Tag Archives: interpretation

An Introduction, or Re-Introduction, of Sorts

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

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No, I won’t say how many cups I’ve had.

What is this thing, and who am I?

It’s Costume Blog Writing Month (inspired by NaNoWriMo), and I’m Kitty Calash. I used to post much more frequently, but life caught up: I moved, which meant I didn’t sew at all for over a month* and thus didn’t have much to write about, since this isn’t a packing and moving blog.

But even before that, posting had slowed as I began to wonder why I wrote, and why I sewed. Costume Blog Writing Month, with its 31 flavors of posts, is a chance to reacquire the writing habit, and to think again about what I do, and why– and thus proved irresistible.

I’m a curator in search of a collection, a fugitive from architecture school, a compulsive editor, and a cat wrangler. I started sewing as a child with help from my mother and grandmother** who made clothes for me and my favorite doll, Moira. Although I graduated from two art schools, my interest in history is deep: I craved china dolls, collected antique quilts and tools, and insisted my bicentennial Samuel Adams costume have functioning knee bands– and yet, it’s taken me years to admit I’m “detail oriented.”


Some days Drunk Tailor asks me if I really enjoy sewing– my face betrays my frustration, and I do not play poker–but I get both distraction and satisfaction from it. Most of what I make I wear at living history events, so I hand-sew everything I can. I fall into the “progressive” reenactor/enactor/costumed interpreter camp, and strive for authenticity and accuracy in what I make, how I wear it, and what I do.

I’ve come to realize that I’m chasing art: my thesis work looked at what it means to be an American. What does “America” look like, what does the myth of America and our founding story mean? How do we portray it? Yes: I costume and organize events in pursuit of an experience for myself and participants that helps explain this nation, and how it came to be the way it is.

Not every post gets into this kind of theorizing— really, most don’t– but at core, my costume pursuits do chase the myth of an American Dream as I try to understand the people of the past, how they thought, what they made and wore, and how the past continues to inform the present.***

*During this time, I lost the distinctive callouses that will help a detective identify me as a seamstress when my murdered corpse is found in a Paris hotel doorway in the Georges Simenon novel I write in my head. I watch a lot of murder mysteries while I sew.

**Elsa turns up here from time to time; she was a style maven, the doyenne of design in a small Southern Tier town, who, for 50 years, ran the shop that dressed the maidens and matrons of the nearly best classes in a community of striving Swedes aching to assimilate.

*** And that, friends, is what working in history museums for two and half decades will get you: your own personal mission and an empty bank account.

Style Council

28 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by in Living History, material culture

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National Gallery of Art furniture gallery, May 2017

One of the critiques leveled at historic house museums is that they’re often “frozen in time,” specifically a particular moment, rather than reflecting the changes that happened over time. This charge is sometimes leveled at period room installations as well, when all the furniture in a room is from a tight time span– a year, maybe five– when for most of us, the furnishings in our homes and the clothes in our closets reflect a number of years, rather than a tight twelve or eighteen months.

So, when we go out “into the field” (or the house or the milliner’s shop or the tavern), shouldn’t our belongings reflect the multiplicity of years of objects? If I’m a woman Of A Certain Age, won’t I have possessions, from jewelry to ceramics to clothing, from multiple decades? Well…. yes and no.

It’s true that as far as we can tell, John Brown moved his 1760 furniture into his 1788 mansion, but we also know he bought new furnishings, including a large (188+ piece) set of Chinese Export Porcelain (see above).

Up-to-date, stylish, expensive: table settings signaled wealth and sophistication as much as clothing and manners, so whatever JB had before 1788, he wasn’t setting his new table with it. What might he (or Mrs B) have done with it? Consigned it to use by grandchildren and servants? Given it to less fortunate relations? Possibly. And if they had creamware, it would not have been singularly out of place in 1788 or 1800 on any table– it was only 40 years old, and heaven knows my “best” china is from the 1930s– but would they have used earlier pottery, even in the kitchen?

All pottery is not the same: North Devon pottery, while imported to North America in the late 17th and early 18th century, is not what you would expect to find in a late-18th century farm kitchen. It’s here, sure, into the mid-18th century, but in 1799, it’s not the form you would expect to see. So what does that mean for living history folks? Does it matter what you use?

You know what I think: there ain’t nothing like the real thing and that means paying careful attention to details. If you’re portraying a camp follower in 1778, or tenant farmer in 1799, you are not likely to have, say, a Jackfield-type figured tea pot, just as you are not likely to have a salt-glazed squirrel-relief cream jug, no matter how much you adore it.

Time and style matter. The people of the past read each other the same way we read each other. Remember Clarice Starling, with her “good bag and her cheap shoes”? Get on a train anywhere, and you can read your fellow travelers: you can guess income and education levels, marital status, and sometimes interests and hobbies if you look closely. You make assumptions about people based on their appearance, whether you’re conscious of it or not– and so did the people of the past. To portray them accurately, and to help the public learn to read the past, the details matter.

Everything Old is New Again

19 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Art Rant, Living History, Museums

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I could be making bonnets. I could be applying for moar jobz. I could be finishing the soup that’s on the stove. But instead, I’m annoyed by a museum’s social media posting. For the sake of all that’s holy in history, is there nothing more to an 18th century soldier’s life than his weapon? Now, to the museum’s credit, only 50% of the posted images could truly be said to focus on the musket or some musket-related tool.

But what’s so damned annoying is that the organization in question, all brand-spanking new and on everybody’s “must-see” list, falls back on the same old tropes on social media, which makes me want to know more about their educational mission. If the social media message continues to reinforce the same messages (guns are important) instead of expanding to include a soldier’s daily life, or even his inner life, the public has trouble moving past that simple message to ask more questions.

Museums and their representatives cue the questions visitors ask by framing objects, writing labels, even aiming the lights, to focus on what the museum believes is important. Put guns front and center, that’s what the questions will be about instead of about hygiene, clothing, literacy, or diet.

This image got me really excited, until I read the caption.

“Brick dust for polishing the brass elements on his weapon.” Dammit! It’s not tooth powder!

I understand full well that the museum’s interpretation of our national founding is far more inclusive than many museum visitors have previously encountered. I understand that the educational program currently lacks a permanent director, and is not yet fully fleshed out.

Museums are among the most trusted sources for information. Presentation matters. What museums emphasize matters. If museums — in their exhibits, programs, or marketing– continue to “give the people what they want,” the people will not know that they can want something different, or even that there is something different to want. Inclusivity is constant: in the galleries, in the labels, in the programming, in the staff, and in the marketing (which this museum did, in fact, do, masterfully, at a major train station).

But I’m picking on them for this post because they are the top of the game right now, and if they can do better in the galleries and in the train station, they can do better on social media. They’ve had some of the best female interpreters around working this month and the end of last, and yet the first social media post on that program is of a soldier, and focuses on his weapon. The past– and the present– deserve better.

Cross my Heart

25 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Clothing, History, Making Things

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Dress, cotton, United States, private collection; reproduction chemisette, private collection; coral necklace courtesy of Dames à la Mode.

The goal is on the left. How far have I made it? Well… I have been busy. We started on the right, remember?

In executing the final plan, I did choose to cut a lining to support the lightweight fashion fabric; I didn’t think it would look, drape, or wear well without a lining.

The adaptation is truly that, and not a copy, in this instance. The lining means that the finished piece will have more of the appearance of a drawstring fitting than an actual drawstring across the back.

The sleeves, thankfully, were pretty straightforward, and I’m one of those odd people who really enjoys cutting and setting sleeves, so there you are. It took me about six days to get to this point, and then work came to a halt. I have other centuries I’m playing in, and am determined to finish that yellow dress to wear this weekend. When and where else can I look like a person of means than the Fort Frederick Market Fair?

Rethinking Reenacting Redux

22 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by in Art Rant, Living History, personal, Philosophy, Reenacting

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Some of you may recall my friend from the antediluvian age, Dread Scott. He was in town briefly and while I wasn’t able to attend his talk, I got my own special artist’s talk over breakfast.

Scott’s working on a Slave Rebellion Reenactment, (additional info here) so we had a lot to talk about.

Scuffle in the Square, Princeton, 2017. Photo by Wilson Freeman at Drifting Focus Photography

He had some great questions about what we do, and why we do it, especially around Princeton, and in talking about my end goal (getting the public to understand how the past informs the present), I said something about how in Newport in 2014, the cars disappeared and we forgot we were in the present.

Scott’s great reply was about keeping the present present, occupying two time periods simultaneously, to recognize that the past made the present. I know that seems obvious, but it isn’t always when we’re out in our funny clothes. It’s another layer of interpretation that we can build onto our reenactments and recreations, particularly when we are trying to talk about slavery. Slavery built the institutions we have today– like Aetna Insurance and Georgetown University– so if we acknowledge our surroundings in a place like downtown Princeton or Newport, we can talk about more than just the moment we are recreating.

Some of us seek historical transcendence. Some of us enjoy a social experience. And some of us seek ways to connect the present to the past in ways that help us understand how we got here, and how to make a better future.

The more I contemplate what matters to me, the more I think I’m seeking that last more than I am even transcendence.

Serving Delaplace

21 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Events, History, Living History, material culture, Museums, Reenacting

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With 400 miles between us, Drunk Tailor and I have few chances to explore the past together, so I was both delighted and nervous when he agreed to join the British Garrison 1775 event at Fort Ticonderoga as one of Captain Delaplace’s servants.  Even better, we were also joined by the itinerant Deep North Yankee who wandered around the Fort (possibly seeking roofing shingles, of which he is much in need).

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Friday nights are always magical, candle and firelight (and only the warmth of the fire) as we drink cider and talk about history. But morning always comes: Saturday, cold and clear, Mr S and I woke and blinked across the room at each other, and I wondered to what degree I really wanted to ever crawl out of bed…only hunger and an eventual need to pee (and fear of a Sergeant) propelled me.

Yup, you cook 'em on a board.

Yup, you cook ’em on a board.

First order of business: breakfast. Mr S, supplied with his corn meal of choice, made us johnnycakes, which provided perhaps more interpretive than nutritive value. Still, they were warm and tasty and he is the only person I know who can make them; my efforts end up as FEMA disaster sites.

Captain Delaplace’s servants were tasked with cooking for his mess, so Mr S and I got a start. We had a chicken, an onion (I traded onion # 2 for some bacon), butter, carrots, potatoes, a butternut squash, salt, and some port. I don’t know where this English serving woman of 1775 encountered mis en place, but she accidentally introduced coq au vin to the Captain’s table with the dinner meal.

Captain and Mrs Delaplace dining, manservant in attendance

Captain and Mrs Delaplace dining, manservant in attendance

The Captain and his Lady dined on chicken braised in butter and bacon with root vegetables in a port sauce; we servants waited until they were done before we could eat. (Confession: I need to eat a lot, and have a sensory overload problem, so when visitors fully crowded the room, I had to dash across the parade ground for a Clif Bar and an Ativan before I could continue to wait for my dinner.) In the afternoon, dishes were washed at the table, as was common (at least in early New England), dried, and set away, while the Captain’s lady and child played in the cabbage patch between the beds.

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When the room was empty, servants were able to eat (huzzay!) and found the meal very tasty indeed. I would certainly make this again, and learned more about cooking– a typically female task I generally try to avoid– than I had expected to. Then we had yet another round of dishes before it was time to tidy the room and make ready for tea or supper.

To that end, we cleared the table and broke it apart to reveal the floor and hearth, which needed to be swept of bread crumbs, squash peels, dead leaves, and other detritus. The best way to sweep an unfinished floor in the 18th century (per Hannah Glasse et al) is to strew the floor with wet sand and then sweep. I mixed sand with lavender-infused vinegar and threw it on the floor; this keeps the dust down as you sweep months of dust and dirt out of the corners and from behind tables and chests.

The trick is to sweep in one direction (more or less) from the back of the room to the front, and then to gather up the sand (here in a shovel) and pitch it off the landing. Much was thrown out the door and over the stair rail, just as servants would have done in 1775. (And I am told it is soothing to nearly hit the sergeant, but perhaps that’s merely hearsay, if not heresy.)

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When we were done, we restored the table (Drunk Tailor noticed the height of the ceiling, and wondered about hanging birds in cages whist awaiting the return of the tabletop), fully reset with cloth, candlesticks, plates, and knives, ready for the supper we didn’t cook, as we skipped away at the close of the day to find our own meal in Glens Falls, where live music is inescapable on a Saturday night.

“Exteriorizing,” or, Showing the Past: Part I

15 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by in History, Living History, Reenacting

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This guest post was written by Sharon Burnston. Sharon and I will be co-teaching an interactive workshop on first person impressions this June. “Exteriorizing” is an important part of developing an impression that works not just to represent a character, but to tell a story. Part II will appear tomorrow.

John Gilmary Shea, The Story of a Great Nation (New York: Gay Brothers & Company, 1886)after 444, says "page 475" University of South Florida clip art collection.

John Gilmary Shea, The Story of a Great Nation (New York: Gay Brothers & Company, 1886)after 444, says “page 475” University of South Florida clip art collection.

The first time I was ever “abducted” at a living history event was during an F&I scenario 35 years ago. I was dragged off into the bushes by scary looking strangers, and it was all very well researched and convincing.

But one thing I realized, upon reflection afterward, is that a really accurately portrayed scenario isn’t always in all ways the “best” scenario, for the participants or the public. In real situations that are terrifying, the usual physiological/behavioral responses are those described as Flight, Fight or Freeze. That’s what real people do when that sort of thing really happens. At the time I was abducted by “the French and the Indians”, I put myself into the moment, imagined how I would really feel if it were actually happening, and I froze. I portrayed terror so well, my abductors looked at me oddly, wondering if I was okay. But y’know what? The spectators, standing 30 feet or more away, couldn’t see my face, couldn’t hear my shallow breathing, and they got nothing out of it.

The Abduction of Daniel Boone's Daughter by the Indians. oil on canvas by Carl Wimar, 1853. Washington University Kemper Art Museum. Gift of John T. Davis, Jr., 1954 WU 4335

The Abduction of Daniel Boone’s Daughter by the Indians. oil on canvas by Carl Wimar, 1853. Washington University Kemper Art Museum. Gift of John T. Davis, Jr., 1954
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I realized that I had actually failed to do justice to the interpretive moment, I should have done something less lifelike and more communicative. I should have screamed for help, in detail, loudly, and at length. In real life, this would have been a risky thing for a captive to do, but in a reenactment interpretive setting, it would have been useful. I mean, I knew precisely why my character was terrified, but did the public? If I had screamed and carried on, it would have given me an opportunity to put into words what the 18c abducted woman knew about what was going to happen to her. It would have been a better scenario in terms of educating the public if I had, in a word, exteriorized what my character was feeling into words, for everyone present to hear.

The problem with my having learned this sort of thing experientially and so long ago, is that I tend to blithely assume that other folks whom I regard as skilled 18c role players also know it, because to me it is by now so obvious.

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Last summer I participated in a brilliant re-creation of a different kind of abduction, a reenactment of the British naval press gang that abducted American sailors out of Newport RI harbor in 1765. Over 60 of us from all across New England worked hard for months to research and develop our impressions in order to make this event as convincing and accurate as we could. For the most part, we succeeded magnificently. But I came away dissatisfied and I think some of the public I talked to did also. That was a helluva scenario, meticulously planned and carried out, and we did it so well! But I think we could have done it one or two notches better, and here is why I think so.

First person role playing has far more of theater about it than perhaps we living historians care to admit. Drawing upon theatrical strategies can allow us to better communicate our knowledge to the audience, by exteriorizing our characters’ thoughts or feelings into dialogue the public can hear, even if doing so might slightly violate the strictest historical purity of our role playing. After all, don’t we claim to be doing this in order to educate the public?

The strategy I have in mind is the collaborative trick referred to in improvisational theater as “Yes, and”.

“Yes, and…” refers to a basic concept in improv theater. If a participant throws a gambit at you, don’t shut it down. Accept it, whatever it is (“Yes”) and then add something of your own (“and…”) to expand on the idea and keep it going. “Yes” means being receptive to the contributions of others. “And” means offering something back, to further the collaborative process.

How would this notion apply to a living history role playing scenario? Stay tuned to find out!

Sleeping on the Job

03 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by in History, Living History, Museums, Research

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Last night, as I lay in the tester bed we slept in on What Cheer Eve, I wondered again what it was like to live and work in the house over the course of its life, and how the servants had been treated. In the late 18th and early 19th century, the notion of “service” was still evolving in New England. Help was common, and while northern and urban slavery existed, and we know the Browns traded in and owned enslaved people, we have no evidence of them in the house.

We know there was a white woman between 45 and 60, and four “all other free people,” we have names –Mary, Jonathan, and Gideon– for some of the people associated with the family, but don’t know their details. How did the Browns treat them? What was the relationship like? Were they invisible? Thanked? Chastised?

Goody Morris makes up a bed. Photograph by J. D. Kay

Goody Morris makes up a bed. Photograph by J. D. Kay

Diary entries that record “my babe takes tea with Ma’s Mary” suggests that there was some level of familiarity, and hints at the friendly relationship children and servants sometimes had in these houses, when both were seen as less civilized, less refined, and (clearly) less educated than the adult homeowners. Physically, service stairs kept chamber pots, laundry, food, servants, and children out of view, sequestered into smaller, dimmer, less-finished spaces.

Petulant Alice faces her first hurdle, Kitty and Goody Morris. Photograph by J. D. Kay

Petulant Alice faces her first hurdle, Kitty and Goody Morris. Photograph by J. D. Kay

We’ll never really know how the Browns really treated their servants, or felt about them; these are people who matter only enough to be remarked upon in passing. Perhaps even more frustrating is that we’ll never know what the servants thought of the Browns, of their businesses and moods, loves and appetites. These barely-documented people could tell us so much, if only the past could talk.