Tag Archives: resources

The Checkered Past

26 Tuesday Nov 2013

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Coat, 1790s American CB: 38 in. Gift of The New York Historical Society, 1979.346.42. MMA
Textile Sample Book, 1771. British Rogers Fund, 156.4 T31, MMA

Some gentlemen I know should consider what they might want to do to avoid (or alternately, encourage) having this coat made for them. It’s really a lovely thing, found as the best things are, while looking for something else.

It reminded me, too, of the textile sample book at the Met, currently on display in the Interwoven Globe exhibition. (No, I haven’t seen it; I’m going to try, but…).

Wm Booth has a new linen coming in the winter, and as the men in my house have outgrown or outworn their shirts, I am thinking of making new check shirts. I did finish a white shirt at Fort Lee, which will go to the Young Mr (his small clothes being now his too-small clothes). I will have to make Mr S a white shirt for best wear, but they could each use a second working shirt. At least with checks you get “cut here” and “sew here” lines.

Last week, I found a weavers’ book in the Arkwright Company Records (Box 1, Folder 1, 1815). It’s a slim, blue paper-covered volume with small samplers glued in to the pages, and full of checks and stripes. Blue and white, red and blue, checks and stripes were prevalent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The more I look at extant garments, sample books, and ads, the more I think the streets must have been a vibrant, if grimy, visual riot.

Book Review: Book of Ages

17 Sunday Nov 2013

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Book of Ages, by Jill Lepore.

Book of Ages, by Jill Lepore.

This is a book about reading and writing as much as it is a book about Jane Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s little sister. Book of Ages has been reviewed elsewhere, and Lepore wrote a really lovely piece in the New Yorker called The Prodigal Daughter that is unfortunately behind a subscription firewall, but which I have read on actual paper. If you can get hold of it, I do recommend reading it before you read Book of Ages. It makes the book all the more poignant to know something about Lepore’s process.

This is, in many ways, another book about mud and misery (see the best bits of Longbourn). Because Jane Franklin Mecom (her married name– she married at 15) left behind so little, Lepore builds much of her story out of the context of Boston and New England in the mid-18th century.

It’s not exhaustive in its detail, and that’s fine: the book is an easy, comfortable read that still provides well-researched information about the lives of women in the 18th century. I finished it over a week ago, but details still remain (and that is a testament to Lepore– these could have been supplanted in my mind by details of exterior water meters, skunk removal techniques, or indexes for early vital records). Among the details I recall: Funerary and mourning customs, from published sermons to the distribution of mourning gloves and rings; soap making and trades practiced by small holders in home workshops; Jane Franklin Mecom’s wartime flight to Rhode Island; the power and practice of extended family networks.

It also reminded me of the differences in educational methods or standards for boys and girls, which helps remind us all of the importance and significance of the ideal of free public education for all. (We had some early proponents here in Rhode Island.) What might Jane Franklin’s life have been like in other circumstances? Honestly, even if she’d been well-off and well-educated, as as woman in the 18th century, she would never have had the same chances as her brother, no matter how evenly their intellects might have been matched.

If anything, that’s reason alone to read Lepore’s book, to celebrate the life of a woman who was both ordinary and extraordinary, and to recognize how much closer to all the anonymous, disappeared women of the past we can get through this example.

What (Cheer) to Wear?

07 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by in Clothing, History, Living History, Reenacting, Research

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JBs HousekeeperIt’s 1800. Do you know what your housekeeper is doing? I don’t. Or, more accurately, I can’t decide.
I’m hung up on stays, and not wanting to make another pair. I’m indecisive about style, and though Mrs Garnett has her charms, it’s her bonnet I love more than anything.

Here’s what I’ve found, in servant-land:
18th-century-kitchen-servants-prepare-a-meal-jane-austen-cookbook-cover-page

Note that this woman is, in the kitchen, wearing an open robe and quilted petticoat.The style of her bodice–which looks  like a cross-over bodice–and the train of the robe suggest the 1790s. Score one for style.

That open robe, where have I seen that before? Why, yes, Mr Sandby showed us that style for a nurserymaid. (It’s interesting, too, that both images show women with their hair quite visible under their caps, and not pulled up and out of sight.)
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Why does “robe stye” matter? Because I only found 3 and a quarter yards of a brown fabric I like, and even with the most careful cutting, that’s unlikely to make a full gown. However, I have some lightweight black wool that will make a decent petticoat. The bodice style is a bit of a stumper, though: the wool has good drape, so it might work for something other than the usual bodice I make. I did consider whether a very smooth, edge-to-edge, front-closing style of the 1780s would be more appropriate, but I think that I can move the bodice style forward, style-wise, and be correct.

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Brown gowns are a fine tradition in the sartorial habits of questionable servants. This young housemaid twirls her mop dry while wearing a brown gown over what could be a dark blue or a black quilted petticoat. The red “bandannoe” is a nice touch, though I don’t think I’ll wear one myself for this event.

In all this there is a compromise: using fabric I like, in a style I know I can make and document, perhaps even without having to make new stays. That would be ideal, because although it’s four weeks to the event, I’ll lose a week of sewing time to other commitments. Three weeks to pattern and hand sew a petticoat, gown, apron and cap seems just manageable.

The Authenticity Challenge

14 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Clothing, Events, Research

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We’re going up to Minute Man on August 24, or at least that’s the plan. We have hostages to exchange (one ends up with other folks’ spoons and bowls when one does the dishes) and drilling to do for the September 28 event in Boston.

Immediately after Sturbridge, the authenticity question blossomed on the interwebs, as there was an unusually fine crop of bodices on view in the village that weekend. (To be clear, I am pro-authenticity and anti-bodice, but I am still working over my thoughts on authenticity, which veered into hermeneutics, and are therefore not really germane to the conversation.)

Authenticity and standards are in the ether, and for this year’s event, all participants are asked to provide documentation, not just the people taking part in the challenge. I plan attend but not to partake of the challenge, as I have no desire to relive my childhood of never-even-third-place, thank you. Instead, I’m merely queasy and scrambling, as the only person in our household who seems really documented to me is the Young Mr, with his snuff-colored trousers  currently under construction, and two jackets from which he may be able to choose (presuming I get all buttonhole inspired). So he’s good. Run away!

I’ve been working on a ‘secret’ gown that’s not totally secret, but don’t feel I can adequately document it for this event. I have examples of the fabric advertised for sale, and a period print. But so far, the only gowns of this fabric type described in runaway ads have dark grounds. Granted, servants might tend to wear darker, more dirt-hiding colors, but I don’t feel that one print and some wrong-ground ads are enough. Next!

Anne Carrowle is Philadelphia, not New England: she’s passable for Monmouth and other Mid-Atlantic events. Chintz jackets: also fine for those runaway Dutch servants in NY and Philadelphia. Next!

Brown wool seemed too heavy for August, but the way the weather has been of late, maybe not. Well, anyway, it could get hotter. Next!

1772 red pompadoreThat leaves me with the New Favorite Gown, which I like, but which is based on an earlier British watercolor, so must be slightly altered at the sleeve or cuff as well as documented. At first I could find nothing to suggest that the color and fabric were within the realm of documentary possibility. Eventually I did find an ad in the Newport Mercury for what might be a likely candidate.

“Ran away on Sunday the 19th instant, from the subscriber at Newport, an Irish indented maid servant, named Elioner Clievland, pretty tall, who is very corpulent, with a red complexion, brown hair, and has a scar and a large dent in one of her arms, had on a red pompadore gown, and light broadcloth cloak: ” Newport Mercury, 8-10-1772

claret poplinTwo years later, “ a likely tall Negro Woman, known by the name of Violet Shaw, about 25 years old; has a Blemish in one Eye, carried away with her a white Calico Riding Dress, a strip’d Calico Gown, a claret colour’d Poplin Gown, a strip’d blue and white Holland Gown, a Bengal Gown, and many other value Articles…” Boston Evening Post, 8-1-1774

Well, I’m tall, and far from 25, but thankfully, I am not corpulent. But here are two wool or wool-blend, gowns, in reddish colors, in the right time period and place. Unfortunately, I have not yet found striped, or striped linsey, petticoats in Rhode Island, Connecticut or Massachusetts in 1772-1775—plenty in Philadelphia, where there are more servants running away—so what to do? I’ll look a damn fool without a petticoat.
brown petticoat newport

ShortGown There’s the brown petticoat solution. There is one in Boston (Weston), in August, 1774, and another in Newport, in January, 1773. I like the “brown camblet skirt;” I don’t have camblet, but at least the drape of the lightweight wool and cotton will be closer to camblet than to wool. I can agonize over the suitability of fabrics (and the vagaries of style) in some other post.

I made the gown intending to wear it with a blue and yellow striped as-yet-unmade petticoat (to look like the watercolor), but have some brown wool I can make up instead. Better documented than not (or nude).

Hunting Frocks, Again

11 Sunday Aug 2013

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They’re not Mr S’s favorite thing, and I can understand why. Hunting frocks lack pizzazz, buttons, tape, lace, lapels, skirts and all the things that make him so fond of the Ugly Dog Coat worn by the 10th Massachusetts in 1782. (I think these are the coats captured from British supply ships and dyed at Newburgh and West Point in tanner’s vats.) But what he has right now is a hunting frock.

Here’s the kid in his new hunting frock, and a hand colored copper engraving by Johann Martin Will from 1776.

You gotta hold your tongue just right when you drill.

Americaner Soldat, Johann Martin Will. Ann S. K. Brown Collection, Brown University.

Americaner Soldat, Johann Martin Will. Ann S. K. Brown Collection, Brown University.

And then there are the colored and plain engravings, “1. Americanischer scharffschütz oder Jäger (rifleman) 2. regulaire infanterie von Pensylvanien,” engraved by Berger after Chodowiecki.

Library of Congress

Library of Congress

Berger after Chodowiecki, Ann S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University

Ann S. K. Brown Collection

I started thinking about these again because not only am I reading Hurst’s thesis, but I’m fresh from helping the guys get dressed and arrange their capes and straps. I have been doing that as long as Mr S has been wearing historic clothing.

Early days of draping

Early days of draping


Drapey capes

The hunting frock drifts if it does not have some kind of fastening at the neck. The two halves migrate in opposite directions, and while belts help, the light infantry bayonet shoulder belt does not contain the hunting frock as well as one might like. So the thing to do, I think, is to attach a loop and button at the neck to hold the garment in place. From the period engravings, I think that’s acceptable. The garments all look as if they are closed at the neck. From the evidence in the field, and from the images, I plan to make loops and attach buttons, and hope that will limit some tendency to wander.

The image of the two soldiers together suggests another wrinkle in the hunting frock quandary, since the left hand soldier’s out garment looks like a long pocket-less coat with applied fringe and only a very small cape at the neck. Thank goodness that soldier is a rifleman, and thus outside the realm of immediate relevance. (And on a side note, I know a gentleman who very much resembles the Pennsylvania infantry man: identical calves, and even a similar face.)