Tag Archives: progressive reenacting

Hints for a New Hobby

29 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by in Living History, Making Things, material culture, Reenacting, Research

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The historical costuming/living history/reenacting hobby can be a daunting one to pick up. When I started, I was fortunate to have a background making things, including sewing my own clothes, as well as a career that taught me research skills, and gave me easy access to primary sources. Those factors made skill building relatively easy, though I definitely had a learning curve specific to what I was doing. As the season opens and people start to ease into new units, I thought about things I found that made this hobby a little easier to manage, and skills easier to acquire.

Same years….
different class levels

Know who (and when) you are. When you step into the past, who are you? Where are you from? What year are you representing? With answers to these questions, you can begin to sort out what you need to know, and where you need to look for answers. What you’ll wear in North Carolina is not what you will wear in coastal New England. The styles of 1750 are not the same as those of 1780– and fashion information traveled quickly from England to America. American colonists were as stylish (or more so) than their English counterparts. Wearing a gown 20 years out of date without alterations is only going to work well if that gown really shows its age (and you do, too).

Learn to do research. If you are going to strike out totally on your own, you need to be able to do research and sift through the sources you find to understand and interpret them appropriately for your situation. What is right for Costume College may well not be right for a camp follower, no matter how accurate the fabrics or construction. It seems so obvious (and in the case of a silk sacque back gown, it really is) but in other ways it’s not. Jackets aren’t going to be right in New England, and calicos are more common in Philadelphia and Rhode Island than they are in Boston.

Lance needles: the best I’ve used.
Rowenta steam iron

Buy good tools. Really: tools matter. Sharp shears, sharp thread snips, good, sharp needles, sturdy pins, a pin cushion, a cutting grid, a steam iron, a sleeve board, a sturdy ironing board: all of these things make my sewing life so much better. (I actually own three ironing boards: a full size board, a table top board, and a sleeve board and use them all.) Tailor’s hams are also useful– that’s what I steam my caps on.

Ruffle attachment in progress. Possible thanks to the material and the needle.

Use good materials. Good fabric is expensive, but what’s your time worth? If you calculate the per-wearing cost of a garment, you’ll find that the “cost” decreases over time. One of my favorite gowns is made of $2.99/yard fabric from a mill store in Rhode Island. (I was very lucky to find a woven check that matched one in a RI sample book.) I bought five yards, so $15. I’ve worn that gown more times than I can count, and it is perfectly filthy. If we calculate $450 for hand sewing, the total cost is $465. Since April 2014, I have worn that gown 12 times (that I recall), making the per-wearing cost $38.75. I’d call that a good value. If we count just the yardage, it’s $1.25 a wearing and honestly, you cannot do better that that.

When it comes to shifts, the ultimate per-wearing cost is even less. My most recent shift of hand-woven linen with vintage linen sleeves would have been $450 in materials, and $425 in hand-sewing. $875 seems crazy, right? Consider the shift I made in 2011, worn to almost every 18th century event I’ve attended (I had two); I’ve worn that shift….45 times that I can recall. That’s $20.83 per wearing, a better value over time than the $2.99/yard gown. If a soldier’s coat can cost $800, and you are going to every event your soldier goes to, an $800 shift is as good a value as the coat, and possibly more essential.

Cost aside, the value of good materials is in the time they save in making. Well-woven linen is easier to sew and will need less mending over time. Sharp shears cut cleaner. Sharp needles sew better, and smaller needles give you finer stitches.

d’oh! surgical tape made this *much* better later.

Learn to sew with a thimble. Your fingers will thank you. I use a leather thimble with a metal tip (from the quilting notions section) and it helps. Thimbles are essential when sewing heavier fabrics like broadcloth and indispensable if you make your own stays (and you can expect bleeding even with a thimble).

Practice patience. Learning a new skill, or refining one you already have, takes time. It isn’t always fun. I get sick of sewing, and have to switch to something else (like cutting out, or research, or patterning) or take a break. Recognize that frustration is often the moment before you master something new, but also know when frustration means it’s time to stop. Just as we build muscle on rest days, our brains process skills when we stop. Then, the next time we pick something up, we’ll be stronger, or more skillful, than if we hadn’t stopped. (This New York Times article was helpful, and inspired this post.)

A purchased bonnet because it’s one I can’t make.

Buy what you cannot make. I thought I needed to make everything myself (with the exception of men’s hats and buttons) but that’s just not true. If you can’t manage fine sewing, buy a cap! If you hate assembling tricky things, buy mitts or a bonnet. I bought caps when I couldn’t make them as well as I wanted, and it saved me hours of frustration. I love flamestitch pinballs, but I can’t manage that needlework yet; lucky for me, I know someone who excels at it, so I can buy from her. Other people have skills, and buying things from them will save you time and frustration, so you can focus on what you really want to do.

Codes of Conduct & Rules of Civility

11 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by in Events, Living History, Reenacting

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These have been a tough couple of years. We are, once again it seems, in a period of polarization and increasing political violence. In times like these, when disagreements flare brighter and behavioural norms are changing, even the things we do for fun can be affected. From online fights that turn nastier than ever to onsite behaviour that runs the gamut from passive-aggressive to hostile, the real world creeps into our fantasy worlds. I have experienced and seen behaviour that I find unacceptable. It was subtle, but not acceptable. When I posted about it online, a lively discussion ensued.

From that, an idea was born: Sharon Burnston suggested a Code of Conduct, which I heartily endorsed. Drawing on her experience organizing and managing events and groups, Sharon wrote a draft code of conduct. Now, with edits and suggestions from others, it is available on her website.

“We are all here at this site/event for the same purpose, to portray events that happened here in the past for the benefit of the public, and for our own enjoyment. We agree to follow the site’s rules for fire safety, gunpowder and weapon safety, curfew, alcohol consumption, and whatever other restrictions they require of reenactors. Just as we have agreed to adhere to standards for our clothing and our kit, it is appropriate that we agree to adhere to standards for our behavior. The standards for our behavior are modern, not period. We are interpreting history, not re-creating historical attitudes to class, gender, or race. We are 21st century people, and 21st century expectations apply.

In its simplest terms, treat everyone else as you would want them to treat you. Don’t be a jerk. But to break it down into specifics, and in order for this community to feel welcoming to the largest possible population, we expect everyone to endorse the following standards of behavior. Anyone who cannot adhere to these simple rules will not be invited to future events.”

Don’t be a jerk.

Seems so simple, right? Apparently not for everyone, because not everyone embraced a fundamental grade-school lesson:

“I will take responsibility for both my actions and my feelings. I have the right to have my feelings respected, I have the right to be heard and understood, I have the right not to feel pressured or browbeaten. I extend the same rights to all other reenactors and to the public.”

For me, this presents an interesting conundrum. You see, I kinda started this when I announced online:

Now, this is in fact a wimpy way to deal with a person who I think treated me pretty shabbily at an event, and who made clearly misogynistic comments at that event, and has posted white nationalist stuff on social media. A quicker-witted person than I would follow Sharon’s precept six:

“I will call out these inappropriate behaviors in others. If I see something, I will say something – either to the offender directly or to an authority figure – a captain, event planner/organizer, or someone I trust. I will stand in solidarity with my fellow reenactors and pledge to stand up to bullies, abusers, and other unpleasant behavior to ensure the safety and comfort of those around me.”

This last is easier for some than for others. It gets easier when one can believe that one will be listened to, heard, and taken seriously. And that is not on the person reporting: that’s on the person hearing. When someone’s feelings are dismissed, or another’s actions excused (he’s a good guy; he’s just insecure), the status quo is maintained, the ranks secured, and the world unchanged. It will take all of us to make places safe and pleasant to be it. A code of conduct we can all agree to is a good place to start.

Now Left

13 Sunday Nov 2016

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

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Through the barracks window on Friday night. Photo by Eliza West.

Through the barracks window on Friday night. Photo by Eliza West.

While for some events there are no second chances, Fitzgerald himself knew it wasn’t true that there are no acts in American lives.  And so it is with Fort Ticonderoga, changing hands several times throughout its existence, until British troops, retreating in 1777, did their best to raze the structure.

A day after participating in the “Now Left to their Own Defense” event at the Fort, I feel a bit destroyed myself, in the best possible way. (It isn’t history till it hurts, but sometimes cold nights on straw-filled ticks get into what’s left of my hip bones.)

Women at work.

Women at work. Photo by M.S.

Every trip to Ti teaches me something new. This time, against all odds, it was cooking. Against all odds because I usually object to reinforcing gender norms at living history events, particularly in a military setting, when women did not typically cook for mens’ messes. Fort Ti is different: both times I have cooked there, it has been as part of the women’s mess.

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Done! And no, it didn’t taste burnt. Photo by M.S.

This past Saturday, we may have gone a bit overboard, but we justified our efforts with the thought that Loyalist women would not only have used up all the supplies they could (waste not, want not) before retreating, but that they might also have striven for normal activity and to prove their worth to men whose protection they needed.

To that end, we made bread pudding. I’m a fan of Indian pudding and rice pudding, but I’ve never made a bread pudding, despite the similarity of these starch-and-custard concoctions. I like to think that rather than having reached a “throw reason and caution to the winds” point, I have, like any good 18th century cook, become comfortable enough not to rely on measuring cups but rather trust my eye and experience. Enablers help, of course, and I had the pleasure of spending my day with some of my favorites and meeting new ones, too.

Wicked Inspiration

28 Thursday Apr 2016

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

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You know that musical? The one you can’t get tickets to unless they were willed to you by your grandmother because she was lucky enough to stumble out of the Tardis right at the box office on opening day, but had to buy them for, like, six years from now, and they’re actually for the Kansas City production? The one in which the founding fathers are, you know, brown? My friends and family assumed I’d hate the whole idea, but I don’t. Like so many people, I love it, and not just for the music, though my preferred method of psyching myself up for GeeDubs1790 or What Cheer Day is listening to the Stones or the Beastie Boys all the way up.

So, what then, interests me in “Hamilton,” and why do I think it relates to interpretation? This: the way that the show filters the concerns of the late eighteenth century through the lens of the twenty-first could make for enlightening listening.

My Shot gives me goosebumps: why? Is it because history and civics are finally sexy?

Maybe. But “Hamilton” as a whole, per Rebecca Mead in the New Yorker, “is a hymn to the allure that America promises the immigrant who aspires to reach its shores; it is also an argument for the invigorating power that this nation’s porous borders, and porous identity, have always offered.”

Porous identity. That’s part of why I’m fascinated. But just as “Sleep No More” and Occupy Providence (really really) were partial inspirations for What Cheer Day, “Hamilton” strikes me as the kind of production worth paying attention to. No, I am not suggesting that the paunchy reenactors start channeling their inner Biggie, though I might well pay to see that.

No, what I’m suggesting is that we reconsider what it is we’re doing out there on the field and in the historic houses, and not just what but how and why. Hamilton takes an unexpected approach to history and it’s going gangbusters, while Amazing Grace tanked. So it’s not about the costuming authenticity, though I implore you not to give that up. It’s about the passion. It’s about coming at things sideways.

What makes you love doing laundry, drilling with precision, telling local gossip, making soap, or whatever it is that you love best about your place in the past? Why does all this matter to you so much? What is it that we can learn about today as you teach us about the past? Let loose that love and passion, share those insights, and ten to one you’ll have more fun and excite more visitors.

The Devil is in the Details

21 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by in History, Living History, Movie Review, Philosophy

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durer_hare

The Hare. Watercolor on paper by Albrecht Durer, 1502. The Albertina, Vienna.

The Witch. I had to go see it after Mr JS sent me a link to this article, and of course I was captivated. (I also needed a break after what was very nearly the Worst Week Ever, starting Wednesday at 4:30AM.)

“The recreation of farm life in 1630s Massachusetts is so complete it pulls you into the pocket universe that exists inside the characters’ minds. As you experience their fear, you experience your own. The barrier between you and the people on film disappears, and their terror consumes you. And that is how you make a scary movie!”

That pocket universe: that’s what some of us are after when we go about this living history business, creating a world so seamless (or so meticulously hand-seamed) that you, the interpreter, appear to inhabit the past and the present simultaneously.¹

So how does it work? How did it work in The Witch?

Here’s Eggers on authenticity:

“…authenticity for the sake of authenticity doesn’t really matter. To understand why the witch archetype was important and interesting and powerful—and how was I going to make that scary and alive again—we had to go back in time to the early modern period when the witch was a reality. And the only way I was going to do that, I decided, was by having it be insanely accurate.”

Got that? Authenticity for the sake of authenticity doesn’t really matter.

But the only way to make the witch powerful was to be “insanely accurate.”

The only way to make living history powerful is to be <ahem> insanely accurate.² If we’re not, the points where we are not accurate will stand out, the spell will be broken, and the visitor will be lost. The real thing is the right thing for your time and place. Context: It really does matter. 

That means that just because you perfectly replicated a silk gown from a French fashion plate it may be wildly incorrect for the streets of Providence, Boston, or Philadelphia– much less a military camp– even if it’s the same year as the event you’re attending. It means that just because you got every buttonhole perfect on your 1765 frock coat, it won’t be right for an 1803 funeral if you’re only 30.

Don't take an anecdote to a data fight.

Don’t take an anecdote to a data fight.

When you’re wearing and carrying the right clothes and objects for your portrayal, you can focus less of the what and more on the why. As interpreters, re-enactors, enactors, whatever you want to call yourself, we lead the visitor to better questions and a better understanding of not just events but the meaning of the past if we are thoroughly convinced and convincing. And that only happens by questioning ourselves.

The Witch is a horror movie, and while it was tense, the world it portrayed felt pretty close and natural to me and to Mr JS. Maybe that’s because we spend so much time trying to understand that vanished world—it’s Roger Williams, baby—maybe because we engage in living history and material culture. I don’t know if it’s scarier for folks who don’t have that level of context, don’t assume a world where hierarchy, acceptance, succumbing to a higher power, is normal. Where everything is a matter of faith, and belief. It’s a tiny world, that past. We were so immersed in that world that walking out into the mall was a shock: colors, noises, smells. And the world was so immersive because the details were so correct.

Ultimately, what we do with living history is interpretation, and interpretation is provocation.³ But what should be provoked is not a question about what you have, but why you have it, and what you’ll do with it. And that only happens if you have the right thing.

………………….

1 Your mileage may vary. It’s my dream goal. “Man’s reach should extend his grasp” and all that.

2 That is, as accurate as possible, recognizing the limitations of modern materials and access to primary source documents. More on that later.

3 Freeman Tilden. Interpreting Our Heritage, Chapel Hill: 2007. p. 35