: NYU Press, 2016

Gagnon, Jeffrey Charles. (Re)creating Social Life Out of Social Death : cross-cultural alliances in the circum- Atlantic, 1760-1815. Ph.D. Thesis, University of California San Diego, 2012.

Gigantino, James G. II. The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey, 1775-1865. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Hartigan-O’Connor, Eleanor. The Ties That Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

Lin, Rachel Chernos. “The Rhode Island Slave-Traders: Butchers, Bakers, and Candlestick-Makers.” Slavery and Abolition 23:3, 21-38. (2002)

Rapplye, Charles. Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.

Salinger, Sharon V. “Artisans, Journeymen, and the Transformation of Labor in Late Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 1, 62-84. (January 1983)

Smith, Billy G. “Poverty and Economic Marginality in Eighteenth-Century America.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 132, No. 1, 85-118 (March 1988)

Smith, Billy G. “The Family Lives of Laboring Philadelphians during the Late Eighteenth Century.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 133, No. 2, Symposium on the Demographic History of the Philadelphia Region, 1600-1860, 328-332 (June 1989)

The Tracing Center: Resources for Interpreting Slavery.

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In Defense of Bad History

19 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by kittycalash in Events, Living History, Reenacting

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

cleaning, difficult interpretations, first person interpretation, interpretation, servant girls, servants

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.

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Clear and Present Danger

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by kittycalash in Living History, personal, Philosophy, Reenacting

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

authenticity, Critical Theory, difficult interpretations, feminism, interpretation, rant, Revolutionary War, ripostes

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.

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Living Like a Refugee

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by kittycalash in Events, History, Living History, personal, Reenacting

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

1777, 17th Regiment of Foot, authenticity, common people, difficult interpretations, interpretation, Pennsylvania, refugees, Revolutionary War, Trappe PA

At the Speaker’s House. Photo by Drunk Tailor.

When I was in middle school, we were given an assignment that is now considered inappropriate: we were asked to trace our family history or genealogy as a way to help understand historical time, stories of immigration, and the ways in which we are all American (according to the then-prevalent “melting pot” model of being American). Exercises like that are now discouraged as educators recognize the myriad ways in which people form families, though in my middle school, what was revealed was not adoptions or absent parents but the yawning chasm of class and privilege. My people are more peasant than princess, so the women I portray in living history make sense to me. They don’t wear silk. They make things, and they sell things.

Walking back from Augustus Lutheran Church, Trappe, PA

Portraying a refugee was a little trickier to wrap my head around. Whiny I can do– if I wasn’t teaching workshops in New Jersey this November, I’d be in 1587 North Carolina pining for England and wondering why I didn’t listen to my mother instead of marrying that head-in-the-sky Virginia colonist. What made being a refugee tricky for me was finding something to do. Obviously I shared in the cooking chores and the walk to Augustus Lutheran Church, but projecting “refugee” was tricky for me.

Looking back, I can see that straggling after a militia company may well have been enough– not wanting to leave their “protection,” not having a place to be, illustrates displacement. Even dressed as a middle-class or lower-middle-class woman, I am out of place sitting on grass or following armed men.

Displacement: I had not previously considered this as a means of provoking informed interpretation. Interpreting lack or absence can be as effective as interpreting presence. “No shoes” or “no musket:” these are easier, more obvious, but as a refugee, I had no home, no place, and no belonging. That seems even more important to understand and interpret today, at least for those of us concerned with making the past present, and the ways we can study the past to understand the present.

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Trigger Warnings

05 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by kittycalash in Events, History, Living History, Reenacting

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

authenticity, common soldier, difficult interpretations, first person interpretation, interpretation, living history, New Jersey, Princeton, Revolutionary War

Reenactors portraying Philadelphia Associators take part in the real time tour of the Battle of Princeton, Princeton, NJ, January 3, 2015. Beverly Schaefer, Times of Trenton

Philadelphia Associators January 3, 2015. Beverly Schaefer, Times of Trenton

It’s upon us, this Princeton event, and Peale’s, too. And the overnight march I missed two years ago. I’m so glad to be part of this, and I’m interested in seeing where it goes from here– partly for me, and partly for the way we do living history. Now, I’ll miss some of what I’d like to see (like Mr. White’s tour of the second battle of Trenton, but when you’re plundering in Princeton, you’re committed.) A formal media release may be downloaded here.

A little more than two years ago I was asked if I wanted to join the Peale’s March to Princeton. I said no, because women couldn’t march and that was the experience I wanted. Someday, I will have the hallucination that allows me to square experiential learning with authenticity, and, at the same time, the world will care about having a women’s Tour de France.

Anyway: there’s a point. This event became a pivot point for me in thinking about accuracy and authenticity of all kinds.

Accurate impressions rendered in a place of shared value will transport you to the past, and give you insights you did not expect. That is the point of these exercises: insight and understanding. It’s how to get high on history.

Test run: bedspread petticoat. Girl's gotta keep warm.

Test run: bedspread petticoat. Girl’s gotta keep warm.

In Palmer Square and at Morven, that means stealing (from each other), soldiers arresting Quakers, Loyalists and Whigs insulting each other, arguments about loyalty oaths, and women being attacked. (When you see the grey gown grabbed off the square by the red coat, please know that this is acting.) It means rough justice in a drum head court martial.

Will it work? I think so. Will it change my life, the way not attending two years ago did? That will depend on what I regret.

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