• Home
  • Shop
  • Completed Costumes/Impressions
  • Emma and Her Dresses
  • Patterns & Kits
  • Free Patterns and Instructions

Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: lighting

After Dark: Bedtime for Kitty

14 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by kittycalash in Events, History, Living History, Museums, Research

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

19th century, After Dark, candles, chamber pots, experimental archaeology, hygiene, interpretation, John Brown House Museum, lighting, living history, Rhode Island history, sleep patterns

Lewis Vaslet, 1742–1808, The Spoiled Child, Scene II, ca. 1802, Watercolor with black ink and gray wash over graphite on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. B1977.14.4342

Lewis Vaslet, 1742–1808, The Spoiled Child, Scene II, ca. 1802, Watercolor with black ink and gray wash over graphite on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. B1977.14.4342

In just about a week, we’re running a pilot program in the historic house where I work (tickets available here). After Dark, or What Cheer Night, are programs we’ve wanted to do for a couple of years, but all good things take time.

Error
This video doesn’t exist

I’ve drawn the lot chosen to talk about getting ready for bed and sleeping: lighting devices, bedding, washing, chamber pots* and what people wore to bed. While already in possession of candles and candlesticks, and the proud new owner of exhibition and interpretation grant-funded LED candles, there are things I needed to make. Of course.

Print made by Guillaume Philippe Benoist, 1725–ca. 1770, French, Pamela Swooning, after having discovered Mr. B. in the closet, He (frighted) endeavouring to recover her, Mrs. Jervis wringing her hands, and screaming, 1745, Etching with stipple engraving on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Yale Art Gallery Collection, Gift of the Library Associates.

Print made by Guillaume Philippe Benoist, 1725–ca. 1770, French, Pamela Swooning, after having discovered Mr. B. in the closet, He (frighted) endeavouring to recover her, Mrs. Jervis wringing her hands, and screaming, 1745, Etching with stipple engraving on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Yale Art Gallery Collection, Gift of the Library Associates.

A banyan, for one thing. And you know that will (one hopes) be followed in short order by a night cap. After all, you can’t talk about Pamela if you haven’t got a banyan and a cap in the house. That’s a simple and relatively fun project to tackle when brain capacity is somewhat limited: some piecing, straight seams, setting in facings and sleeve linings can all happen before I must assault the collar.

IMG_6554
Piecing it together, as the eventual wearer is taller than available fabric.
Piecing it together, as the eventual wearer is taller than available fabric.

Collars are devilishly tricky for me sometimes– oddly, a pad-stitched collar set onto a tailored jacket seems easier to me than a bedgown collar– but I suspect the eventual recipient will manage to enjoy the garment no matter what minor construction errors a tipsy milliner or half-seas over housemaid might make (not, of course, that I am either of those things).

It’s been a fascinating exercise in having a staff-and-docent study group that has taken a decidedly feminist bent (calling Our Girl History!) as we explore what happened in Providence After Dark. Brothel riots in 1782. Warnings by the Baptist Church not to visit the “theatre, circus, or Green Cottage” on pain of punishment. No, I do not yet know what or where the Green Cottage is, but the best researchers I know are working on it. Is this the 18th century answer to the Green Door? We can but hope.

Reading The Coquette? Thomson’s The Seasons? Come experience an 18th century house on a night when people will know what you’re talking about! Or you can watch  that questionable housekeeper prepare a room for the night while she talks about sleep patterns and shares tips for 18th century pest control.

 

 

*Pro tip: put it on a chair. I fully expect to run an intimate workshop some evening called “Will Humiliate Self for History, or, Everything you ever wanted to know about the 18th century, but were too well brought up to ask.”

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Email
  • Twitter

Like this:

Like Loading...

Light & Night

04 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by kittycalash in History

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

fine art, light, lighting, museum collections, Museums, paintings, resources, seasons, winter

Morland: Woman Reading by a Paper-Bell Shade: YCBA

Winter’s hard for me. I don’t like the lack of light, I don’t like the shortness of the days and how the sky is pale and stretched in these months. But this is a good time to think about basic needs, like light and heat and warm clothing.

The New York Times came to my rescue this morning with the article by Holland Cotter (and others) on “Artworks That Shine in New York Museums.” Cotter is one of my favorite critics and writers, and he, along with Karen Rosenberg, Roberta Smith, and other NYT critics, have selected some interesting pieces.

De La Tour: Penitent Magdalen, MMA

Ken Johnson leads with Georges De La Tour’s Penitent Magdalen. It’s earlier than my usual era but I was attracted to the image of the flame in the mirror; it’s not just a lighting device, of course, it’s a metaphor, but the rendering of the candlelight, and the use of the mirror to boost that light, tells us about how 17th and 18th century painters saw light, and how light was manipulated. We know from our simple experiments at work that mirrors really do amplify light, and that large stately rooms would only glitter with lots of candles and lots of mirrors. Light gives us a window on economy and wealth, as a precious commodity that cost money or labor to have.

Vermeer: Mistress and Maid, The Frick

Vermeer: Mistress and Maid, The Frick

Cotter looks at Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid at the Frick, and notes the lack of obvious natural light or other light sources, and the overall dark mood of the scene. But Cotter’s writing shines, as he concludes the little essay: Whatever Vermeer’s anxious thoughts, light stayed on his mind. It scintillates in the pearls the woman wears in her hair and shines in the butter-yellow silk of her jacket. And the blacked-out space the women occupy turns out to have sunlit windows after all. We see them reflected in glassware on the writing table as tiny lozenges of light, far in the distance, as if at the end of a tunnel, but there.

Writing like that is its own kind of light, a joy to have in the daily newspaper on a cold, short day. In all, four critics look at five paintings each from a range of cultures and time periods. It’s enough to make one want to hop a train south.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Email
  • Twitter

Like this:

Like Loading...

Domestic Bliss

07 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by kittycalash in History, Museums

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

candles, exhibits, galleries, Geffrye Museum, history, john middleton, lighting, museum collections, museum of london, Museums, Research, resources, setting a formal table

Museum of London

Museum of London, John Middleton &tc

I’ll come back another time to John Middleton & His Family, 1797 from the Museum of London, but today, this group portrait represents one of the online galleries at The Geffrye Museum of the Home in London. Their website has some nice features, and while I did get distracted playing the Topsy-Turvy Timeline game, what I really like playing with exploring is the Life in the Living Room 1600-2000 gallery.

The Geffrye Museum

This has proven useful in keeping on (slightly distracted) track as we polish silver and think about lighting, entertaining, and the ways rooms were used in the past. In particular, since we settled on the idea of setting a formal table for the “holiday themed tours,” and on the After Dark tours, I’ve been thinking about lighting.

Not only is it clear that the expansive use of candles represented expense and disposable income, it’s also clear that it was uncommon. Special occasions on high-style homes: yes. Everyday use in middling homes: no. Even the charming and well-dressed lady reads by just one candle (though that is also a composition choice, and not purely documentary).

More hilariously to the point, this satirical engraving from the Lewis Walpole Libary:

The Pantry Apparition

Lewis Walpole Library, The Pantry Apparition

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Email
  • Twitter

Like this:

Like Loading...

Kitty Calash FB

Kitty Calash FB

Kitty Calash on IGram

Prototyping. #bonnets #millinery #milliner #fashionplates #19thcenturyfashion #1800

The Etsy Shop!

Kitty Calash Swag on Teespring

Archives

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,928 other followers

Blogroll

  • A Most Beguiling Accomplishment
  • Afroculinaria: Michael Twitty
  • British Tars
  • Clothing the Carolinas
  • Drunk Tailor
  • History Research Shenanigans
  • Kleidung um 1800
  • New Vintage Lady
  • Not Your Momma's History
  • Our Girl History
  • Picking for Pleasure
  • Places in Time
  • Ran Away From the Subscriber
  • Slave Rebellion Reenactment
  • The Hidden Wardrobe
  • The Quintessential Clothes Pen
  • Worn Through

Etsy Shop

  • Kitty Calash on Etsy

Resources

  • Casey Fashion Plate Collection, LAPL

Sutlers

  • Burnley & Trowbridge
  • Wm Booth, Draper
wordpress statistics

Creative Commons License
Kitty Calash blog by Kirsten Hammerstrom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

A WordPress.com Website.

  • Follow Following
    • Kitty Calash
    • Join 1,928 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Kitty Calash
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: