Tag Archives: interpretation

Living Deliberately

08 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in Living History, personal, Philosophy, Reenacting

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WCD: The Original

A friend of mine recently wrote about replicating the domestic life of the past (specifically the 18th century) and how much meaning that had for her.

Being so deeply embedded in the rhythms of life there, it became my home in a very real sense that has never left me.

I read that quickly, and what I read was that the place she had spent so much time was home to her because the place never left her– she carried its rhythms and seasons within her. Perhaps that isn’t quite what she meant, but that’s the risk of writing: the reader reads what they need to.

It made me think of home, and of living deliberately, and of a very bad year I had a long time ago, before I even imagined doing living history, when I thought I would spend my life making new things, like cities and buildings. (This makes me think of an album I listened to at the time, More Songs About Buildings and Food, which seemed all the more important because I’d gone to RISD, too.

Food, in a Building, in Rhode Island

The year I turned 25 was particularly bad not because a man broke my heart, though that didn’t help, and not because I had a miscarriage, though that was the catalyst that led to the man breaking my heart, but because the miscarriage shattered my sense of purpose and self. Somehow, everything that I had ever wanted to be — a sculptor, an architect, a writer– was gone, and I didn’t know what to do or how to be. (Read The Year of Magical Thinking if you want a well-written take on this kind of loss.) I didn’t know what to do next, but the man who eventually broke my heart gave me a book to help me figure it out: Chop Wood, Carry Water

Chopping wood.

Two years ago, I wrote a piece called Zen and the Art of Living History, in which I extolled the virtue of the everyday: Embrace the everyday, bring everyone back into history. Since then, I’ve thought more about how history and historic house museums can be a catalyst for change, how domestic sites can create “homes for history,” where we can have the difficult conversations that must be had to make the change I think we need as a nation, and as humans. These changes are happening, slowly, in museums and at historic sites, but even at the personal level, there’s meaning and change to be had through the business of “doing history.”

I suspect that among the reasons people really enjoy immersive, civilian (non-musket) events is because the work brings them into the rhythms of the natural world in a way that industrial life precludes or even prohibits. Consciously or not, interpreting the domestic life of the past forces us into mindfulness, into being as much as or more than doing. That’s the point of “chop wood, carry water:” to live deliberately. To cook without a clock, with only the color of the coals and the smell of the food to guide you; to notice the changing light because, as it fades, you must act to create light; to find the flaws and shifts in a floor as you scrub it, because there’s no machine between you, just your hands and a brush or a mop: all these tasks force you to be in the moment, noticing your environment, noticing yourself. You. A corporeal presence in a material world. How does that feel, moment to moment? Physically, emotionally: the challenge of living in the past is to live an unmediated life.

To go back to basics the way we do with civilian or domestic-site based living history brings us back to our base: we face our physical needs and the challenge of meeting them. We face emotional tests that help us imagine how people in the past endured– I often wonder how everyday people coped with “melancholia,” grief, and disappointment– and help us endure. It brings us home to ourselves, to our individual histories and our shared histories, and that’s what really matters. The connection to the everyday that we experience in a place in time puts us in a continuum with the people of the past, and gives us a place to be, a thing to do, a meaning. And that is what every one of us needs.

Sandby in Salem (New Jersey)

01 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in Events, History, Living History, Reenacting

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The Kitchen at Sandpit Gate (detail). Watercolor on paper by Paul Sandby 1754. Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 914331

The best times are always those when we are the least self-conscious– not that we can necessarily choose those times. Often they simply happen to us, but if we are lucky enough, we will notice, or someone else will record those moments for us. Last weekend, without even meaning to, we came as close as I may ever hope to get to recreating Sandby images of the Sandpit Gate kitchen.

Mistress F commanded the kitchen: I served as her reasonably able scullion, and, with assistance from Drunk Tailor and the company of the B’s, we managed to produce enough food for several dozen people.

 

(I baked the pound cake at home, but the egg and onion pies were made on site. I lack historically correct baking apparatus aside from one pie plate.) Cooking in the cabin at Hancock House reminded me of good times long ago— and not so long ago–and how much I enjoyed throwing refuse out a window, and using a soapstone sink. The weekend also brought to mind “show, don’t tell” as it applies to interpretation, and made me think again about how to create more immersive educational experiences for visitors, without becoming ritualistic.

There’s not much time to think those esoteric, grad-school-seminar thoughts when you’re in the midst of cooking, and that can actually be a relief. Instead, better to think of the light, and the landscape, and the time remaining until a pie is cooked through.

At Sandpit Gate circa 1752. Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 914328


The landscape and the light: redemptive, all that space, the blue sky and the grasses. I thought of The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which I haven’t read in decades, for in some ways, the coast of New Jersey resembles the coast of Connecticut. It’s one of the first historical novels I remember reading– it is probably one reason I have ended up doing the work I do, and spending as much time as I did in New England. (You can read it here.) It’s not brilliant literature, and it was nearly two decades old when I read it, but it was certainly memorable.

Photos courtesy of HM 17th Regiment, Al Pochek, and Cape May Wren Photography.

The Stuff of Life

07 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Art Rant, Collecting, material culture, personal

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We all love things, don’t we? Things in the literal, corporeal, piled-in-a-heap sense: plates, shoes, books, chairs, necklaces, models. But what makes us love them? How deeply do we really love them?

Someone posed the questions, What would you take if you had to pack in a hurry to leave home forever? What will your kids remember you by?

Those are hard to unpack: how will other people remember us? Often, we have no idea what we mean to other people, even the ones closest to us. It’s easier for me to know what I would take or keep to remember someone else by– a single sleeve link; a wooden train engine; a stainless steel spoon; a necklace of handmade beads. None of those things reflects what is truly meaningful to me about them, that is, without my knowledge, these aren’t particularly interesting or aesthetic objects. What makes them special is the story I attach to them.

That is, of course, the key to interpreting objects in a social history context: the story is what makes the object more interesting, more important, more compelling. It’s the difference between a provenanced and an unprovenanced object, between a roundabout (or corner) chair in context, and one out of context.

Corner chair, probably John Goddard. Metropolitan Museum of Art, L2014.9.1a,b Lent by the Wunsch Collection, 2014

This is not to say that beautiful things are without value removed from context, but what makes that Goddard chair more compelling is knowing who made it, who it was made for, and when– knowing that it was part of a set of furniture ordered to furnish a house for Providence newlyweds, made in Newport by one of the hottest makers of the time. It’s the people who make the object more interesting, who make it worth having, seeing, holding on to– whether it’s a $6 million chair or a $25 mug, memories and stories make things compelling beyond our associations with them.

Part of a museum curator’s job is understanding those stories, placing objects in context, and connecting them back to their stories, to their makers, users, owners, and keepers. We may buy things because they’re beautiful or useful, but often we keep them because of their meaning– which is, more often than not, about people. Unprovenanced objects have less meaning; an object sold outside, or without, its context will not fetch as much. Value resides in people, not in things.

I think of this not only because a portion of my work is to recreate or reestablish the human contexts and connections for things, but because there is a human instinct to grab onto something tangible (like an object), rather than something ethereal (like a memory), even though what will sustain us in the end is not things, but other people, and our memories of them.

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.

Living Like a Refugee

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

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

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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.

Reading Double

07 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by in Book Review, History, Research

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The mop trundler. Chambars after Penny. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford: John Johnson Collection

Photo by J. D. Kay, 2013

I love this image, and the original on which it is based. I love it so much that we’ve recreated it (in a later time period) whilst fooling about during a photoshoot.

But what does it really show? The image in the print depicts a passage in Jonathan Swift’s poem, A Description of a City Shower,

Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean
Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean:
You fly, invoke the gods; then turning, stop
To rail; she singing, still whirls on her mop.

Straightforward, right?

Well, not so fast. Thanks to the wonders of ILL, I’ve been reading The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England, by Cindy McCreery, and looking at prints anew. Her chapters on prostitutes and old maids are particularly interesting, and confirm some of what I had been thinking about when we use prints as documentation.

Here, in the Macaroni Provider, we have what is “Probably a portrait of some (alleged) notorious procurer; perhaps Thomas Bradshaw whose portrait he somewhat resembles.” We have a pimp, folks.

The Macaroni Provider / Macaronies, Characters, Caricatures & designed by the greatest personages, artists &c graved & published by MDarly, 39 Strand. 1772 (Vol.3). British Museum

So, with this information in hand, let’s look again at The City Shower. We have a maid– one of the few classes of women found in city streets unaccompanied, and a class of women often associated with prostitution (along with street vendors and market sellers). The fashionably dressed man recoils from the spray from her mop– is he rejected the literal filth, or the implied filth of a “maid of all work,” who may have a venereal disease? Is it reasonable to wonder if Swift is using double entendres in the lines Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean
Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean, so that the mop is the woman’s pubic hair, and not so clean suggests she is diseased?

I don’t know, and absent intensive research or a time machine, I may never know. But once again I wonder how we use and understand these images, and think that they pose more questions than answers. McCreery’s book (based on her dissertation) helps get at some of these issues, and is well worth a read. (I found the Amazon review hilarious, myself, once I had the book in hand. No, it’s not a compendium of prints; it’s an analysis.)

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.