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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: some snark

15 Ways to Have a Bad Living History Event

13 Friday May 2016

Posted by kittycalash in Events, Snark

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Events, living history, Opinion, Reenacting, some snark, The Public

The Enraged Musician. Chaos has a long history, and often I am for it.

The Enraged Musician. Chaos has a long history, and often I am for it. But not always.

For Organizers

  1. Do not advertise. Having no audience makes an event super-lame.
  2. Have no attendance limits on a closed site. Intense crowds and no security makes an event scary. Add alcohol for intensity.
  3. Do not publish participant standards or a schedule. Confusion and laxity breed chaos.
  4. Publish standards, but do not enforce them uniformly. Creating the appearance that standards are only enforced for people you don’t know erodes trust and credibility and discourages participation, reinforcing adolescent clique behavior.
  5. Do not highlight (or provide) participant amenities like water, toilets, or dry firewood.
John Greenwood, Sea Captains Carousing in Suriname. Good times, no?

John Greenwood, Sea Captains Carousing in Suriname. Authentically bad behaviour.

For Participants

  1. Don’t bring your own lunch, water, or powder.
  2. Don’t follow the rules at a new event. Standards are for chumps. Text your friends while minding a rope line and acting as an interpreter.
  3. Get drunk. Who doesn’t love an inebriate around gunpowder? Safety, schmafety. Besides, drunkenness is authentic.
  4. Smoke cigarettes on the field. You can always hide your hand behind your back, next to your cartridge box…what can go wrong? The captain will never notice.
  5. Make critical comments about the public and other reenactors just within their hearing. Don’t smile.

For the Public

The Death of General Wolfe, Benjamin West. NGC

What, no dogs? The Death of General Wolfe, Benjamin West. NGC

  1. Bring a dog. Dogs love guns, drums, and cannons. “Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war,” right?
  2. Ride your bicycle through the crowd. Make disparaging comments about the crowd interrupting your ride.
  3. Touch things and people. Touch reenactors’ tools, weapons, clothes, children, food. Heck, use their tools. It’s not real, it’s history, so it has to be safe–right?
  4. Interrupt people answering your questions, or better yet, someone else’s questions, and answer yourself.
  5. Get drunk, especially on a hot, humid summer day or night.

Stop.

Breathe.

Think.

Then speak or act. Think about what you’re doing. Is it sensible? Is it kind? Is it how you would like to be treated? Does you behaviour foster a pleasant and welcoming environment?

If not, don’t do it.

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Frivolous Friday: A Feather Kerfluffle

22 Friday May 2015

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Events, Fail, Frivolous Friday, History, Living History, Reenacting, Research, Snark

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

18th century clothing, Costume, interpretation, millinery, Research, some snark

Miss Caroline Vernon by François-Xavier Vispré (c.1730 – London 1790). pastel on paper. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond.

I troll the interwebs in the fishing and not the under-the-bridge sense: there’s a lot to read out there. Still, I’ve kept one eye on the feather-and-flower kerfluffle that erupted in certain circles this week, but have been much more interested in documentation of one kind and another.

Miss Vernon is really my favorite image of feathers on hats, and I wish I could say that a) I have replicated this fabulous creation or b) that I have seen such a thing, but alas! I have not.

Still, scouring sundry repositories for tayloring manuals (more on that another time), I found this delightful broadside. We can’t use 1782 to document 1780, and no means of using any of these items is mentioned or implied. Still, there they are, those inflammatory terms: Feathers, Flowers.

1782 Broadside. Early American Imprints, Series 1, no. 45771  (filmed)

1782 Broadside. Early American Imprints, Series 1, no. 45771 (filmed)

To paraphrase Max, Let the wild rumpus continue.

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Frivolous Friday: A-Spalling Behaviour

08 Friday May 2015

Posted by kittycalash in Fail, Frivolous Friday, personal, Snark

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

19th century clothing, art, Clothing, common dress, Costume, fashion, movies, Mr. Turner, Museums, snark, some snark, style

Mr. Turner, out now on iTunes and elsewhere, won’t be for everyone: M’damsel isn’t treated very well– artists are, you know, often narcissistic, driven users– but the landscapes thrill.

We talk sometimes about going to the antique store in historical clothing and asking why our chattel is for sale. I toy with similar naughty thoughts about visiting historic house and other museums, but Mr Turner inspires a dream of a simpler pleasure: dressing in period clothes to visit a period gallery.

Classic Mr Turner in the salon

Possibly my companion would grunt as Turner does, but we might also unnerve guards by pointing walking sticks at salon-hung still lifes or reacting with disgust at the sight of an Impressionist work. (Might as well take it all the way.)

Everybody’s a critic

No takers yet for this diversion, which is just as well. I expect it would be a quick way to meet security and police staff if you didn’t coordinate with the museum/gallery in advance. Still: what a stunt. Someday I’ll pull it off.

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Smells Like Money: Must be Auction Season

30 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by kittycalash in Art Rant, Collecting, Snark

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

art, auctions, birds, dogs, ducks, material culture, porcelain, snark, Snarky Duck, some snark, Sotheby's, tureen

There’s nothing like a little frivolity to lighten your day when you’ve been pondering some really serious and stomach-churning topics. Hail, then, the arrival of the Sotheby’s catalog and the momentary dropping of all material culture pretenses.

This time, it’s Private Collections.  You say Private Collections, I say Disturbing and Hyper-Overpriced Gift Shop. But what does Snarky Duck say?

A Continental creamware duck tureen and cover.  Duck ways, no more hot soup, please.

A Continental creamware duck tureen and cover. Duck says, No soup for you.

Poor Strangled Parrot: I don’t think he can say much.

A Holitsch parrot-form jug and cover ca. 1760.

A Holitsch parrot-form jug and cover ca. 1760.

And these guys, described as playful dogs, look more like dyspeptic pugs to me.

A pair of Hochst fayence figures of seated pugs ca 1770.

A pair of Hochst fayence figures of seated pugs ca 1770.

It is amazing what people will make and buy (which delights me), and I’m certain that things I own would astonish and appall someone with different taste. But animal effigies always intrigue me, and (aside from Snarky Duck, our 19th century friend) figures like these could have graced the mantels and tables of the finest homes of the 19th century. It would have been a crowded and raucous world.

Here’s the whole catalog, should you care for some ormolu chairs or Aubusson drapes (which I did not know existed until today).

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

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