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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: semiotics

Reading the Night

18 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by kittycalash in material culture, Research

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

art history, context, engravings, lithographs, prints, semiotics

Francois-Robert Ingouf after Sigmund Freudenberger (French, 1747 – 1812 ), La soiree d’hyver, 1774, etching and engraving, Rosenwald Collection 1943.3.4377

Details. It’s all in the details, right? I see this print multiple times every day, and contemplate the little stories in the details of the room.

Francois-Robert Ingouf after Sigmund Freudenberger (French, 1747 – 1812 ), La soiree d’hyver, 1774, etching and engraving, Rosenwald Collection 1943.3.4377

Perhaps the first thing I noticed that jarred my eye (and my thinking) was the row of glass vases for forcing bulbs. They look so modern, don’t they? But the shape is classic– form following function– and findable today. How pleasing that my mother’s winter ritual of filling windowsills and mantles with forcing bulbs can be visually documented to one of my favorite eras–and was, indeed, common in the past. This is one of those “everybody did it” ideas I can endorse.

French François Linke Louis XVI Style Gilt Bronze and White Marble Clock
French François Linke Louis XVI Style Gilt Bronze and White Marble Clock
Francois-Robert Ingouf after Sigmund Freudenberger (French, 1747 - 1812 ), La soiree d'hyver, 1774, etching and engraving, Rosenwald Collection 1943.3.4377
Francois-Robert Ingouf after Sigmund Freudenberger (French, 1747 – 1812 ), La soiree d’hyver, 1774, etching and engraving, Rosenwald Collection 1943.3.4377

What else is on the mantle? A clock, undoubtedly ormolu– though it could be much worse. And yes, the cupid on the clock has meaning in this print.

And then there’s this: the hot water urn– or is it?

Tucked into the fire place, I was initially pretty sure that’s a hot water/tea/coffee urn, meant to go with the tea or coffee cup on the mantle (see above; it’s in front of the bulb vases). Hot tea or coffee would be welcome on a cold winter’s evening, and the water would stay warmer tucked close to the fire.

Francois-Robert Ingouf after Sigmund Freudenberger (French, 1747 - 1812 ), La soiree d'hyver, 1774, etching and engraving, Rosenwald Collection 1943.3.4377
Francois-Robert Ingouf after Sigmund Freudenberger (French, 1747 – 1812 ), La soiree d’hyver, 1774, etching and engraving, Rosenwald Collection 1943.3.4377
Tea urn. Silver, by John Carter II. 1773-1774. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 11.28a–f
Tea urn. Silver, by John Carter II. 1773-1774. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 11.28a–f

18th Century Cast and Wrought Iron Fireplace Fire Grate

But it could also be a decorative fender, ornamented with urns at the ends. The fireplace grate shown here is English, made ca. 1780 according to the seller) but should you have space cash burning a hole in your pocket, there’s a similar 19th century reproduction of the one in the print for sale on the interwebs, should you care to recreate this image (I know some of you have the clothes). In fact, there are quite few fenders-with-urns, once you start looking, some in bronze and some in steel.

And what of this? Is that an 18th century dog house or covered dog bed? Yes, it is.

Dog kennel, by Claude I Sené, 1775-1780. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1971.206.18
Dog kennel, by Claude I Sené, 1775-1780. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1971.206.18
R-20100527-0015.jpg

The bouillotte candlestand on the table is another nice household detail, illuminating a book lying open on the table set against the wall.

R-20100527-0015.jpg
Screenshot 2017-12-17 10.48.42

It has taken me some time of looking at period images to accept these candle stands as correct, since my experience with them was grounded in electrified reproductions in suburban Colonial Revival dens and family rooms– a location I will admit I was prejudiced against to begin with, having grown up in a city surrounded by architects devoted to (and buildings by) Mies van der Rohe.

But therein lies the point of looking: what initially seems absurd (Versailles-quality dog beds) or simply anachronistic (candlestands with shades) slides into place when seen and understood, within its proper context.

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What’re you lookin’ at?

23 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by kittycalash in Art Rant, Living History, Reenacting, Research

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

art, art history, fashion, interpretation, semiotics

Pupils of Nature.hand-colored etching published by S W Fores after Maria Caroline Temple, 1798. British Museum, 1867,0713.409

Pupils of Nature.hand-colored etching published by S W Fores after Maria Caroline Temple, 1798. British Museum, 1867,0713.409

No, really: Do you know what you are looking at?

When we set out to make historic clothing and costumes, it’s important to understand our sources. Newspaper advertisements and account books are one source of information that can be difficult to decode: from Swankskin to Tammies to Shalloons, Nankeens, and Calimancos, we encounter words we do not understand. Dictionaries can help, but it is as well to remember that we need that help decoding the words.

We don’t get the same handy, universal guidebook in quite the same way when we look at extant garments. What we do often get is provenance. Knowing a garment’s history is essential to truly understanding it. It helps date the item, for one thing, and understanding the history of the wearer gives us even more information about the clothing. How old was the person when this was worn? What was their social status? Income level? And if there are mends and alterations: even better!

I came to understand the family who lived in the house where I work more clearly through their clothes. Muslin waistcoat fronts that, on examination, are not truly out of the tippy-top drawer helped me see the Big Fish/Small Pond nature of the family and their wealth. You may be a Playa in backwater Providence, but you Just Another Guy in Philly. It was a little window into the insecurities of the father, and how those played out in his reaction to his daughters’ marriages.

The Unfortunate Beau, etching, Publish'd as the Act directs 12th Sept 1772, by S.Hooper, No.25 Ludgate Hill. British Museum 1991,1214.20

The Unfortunate Beau, etching, Publish’d as the Act directs 12th Sept 1772, by S.Hooper, No.25 Ludgate Hill. British Museum 1991,1214.20

But (in the grand scheme of things) there are only so many newspaper ads and account books and few enough garments, let alone the zebras of garments with solid provenance. The groups are smaller still when you consider relevance to what you need or want to know or replicate. Small state? You’ll have a small pool.

So we turn, often, to images. Here again, provenance is helpful when we look at a portrait. Even knowing the maker is helpful: Ralph Earl or James Earl? Portraits by brother James aren’t the same level as those by Ralph, so you get a different kind of information. But that’s all quite aside from what’s contained within the image– and that’s even before you begin to consider what you are doing when you replicate the image.

Understanding the symbols and meanings of images and objects is slightly esoteric but questioning your sources (Interrogating the Object, if you will) allows you to better understand what the heckers you are doing and how it may be perceived. In the pursuit of historical clothing, living history and reenacting, that is more important than we credit. Do we really know what the sources mean? I’ve argued before that we don’t-– and that doesn’t mean DON’T it means USE WITH CAUTION. We’re long removed from the details of, say, satirical engravings that lack a literary source, so those need especial caution as sources. We lack the context.

The Bargain Struck, or Virtue conquer'd by Temptation. Mezzotint, 1773. British Museum 1935,0522.1.130

The Bargain Struck, or Virtue conquer’d by Temptation. Mezzotint, 1773. British Museum 1935,0522.1.130

Now, if your goal is straightforward: replicating costume for fun, say, you will care less about the notion of meaning within images than someone who is trying to understand the past by inhabiting the clothing with the hope of gaining insight into the worldview of the past. That second category is possibly a more tortured group of souls than the first, laboring as we do at an impossible task.

We are talking about semiotics here, and if you want a quick intro, The Signs of Our Time by Jack Solomon, PhD clocks in at 244 pages including bibliography. It’s old– 1988– and perhaps oversimplified, but we’re not in graduate seminar here, so it will do for our purposes. Solomon’s book contains a handy list he calls the Six Principles of Semiotics:

  1. Always question the “common sense” view of thing, because “common sense” is really “communal sense”: the habitual opinions and perspectives of the tribe.
  2. The “common sense” viewpoint is usually motivated by a cultural interest that manipulates our consciousness for ideological reasons.
  3. Cultures tend to conceal their ideologies behind the veil of “nature,” defining what they do as “natural” and condemning contrary cultural practices as “unnatural.”
  4. In evaluating any system of cultural practices, one must take into account the interests behind it.
  5. We do not perceive our world directly but view it through the filter of a semiotic code or mythic frame.
  6. A sign is a sort of cultural barometer, marking the dynamic movement of social history.

Now that you’ve read the list, perhaps what I obsess about will be clearer: we don’t fully understand the culture of the past. We don’t have the same semiotic or mythic filter than the people of the 18th century had, but when we recognize first that they had a filter, and second that the filter varied from culture to culture, we can better understand our sources.

If you can accept that the cultural filters of England and France and the United States were all different, perhaps it will be easier to accept that you cannot mimic a French fashion plate in portraying a middle-class New England woman without encountering some questions. But if you replicate that fashion plate for the pleasure of experiencing that fashion moment, that’s another game altogether.

Intention matters. Your goal will dictate your sources, and how you use them. As committed as I am to the everyday (because no one is documenting us or saving us, no matter how desperately we try to signal our being with Facebook and Instagram posts), I’m not suggesting that we all attempt to recreate the same past. I’m arguing that we strive to understand what we are doing (dressing up, portraying a specific character, portraying an archetype) and that when we know what we are doing, we understand better how to use the sources we have.

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