Tag Archives: personal

Ceci n’est pas une assiette

04 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in Collecting, material culture, personal

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Historic American Buildings Survey, George F.A. Palmer, Photographer, 1937 DETAIL OF PARLOR FIREPLACE. – Jeremiah Dexter House, 957 North Main Street, Providence, Providence County, RI

Last weekend, Drunk Tailor and I delivered the Giant to his new life as a college student back in New England, and paid a call on of my oldest friends, a 96-year-old former OSS agent and descendent of the Dexter family. My eldest friend had something she wanted to give me: a souvenir of the Dexter House, in recognition of the hours I’d spent working with her identifying and organizing several hundred years of family papers.

In the photo at left, the coffee pot on the mantle is now in a museum collection, as are the miniatures, the bellows, and the pipe box (which is now on display in a historic house museum). What my eldest friend gave me is not in the image of the house, but resembles the plate to the left of the fireplace: a Staffordshire transferware “Village Church” pattern plate with a wild rose border, ca 1825.

Transferware soup plate ca. 1825. Unknown maker, Staffordshire, England.

I’m a fan of blue and white china, and while I prefer earlier Canton ware, this plate is more special to me than the ones I’ve bought at auction or in New Bedford antique shops: because of course it’s not a plate, it’s memory, or an emotion, made solid.

Drunk Tailor and I spent an early Sunday afternoon on my friend’s porch listening to stories about her children, in particular about her daughter Mary, now an artist living in Mexico. Is it a comfort or an annoyance to learn that schools have been misjudging children since schools were invented, trying hard to fit round pegs into square holes? Mary, always more interested in drawing than in lectures, once left a classroom when the teacher said, “If anyone doesn’t want to hear this lesson, then they can leave now.” Out Mary went, three other girls following her out to play on a beautiful spring afternoon.

That story, and many others, aren’t apparent in the plate with its crazed face and discoloration. Only my memories (and anything I write down and keep with the plate) make the associations. But it is always the stories about the objects that make them important (even big-ticket dec arts items, like Plunkett Fleason easy chairs.)

Last night, before Drunk Tailor and I watched The Maltese Falcon, we watched Adam Savage’s TED talk on his obsession with objects. The TED talk is worth a watch for anyone interested in material culture and objects. Our human fascination with things goes beyond the shiny surface of new things (tabernacle mirrors or iPhones) as they become repositories of memory, symbols of feelings or moments.

War correspondents and personnel of the Office of Strategic Services, leaving from the Railhead, Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia, enroute overseas. NARA. National Archives Identifier: 542171 Local Identifier: 336-H-17(E8671)
Creator: War Department. Army Service Forces. Office of the Chief of Transportation. 3/12/1943-6/11/1946

This: In my desk drawer, I have a buckeye Drunk Tailor picked up and handed to me in a garden in New Jersey. It’s useless: inedible, too light to be a paperweight, but it reminds me of that November afternoon, the soft green of the garden, and how shy I felt. Anyone cleaning out my desk would toss that bit of organic matter, even as I keep it as a talisman of one of our first dates: the places, the smells, and the feelings.

And this, too: My friend is 96. I may never see her again, though when I left her, she was healthy and cheerful, making plans for the fall with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren coming to visit. Given my reticence and her old-fashioned New England reserve, I may never be able to tell her how much she means to me (I try), or how interesting I think she is. (“I’m not interesting, dear, I just worked hard,” is what she says when I try to convince her to donate her personal papers to an archive.) But I have a plate that was in a house that had a great deal of meaning to her, and my best guess is that her gift of that plate to me means she knows how much I like and admire her. It reminds me of her, and reminds me of how little time there is before all that’s left is the plate and my memories.

Headspace: Where I Work

16 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by in Making Things, personal

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An Ikea secretary of my own keeps most stuff organized.

I haven’t had a proper studio since I was just out of grad school and living in a three room apartment with one room dedicated to making. Since then, as I’ve taken on the baggage and responsibilities that come with two- and four-legged associates, I’ve given up a room of my own. Instead, I have have a desk of my own. And the dining table when I need it, which is most days until it’s dinner time. It works within the space we have, and best of all, the secretary can be folded closed when we go away, protecting delicious feathers and tempting beads and ribbons from marauding cats.

And the dining room table, of course.

Whatever space I have, or you have, I find the most important space is the one in my head. That’s where projects are born and die, where they’re planned and tweaked, where problems are solved. It’s the first space you have to get in order if you’re going to do your best work. Walks help. When I get stuck writing or sewing, walking usually shakes loose the next idea or solution.

A break from sewing, coming soon to the shop

To keep that headspace clear and organized, and happy working, I find music more helpful than TV, though many a Nazi Mega Weapons or screwball comedy has eased an evening of backstitching long seams. Lately, Spotify has been my go-to, thanks to these playlists. Listening to them is listening to how someone else’s brain works, which is incredibly enlightening. Whatever your art form, stepping outside your usual genre can be more inspiring than endlessly revisiting the same galleries and sources. Who better than the writer of Hamilton to show us the way?

Bad, Mad Skillz: An Origin Story

05 Saturday Aug 2017

Posted by in Clothing, Fail, Living History, personal

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Aragorn: one of many modified patterns

I’ve been sewing clothes off and on for while, and sewing pretty constantly since the 1990s—baby quilts, piped slipcovers for vintage chairs, knitting needle cases, costumes for the Giant, and sundry other items. Making calms me, and since I tend to operate at a pretty high RPM, I make a lot of things.

Historical clothing took off for me after the Giant decided he wanted in on the living history thing. Hunting frocks, overalls, and shirts gave way to stays, petticoats and gowns. I’m largely self-taught, and although workshops with Sharon Burnston and Henry Cooke helped immensely, much of what I learned about fitting and draping I learned by reading (books and tutorials, especially Koshka and Sabine) and by making mistakes.

The best way to succeed is to fail, and I am an accomplished failure —you have only to look through the archives here, and you will find waistcoats sewn by drunken, crack-addled monkeys , upside-down Spencer collars, and stays gone wrong. I’m okay with those mistakes, because they helped me (and, I hope, some of my readers) make progress towards better sewing.

Really, I’m not sure how this happened. But there it is: upside down.

I’ve made things of late of which I am proud, or at least pleased with; I have taught myself new skills over the years from pad stitching (still working on that) to hand knotting (getting better) . I’ve gained patience (which is a skill itself) as I’ve learned new techniques, and that counts for a lot.

Hand-knotted lapis bead necklace: a new, slightly frustrating skill

Way back when (for the true origins), struggling through a design studio, I realized that the greatest frustration typically comes just before a breakthrough. That understanding is really the origin of my historical sewing: getting frustrated means you’re making progress. And what’s more frustrating that replicating a historical garment?

Fave Friday: Full-On Federal

04 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by in Clothing, History, Research

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Favorite Era? Easy-peasy! Federal, of course. Whether furniture or fashion, the early Republic is my thing. I spend a fair amount of time in the 18th century, since there are so many events in that time period, and while I loved the story of the American Revolution as a child, the early Federal* period intrigues me more. Furniture, porcelain, wallpaper, and clothing from 1790-1820 all appeal to me, as well as the notion that women’s roles were in flux in the earliest decades of the United States.

“American Women and French Fashion,” from The Age of Napoleon

I love the idea of women in mercantile businesses and trade, and the way that milliners provided access to fashion (and you can read more about that in The Age of Napoleon).

Merrymaking at a Wayside Inn, watercolor on paper by John Lewis Krimmel. 1811-1813. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 42.95.12

I also love the way that American women (and men) translated European high style into a vernacular, as seen in John Lewis Krimmel’s watercolors of Philadelphia and surrounding areas.

This is a time period I’m comfortable in (yes, the stays are part of that comfort) but aside from comfort and aesthetics, I think it’s also because for a brief time, women had slightly more freedom than they had previously.

It was short-lived, and Republican motherhood was confining in its own way before the “cult of womanhood” blossomed fully. But ideals of freedom and fashion very briefly aligned, and for that, I love the Federal– and vain creature that I am, I think it suits me.

*pre-Andy Jackson, amirite?

Driving Miss Lady

10 Monday Jul 2017

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In the midst of loading the moving van, the Giant cut his thumb. 18th century pocket knives are no substitute for 21st century tools.

Or, where I’ve been, what I’ve been up to, and why I haven’t posted.

Six weeks ago, I left the museum where I’d worked since the Giant was a toddler, and the duplex I’d lived in for more than a decade. I spent the next two and half weeks packing up my possessions and pondering the benefits of minimalism.

Three weeks ago, I was southbound on I-95 with my ridiculous cats and an assortment of baggage (of which I have a great deal). It’s such an American act, “lighting out for the territories,” as Huck or Laurie Anderson might have it, setting off for someplace new, spurred by an itch similar to Pa Ingalls’.

Leaving wasn’t easy
for anyone….

After an 8 hour drive that culminated in extreme excitement and some confusion on the Beltway (Why do some Maryland drivers proceed at speed in a travel lane with their hazards on? Why did that truck think we could occupy the same space, when we both have a corporeal presence?), I arrived in different weather to a new home already occupied by two gentleman cats and Drunk Tailor.

People are settling in
getting comfy
and exploring

After three weeks, I am nearly unpacked and nearly back to normal operations. I’ve missed a couple of events, including one in central New York I really hated to miss, and few I discovered at the last minute. Still, I am looking forward to reprising my lament for New England as I travel farther south to once again portray a terrible servant married to another terrible servant.

Summery plans to finish in between stitching for the shop

With any luck, the yarn I’ve ordered will arrive before we leave and I can begin the tedious work of tent stitching a wallet in a Rhode Island pattern to remind me of home.

Until I’m working full time, I’ll be making mitts, bonnets, and boxes both for a future millinery shop of the past and for Etsy. I’ve also got two gowns and two Spencers underway, at least one of which I’d like to have before August.