A Day in the Life of MY Dream Job - Margaret Hunter shop at Colonial Williamsburg

This Morning's Interview is with Abigail Cox

1.      Can you describe your working space.  Be as detailed as you like.

Ok, where to begin, first is that our larger overall working environment is on Duke of Gloucester St in the heart of the Historic Area of Colonial Williamsburg. We’re on the side of the city close to the Capitol and other trades sites, which results in an active part of town. The building itself is an original building dating from around the late 1730s. Though the building is original the interior had to be redone in the 1950s to look like an 18^th century millinery shop. They did a nice job, though the interior is based off of French millinery shops and not English millineries. We also question how much the shop would have looked like an apothecary inside as it was an apothecary shop in the 18^thcentury before it became a millinery shop.

The largest room is the front room which is our workspace and where the public visits. We are one of the few shops with one door for the public’s entry and exit, which gives us more privacy in the back of the shop, but can result in the front room being quite crowded at times. There are 5 full time employees in the shop, with two volunteers as of this moment. The number of volunteers fluctuates with the season. We split the shop down the middle with the tailors on one side of the shop and the milliners/mantua-makers on the other. Our work tables are situated right up against the very large south facing windows which is our source of light for the work that we do. We are dependent upon natural light to be able to work; so on very dark and dreary winter days sewing productivity can be minimal.

The tailors sit atop the work board, as was the practice during the 18^th century, and we as milliners and mantua-makers sit at our work board on backless stools or cozied into the window seat. Our work board is a bit higher than the rest of the counter that surrounds the rest of the shop, and part of this is so that way we are closer to eye contact level of the guests when they come in. This allows us, at times, to continue working while speaking with visitors without an uncomfortable height difference.

The walls of the shop are covered in shelves, boxes, drawers, and pegs to store and display our items and materials. The guests are able to get an idea of what a millinery shop would look like at that time, and get a taste of period shopping experiences (they stay on the public side of the U-shaped counter while we interpret, work, and display items from the private or employee side of the counter).

As for the back rooms, there is a storage/display room and an office on the first floor. The storage room has to be kept fairly tidy and historically accurate since it can be seen by the public. It also is where our fireplace is located, which we use on occasion, but not as regularly as other trade shops. The smaller office is where the tailors have their modern office space, books, fabric, clothing, and tool storage. It’s a tight squeeze to say the least.

Above stairs are more offices and our modern restroom. Both offices double as storage of fabric, clothing, tools, and storage. The larger office also holds the larger work table for cutting out of larger projects, meetings, and staff lunches. We also have a refrigerator, microwave, coffee maker, and toaster oven in the larger office, 2 desks, computer, and ironing board. To be frank, it feels like we’re busting out at the seams (pun intended) more often than not.

2.      What are the practices of your daily life?

We are open to the public between 9am-5pm 7 days a week, with Fri/Sat being only the 3 milliners/mantua-makers and Sun/Mon the tailors’ days. We show up before 9 am, some of us arrived dressed in our 18^th century clothing, while others come in modern wear and change at the shop. We write up an interpretive schedule for the day based off of who is working that day, what meetings are occurring, etc. We keep the schedule as even and balanced as possible. With the interpretive schedule set, we are able to configure the rest of our day around our speaking time. Usually we have sewing projects that are demanding our attention, but we are still a modern museum with modern day responsibilities, so there are always emails to write and meetings to schedule. We also fit in our research when we can amongst our other responsibilities and lunch too. Usually we head home between 5 and 5:30 every night.

3. What do you 'do'?

                We are a par to the Department of Historic Trades and Skills at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Our responsibility is to research, rediscover, practice, preserve, and educated the public on our respective trades. All but one of the shops in the department have an apprenticeship program where we have created an educational based employment opportunity where after a series of projects and research, the apprentices are able to graduate to journey(wo)men. Apprenticeships usually last between 4-7 years, and you are encouraged to stay on as a journey(wo)man after completing your apprenticeship.

I currently am about half way through my apprenticeship, which specifically means I have completed the millinery portion of my and am into mantua-making (dressmaking). My sewing projects revolve around my apprenticeship demands and the demands of the various projects and programs that the shop is involved in. Researching my trade and the objects of my trade is done through almost exclusively primary documentation, ranging from newspapers, magazines, books, original images, and garments. Occasionally, we will reference a Janet Arnold or Norah Waugh book to see how they have patterned original garments or skim their primary research that they’ve published in their secondary source.  We practice what many call “Reverse Archeology” or “Experimental Archeology” where the practice of making an object is the point of the study. We recreate items to better understand what they are, why they existed, who used them, and how they were made. Sometimes this means that we are producing some unusual pieces that spark a lot of questions, but the experimentation is what makes our shop so great and helps us understand the past in a much more comprehensive way. We are not here to make reproductions; we are here to understand two 18^th century trades that were extraordinarily popular as they were diverse.

Though our museum focuses on telling the story of Williamsburg, Virginia through the American Revolution, the trades department is a bit different. Our shop, in particular ranges in projects from the early 18^th century through the 1840s, but we do try and keep the 19^th century sewing above stairs and out of the public eye if we can help it, and it doesn’t happen very often. We interpret western fashion from roughly 1774 – 1782 in the shop, and the pieces on display all help tell that story. The clothing we make is not limited to Virginian dress either, as with the lack of primary resources that highlight Virginian women’s dress, we wouldn’t have that much to make. So we have a broader reach in our production, looking at clothing in the USA, England, France, and I’ve even taken a study trip to Sweden.  The variety of skills and techniques that we’ve seen from Western Women’s clothing in the 18^th century has raised a lot of questions for us, and by reaching out beyond our borders we are hoping to find the answers to better understand the women who practiced our trade, what they did the same and what they did differently.

4. What is the knowledge produced?

                To continue what I stated above, our goal is to better understand the trades of 18^th century millinery and mantua-making, and through the study of these trades gain a grounded and well-rounded understanding of 18^th century society and culture as a whole.  From a practical perspective, we also figure out how to make the variety of objects that were worn by our ancestors to such a degree that we are able to educate the public through our interpretation and hands-on workshops.

                De-bunking mythology is another goal of our shop. My personal research has been focused in 18^th century hairdressing and hair care, and a lot of mythology around hair hygiene I’ve been able to debunk through the careful study of primary documentation and experimental archeology. For example, the pomades and powders that were used in hair dressing did not ‘stink’ of bacon or mutton, but instead were cleaned of all animal scent and then heavily scented with essences and essential oils which results in clean smelling and fragrant hair.

5. How does it take shape in material form?

                It takes shape by the objects we make and the clothing we wear. All the objects that are displayed in our shop (that are textile/fashion related) we have made, by hand, in the same manner and techniques that were done in the period. We make the clothing we wear in the shop, and we are able to help others create their own 18^th century clothing through hands-on workshops where we teach the skills and techniques of the milliner and mantua-maker.

6. Are there problems with your space?

                Probably only that which can be expected; it’s too small at times for all of us, the public, and all of our things. With that being said though, there is nothing better than sitting at that work board on a brisk cold sunny morning with a warm cup of coffee looking out onto Duke of Gloucester St.

7. How does this affect your work/knowledge production?

                It’s the struggle of the trades person, regardless, I believe, of what shop you are in. Customer service comes first, and if that means putting down our project to answer a question, regardless of that project’s deadline, that is what you do as a Colonial Williamsburg interpreter. 18^th century milliners and mantua-makers could, and did, work in more private and quiet settings. So their productivity was no doubt larger than ours, but it’s just how the job is. Another issue is the ability to research as a result of staffing shortages or project demands. There is a lot of juggling that comes with this job, and one of the biggest challenges for a new apprentice to face is figuring out how to handle all the different demands and responsibilities of working in a trade shop. Though, I have to say, I am never, ever, bored.

8. What lead you to do the work you do?

                All of us who work in this shop will answer this question differently, but I am only going to speak in regards to myself in this case, so please keep that in mind when reading this. I qualify myself as a Dress Historian who makes the clothing she studies. I’m not a re-enactor nor am I a costumer. As an undergraduate studying Art History, History, and Theatre, I was and always had been very interested in historic clothing and fashion. Between my junior and senior years of undergrad I spent a summer working in the Margaret Hunter Millinery shop 4 days a week and 1 day a week with Linda Baumgarten the Head Curator of Dress and Textiles at Colonial Williamsburg. The hands-on and sort of trifecta approach (studying, making, wearing) to studying 18^th century dress in the millinery shop had a very strong draw for me as an academic. The practice of being able to make and wear the clothing I study has given me a deeply intimate knowledge of the clothing and a better understanding of the culture and its people. Working for Colonial Williamsburg, in my opinion, is the best place to study 18^th century women’s dress in the way I wanted to study it.

We are All ‘Super Slick Salesmen’: A life as a living historian in the retro-utopia, or, I have an amazing post-apocalyptic bug out team – probe on the MIT Media Lab

Most of the world today runs on ‘fixed-term contracts’ (Barbrook, 1995, p. 2). Long gone is the notion of staying in one job or company for an entire career. When I began my career as a historian, Mulroney had decimated the history staff at Parks Canada, and many of the community museums in Nova Scotia were only seasonal.  I knew early on that I needed to diversify my skills and always be ‘on the lookout’ for the next contract. There was no “guarantee of continued employment” (Barbrook, 1995, p. 2), there wasn’t even a guarantee of summer employment!  All that aside, for the most part, Nova Scotians have put their ‘big girl panites’ on and figured out how to live a meaningful life.  Like Europe, we understand the need “for an enlightened mixed economy” (Barbrook, 1995, p.8).  There is no job that is deemed ‘too menial’, in fact many of the people behind the counter at Tim Horton’s have degrees of higher learning, some of them multiple.  The running joke in my family has long been ‘Dr. Grant to the centre cutting table’ because to return to Nova Scotia may mean a return to working at Fabricville. 

So what’s a historian to do? 

In Robert Hassan’s article “The MIT Media Lab: techno dream factory or alienation as a way of life” he asks “what are some of the possible social, cultural and ontological consequences of ‘being digital’ within a hypermediated digital ecology of interconnectedness” (Hassan, 2003, p. 89)? Hassan tells us that the MIT Media Lab looks at ‘Sociable Media’ and how people percieve each other in a networked world, and the ‘Digital Life’ looks at connections between ‘bits, people and things in an online world’ (Hassan, 2003, p. 90). As I have mentioned in class before, part of my life is spent online interacting in online history communities. This is not really all that different from most people’s lives. Everyone has online communities that they frequent. What is a bit different for me, is that the online world is also my work world. “[T]he ‘real-time’of the online environment [has] become the ‘real-time’ of [my] everyday life” (Hassan, 2003, p. 90).  My peer-group has come to realize that we can use technology to create a space for working, sharing research, and networking with historians and museum sites all over the world.  We have found a space that is between the ‘good and evil’ of technology, in that we all use it, begrudgeonly for some, but that it can be a useful tool for us to develop the networks we need in order to remain in the history field (Hassan, 2003, p. 91). For many of us, dabbling in webpage development was just too cumbersome a thing to maintain. Facebook though, proved to be an easy interface to use. Add to this many blogging forums that we could publish in and hotlink to facebook, a network could be formed.  In a similar fashion to LaTour’s laboratory of a couple of weeks ago, we are able to read other’s research findings, share and collaborate on new articles, and be in a creative space together, even though we may physically be thousands of miles apart.  A cocktail party in our network would have to be done over skype, with each of us sitting in our own home offices, probably over coffee instead of alcoholic drinks. “Media has become critical in popularizing me as a person in the historical community” (Hassan, 2003, p. 92).

So my work life and personal life have become blurred into one.  My online prescence is strictly developed to provide ‘good press’ (cited in Hassan, 2003, p.93).  I am constantly reading about the eighteenth-century and its fashion, I am hoping to soon fully contribute to that discussion instead of just the occasional comment. My own trips to the past in the form of re-enactment are not only sales trips in that I am still making clothing for interpreters, but also research and networking trips as I learn of new pieces of extant clothing that I will want to study for the disertation. In both instances, I have to be ‘on my game’.  Unfortunately though, despite my offering a ‘commercially viable product’ (Hassan, 2003, p. 93), I am not being paid unless I have provided an article of clothing as part of the exchange.  I am still being paid for what I do, not for what I know, and that tends to relate to a lower dollar amount.  Hassan tells us that “ICTs have flooded the lives of many within the advanced economies, that it is increasingly possible to speak of life being conducted within an information environment, an informational ecology” (cited in Hassan, 2003, p.95). How to earn a living from this ‘interconnectiveness’ will be the question on many historians lips before too much longer.

I will admit that I am extremely privledged to be who I am in this world, an historian who is not employed in the traditional sense, a graduate student.  If it were not for my husband’s steady job, neither of these parts of my life would happen.  I would be that struggling, retail sales associate at Fabricville, cutting your fabric, asking you what you are making, and if you need thread (questions we all have to ask, not that we are interested).  I would not be sitting here at the computer thinking philosophical thoughts about ‘interconnectiveness’, I’d be worried about paying rent and buying groceries.  These two things are still in the back of my mind though, because I have been that retail sales associate.  And so this past week, along side my philosophical ramblings, I have been carrying out a time honoured tradion of processing the Fall harvest for consumption during the winter months.  Alongside my friends in other parts of New England and the Maritimes, I have been making pickled veg, filling my freezer with other freezable vegetables and meats.  If you live in an area where there are farms and farmers, food tends to be cheaper right now than any other time of the year.  Also, since I have just received my term disbursement cheque, I have money.  Money that was almost entirely spent on food for the winter months.  Other friends of mine are processing their flock of chickens and turkeys, others still have gardens full that need to be ‘put up’ for the winter.  Next summer, I too will have a garden full of things that we can eat.  This summer was a write-off, as we did not move here until mid August, instead of the first of June as we had originally intended.  I have other friends who are now finishing up their summer employment and are getting geared up to begin Winter projects for themselves, or to suplement their income producing items for museums trying to use up budgetary money before the end of March.

By now, you will have noticed that I haven’t cited the Brand reading.  Having tried to obtain a copy of the book to read, I learned that it is not available as an ebook (technology), nor, despite there being several copies available, is it available for shipping until after christmas, unless I sign up for a costly Amazon shipping package that I will never use.  In the meantime, I have been reading about the MIT media lab through other sources.  I have been thinking about technology and how it was supposed to make our lives so much easier.  One would think that by now, most books of this sort would be available as ebooks.  My mum devours fiction now only as ebooks or audio books, which saves our bookshelves for books on art and topics that we are constantly researching.  And then I think about what would happen without technology (there was a recent fiction novel about a post technology state and how re-enactors were able to build a new society, it was the SCA, but the skills are similar).  I still wouldn’t be able to read an ebook entitled The Media Lab:Inventing the Future at MIT.  I have been thinking about the community I have become a part of through the internet.  How I would miss those friendships that I have developed.  Hassan informs us that the time-space compression that technology provides was part of the acceleration of modernity, centrally connected to capitalist development.  He explains that tech has changed the lives of many people in profound ways on a macro level (Hassan, 2003, p. 102).  But what of the micro level?  My own life would change without technology, certainly.  I would have to think harder about the micro of daily life.  How important a good cooking fire is; that hot water is a chore and a blessing when it doesn’t come from the tap.  But then I think of the things that I know how to do, the knowledge that has been passed down to me from my parents and grandparents, the knowledge shared amoungst my peers.  Daily life would be harder, but livable.

Especially if we up and moved again, to be closer to our friends, our post-apocalyptic bug out team. 

Works Cited

Hassan, R. (2003). The MIT Media Lab: techno dream factory or alienation as a way of life. Media, Culture and Society, 87-106.

Richard Barbrook, A. C. (1995). The Californian Ideology. Mute, 1-8.

Works Not Cited

Brand, Stewart. The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT. New York: Viking Penguin, 1987. Chapters 1, 6, 9, 13.

Post Script

Last week I wrote a whole other probe about tech and how I live my life with tech, but still do a lot of non-traditional, low tech things at this time of year.  That my life is a balance of tech vs. non-tech, leaning towards the non-tech.  I was missing the last readings, from the Brand book though, and even commented on how my inability to find those readings ticked me off.  This is why…

Thursday, before class, I went in to the Library and found a hard copy of the book.  Yes, I could have done this right from the beginning, but I was told ‘just go on to google docs and look for the readings’.  Having done that, I really could not find the readings.  Further searches informed me that there was ‘no electronic format’ of this book, but that I could buy it from Amazon for the low-low price of one cent.  I thought, ok, for one cent, that, even with shipping costs wouldn’t blow my budget.  I could do this.  I wanted a hard copy, printed out anyway, so that I could make my comments in the margins and highlight the hell out of it.  You really can’t do that with a library book, the librarians kinda frown on it.  The problem was, with regular shipping, the book wouldn’t get to me until February, unless I bought into Amazon’s expensive ‘free’ shipping program, Prime.  I could get six months free trial and then cancel without being charged.  Well two of my friends have fallen for this trick and have been charged, and have had a difficult time getting out of the contract, so I was hesitant…and so, I went to the library.

The thing is though, this book is about tech that was being developed 30 years ago.  Think about that.  Thirty years ago, I had no idea what the internet was.  No idea what email, or list serves, or even really what a computer could do.  Thirty years ago, I had just written my first computer program, one that made a turtle slowly walk across a bar of music that made the notes play as he passed over them.  This was four years before I would know about something called the intranet, four years before my family would own ANY kind of modern tech.  Hell, we had only just gotten a microwave!

As I have told you before, I spend a good part of my day on the internet, on social media, on J-stor, on youtube.  A lot of my social life is there, as my friends are far flung, not only in Nova Scotia, but in the US, out west, in the UK, Germany.  It makes me feel a little less alone.  I think J-stor is one of the very best inventions ever, and I am so happy that I will still have access to it, long after I leave Concordia. 

Youtube has become my television.  I have separated this one out because I think it’s as important as the fact that I couldn’t get the Brand book in electronic format.  Brand talks a lot about tech in the book, tech that has been developed in my lifetime.  Things that have caused me to have an easier life.  It started with the VCR, because at about that same time, my migraines started to get really bad, and I began noticing that I couldn’t watch movies in the theatre any longer without coming away violently ill.  We had a small screen TV at home, and my dad would rent a VCR on the weekends and a bunch of movies and we would have a great time, all curled up in my mum’s room until long into the evening.  We watched all the classics, concluding each weekend with another great Cheech and Chong movie.  Yes, my parents were/are weird, and I love them for it.  We had a great video store at home, whose staff were into some ‘other than normal Hollywood’ stuff.  I became a great fan of stuff produced in the UK and Europe.  The plots were often better developed, and the scenography ‘quieter’ on the eyes.  Now, I watch a lot of those films on Youtube.  The problem with Youtube isn’t the interface really.  That is really easy to use, and the search engine’s great, and the fact that it’s algorithm remembers me is really not creepy to me, and has been helpful in finding things for me to watch that I wouldn’t know to search for, like Timeteam.  The problem is that I have to wait for other people to upload the programs I would like to watch to Youtube.  I, living in Canada, do not have access to the programming of the BBC.  It is ‘blacked out’ here.  We have BBC Canada, but often it is just a rehashing of programs produced here in Canada, like Holmes’ and Baumler’s renovation programs.  Not the BBC at all.

Timeteam

is a UK based show where a team of archaeologists have two days to go into a site and do an archaeological survey.  The stuff they find is fascinating.  If the site is rich, then there may be follow-up digs on the site at a later date.  All the seasons are there, on youtube for us to watch.  I have gotten many of my friends hooked on the series.  Youtube is also where I ‘met’ Ruth Goodman, and her team of living historians doing a job that I could only dream about, actually living history for a period of time, in a historical place.

Tales From the Green Valley

Living history allows me to have a better understanding of how historical clothing works.  In some of the historic sites that I have worked, we have been able to do experiments on clothing, noting wear patterns, how clothing is changed by the wearing, and how the body is changed by the clothing worn.  It then helps me to understand what I am looking at when examining an extant garment.  I can understand if it has been altered, and often when, and for what purpose.  I have also come to the understanding that a lot of the myths being spread about clothing in our grandparent’s time and before are truly that, myths.

But let me get back to Youtube, and technology…

The UK is big into Living History.  I capitalize it on purpose, to try and explain how big it is in the UK.  Their museum system is almost entirely federally funded.  And they are swimming in historic sites.  It is so important that the BBC has an entire channel devoted to historical stuff, and I’m not talking about Ice Road Truckers or ‘Alien’ anything here, actual HISTORY!  And so these shows are being produced, and people watch them, and they grow to like their own history.  Here in Canada, we get stuff from the US, which by and large is dramatically plotless, and uses far too much special effects and flashy filming techniques to make the viewer think they are getting something new and fabulous.

I have been home sick this week.  I have been watching (listening to, really) a lot of home improvement shows.  I am bored, but cannot stay awake long enough to continue with my readings.  It is really hard to concentrate on stuff you want to write about when you lose your place on the page twelve times before the end of it.  I can watch a home improvement show and it really doesn’t matter who the host is, I can see the problems coming a mile away with the shallow plot techniques and know how the show will end, in case of napping.  Sitting at my computer to watch Youtube is problematic when sick, it is cold outside of bed, and uncomfortable sitting in my desk chair all day.  And yes, in case you haven’t realized it yet, my bedroom TV is still a dumb TV, and Pierre detests it when you set a laptop on the bed…he is a techie.

I have brought you on this quick rant because by now, thirty years after the Brand book was written, I figured that I would just be able to watch anything I wanted to watch (produced anywhere in the world), when I wanted to watch it, on just about any surface in my home.  Or maybe not on a surface at all, that TV would be like Princess Leia’s hologram from Star Wars.  That I would be able to explore the space all around the ‘program’, looking to see what I wanted to see, from the comfort of my own home, from bed when I am sick.  Thirty years in though, I am still stuck watching a lot of bad TV from the United States, which now, Pierre tapes and we watch when I can handle the flashing for a period of time…which lately has been growing shorter and shorter, along with the list of programs I can handle both the flashy filming, and the seriously bad plotlines. 

Works Cited

Brand, Stewart. The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT. New York: Viking Penguin, 1987. Chapters 1, 6, 9, 13.

A selfie of my loom

My loom is like a housewife’s ill-used treadmill.  It sits behind me in my office/studio beckoning me to ‘work’, to weave something, anything!  Instead, at this point in my life I really need to read stuff, write things.  My work table doesn’t hold fabric, waiting to be made into a suit.  No.  It holds collated readings for the grant proposal.  Readings for probes.  More readings for the paper I must write for the end of the term.  The things is though, I’d rather do anything but write.  And so, like a good academic, I have perfected the act of procrastination.  Oh the ways that I can procrastinate, even though I know that if I would just sit here and write, there would be time left in the day to create. By the way, this is my loom’s first ever ‘selfie’, and the second ever ‘selfie’ of myself.  I’m not usually one for modern technology.

For this probe, I am going to talk about weaving.  This had been my plan since first reading the abstracts for the readings for this week.  I weave to develop a better understanding of how people in the 18thC lived.  I weave to firmly grasp how expensive clothing is, so different from what we see today.  Yesterday I went out and spent 200$ and bought two pair of jeans, four T-shirts and four packages of underwear.  Two Hundred dollars; that was all it cost for all those clothes.  That is not the real and true cost of those items of clothing.  In fact, if we were to harvest the fibres, process them, spin them, weave or knit the cloth, then make the garments, we would have a better understanding of the true cost of the clothes that we wear.  And we would be outraged.  But, back to weaving.

This is a weaving pattern.  The main body of the pattern gives you a diagram of how the weave structure will look as you are weaving.  The pattern in the cloth.  There are many different varieties of weave structures that will give you different patterns in the cloth, and are used for different reasons.  The jeans we wear are a twill weave.  Twill stretches a bit and so makes our jeans more comfortable to wear, even if they don’t also have a stretchable fibre in them.  Dish cloths tend to be woven in a variation of the twill that produces a waffle-like effect in the cloth.  This allows for better containment of soap, and more scrubability.  Dress shirts are woven with a plain weave structure.  This makes ironing them easier and allows for a crisper finish.

The top bar of the pattern tells you how to thread the loom to achieve the pattern.  The top right hand corner tells you how to tie-up the foot pedals to the loom.  The bar that runs down the right hand side of the pattern tells you how to weave, giving you which pedals to press down with each step.  This text allows weavers of many generations to understand and recreate cloth that may have been first woven hundreds of years ago.  The structure of a weaving pattern has not changed in a very long time.

My loom is called a ‘colonial box loom’.  It is a modern loom based on the style of looms that would have been created and used in the 18^th century.  My loom came to me in a very interesting way.  This may seem like a bit of a side-bar, but is relevant to the story.  Two years ago, I was able to spend a summer with the Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design.  During that summer residency, I had full access to their weaving studio.  My project was to recreate linen textiles from the 18^th century.  I had never woven with linen before, and there were some things I wanted to create for our re-enacting kit.  Among these projects were dish cloths and towels, chair strapping, a tablecloth, and a length of shirt cloth.  The shirt cloth was to be the major project, with the others being made up as time allowed.  The shirt cloth yardage was supposed to be about 15 metres long, enough for several shirts and some aprons.  Each of these textiles were based on historical weave patterns from a book written in the late 18^th century, and the check pattern for the shirt cloth was based on a sample in the MET museum in Boston.

I began on July 1^st.  It took a week to wind off the threads for the warp of the shirt.  The warp threads run the length of the cloth, and are what is threaded through the loom.  As a weaver winds the warp threads on the warping mill, he/she counts off the pattern of the weave structure.  I had to first determine how wide I wanted the cloth to be, and then how many threads I wanted to use, and in what order, colour-wise.  This idea was then counted off while I wound the warp so that I would have a consistent pattern across the cloth, and would have enough threads to make the desired width.

https://www.facebook.com/pierre.longtin/videos/10151728034619669/

This shirt warp took over a month to actually wind on to the back beam of the loom, ready to weave.  The warp was wide, 30 inches.  Normally it takes two of us to get a warp on to the loom so that I can thread it.  This warp took three of us.  I had to wait for pairs of friends to be willing and able to come into the studio with me.  (In the meantime, I continued on with some of the other projects that I had on the go.)  Also, the linen was very hairy thread, and liked to catch itself on the other threads, making large snarls.  To ‘condition’ the threads to ease in this problem, I starched the threads once I took them off the warping mill.  I then continuously sprayed the threads with even more starch as we wound the warp on the loom.  Little did I know that the threads drying out would be a major issue (problem #1), and that my starching may have caused yet another issue (problem #2).

We finally got the warp on the loom and I began to thread.  This took me two solid days of work. The warp was 30 inches wide and there were roughly 20 threads per inch. Roughly 600 threads to thread into the heddle eyes. And then threading 600 threads through the reeds.  I really do enjoy this part of the weaving process.  I put a Latin mass on my iPod and completely get into the zone of hanging in my loom, threading things.  I really do hang inside the loom.  The front bar comes off, and I get a chair inside as closely as I can to the heddles, and then I hang my arms over the beater bar and thread.  It is tiring though, and hard on the body.

When I finally got everything ready to go, I decided to start fresh the next morning.

I usually start working very early in the morning, even when working in a studio outside my home.  During this residency, I would start about 7am.  The centre itself would open about 830am, with the public starting to come in to visit about 9am.

And so I go into the studio, get settled in for the day, sit down and begin to weave.  I start with a really heavy thread.  This is done to check the tension, and also to allow for a nice strong start to the weave.  I may have thrown about five weft threads when I noticed that my tension was getting worse, not better.  In fact, it was reaching catastrophic failure.  WTH? I got up and then I noticed the back of the loom, where 15 metres of threads were at one time all nicely wound on the back beam.  The threads that had been so lovely the night before had become a snarled mess.  They slid off the sides of the coil of threads (problem #3), and were just a mess of thread on the back of the loom.

And here is where I was really glad that I was alone in the studio.  The air turned blue as I cursed that warp in three languages and threw an epic temper tantrum.  EPIC, I tell you, with tears and everything.  I was still having a good cry, pulling the warp back off the back of the loom when a tourist walked in and said hello.  He took one look at me and understood what was going on.  He told me that his wife was a weaver, and that when she had this happen to her, he would disappear off to the pub until she called and told him it was safe for him to return.  My first angel walked into my residency.  This lady told me what was happening, told me it could be fixed, and then spent a good amount of time with me helping to get the warp off the loom without me cutting it to shreds.  She told me how to fix problem #3.  That weekend, my husband Pierre, friend Garth, and I got the warp back on the loom.  I could finally weave.

This was the first of August.  I had a little over a month left to go on my residency and far too much to accomplish.  I set to weaving.  This shirt warp proved to be difficult the entire time.  I had to continually starch the warp as I wove.  I got into a routine of spraying the warp with starch, while I waited for it to dry just enough, I would knit, then when I hit the sweet spot of dampness, I would weave like a fiend until the warp got too dry. Spray. Knit. Weave. Repeat.  During the month of August, I wove 6 metres of shirt warp, knit a pair of stockings and a pair of 18^th century ladies mitts.  My other weaving projects I finished up in July, thank goodness.

My second angel was also a weaver who came into the studio one morning and sat with me for a good part of the day, talking about historical textiles and clothing.  She was on her was to the UK to take part in an experimental archaeology conference, meeting a friend who had just done what I was doing.  Her friend was recreating Norse textiles, a process far more difficult than what I was undertaking, but close.  This new weaver angle asked why I was working at the centre.  Did I not have a studio at home?  I told her that no, I did not have a loom of my own.  She told me that once she was back in Canada she would email me.  She had some things she’d like to discuss with me, one of which was a loom.

The Labour Day weekend there was an encampment at the Halifax Citadel.  I spent the entire weekend at the encampment, in historic dress, constructing historical clothing.  That weekend I got most of one shirt made.  I finished it up on the Tuesday at home, and Tuesday evening, with great hesitation, I put the shirt in the wash.  With so much starch, the shirt felt as if it were made of cardboard.  I had to mount my portion of the final exhibit on Wednesday for the opening on Thursday night.  I figured at that point, if the linen completely self-destructed in the wash, I’d have a fun story to tell during the opening.  The shirt survived the wash though, and the exhibit was a success.  It was the very first time any of my work had been placed in a gallery exhibit.  I was excited and happy with my work.

At this point, I realize that this has become a wordy post.  There are things that I needed to tell you though, so that the problems could be discussed fully.  I’ll start by telling you that at the beginning, I wove both dish towelling and dish cloths.  They were woven using the same warp, the same threading of the loom.  I changed the weave structure of the cloth by changing how I tied-up my pedals underneath the loom, and the steps I took to weave.  So if looking at the pattern of the weave, the top bar was the same for both types of cloth.  What changed was the top right hand corner, and the bar along the right hand side.  This made the difference between a waffle pattern for the dish cloths, and a bird’s eye twill for the towelling.  This project went perfectly from start to finish.  My chair strapping also went perfectly.  The tablecloth didn’t make it past winding the warp on the back of the loom because this is where things started to go wrong with my shirt warp.  In all, I had four looms on the go that summer.

And so the shirt warp.  Going back to problem #1, you may notice that the threads were drying out.  This was due to the fact that I was working in an air conditioned space.  A space where I could not turn the air conditioning off.  Air conditioning works by drawing the moisture out of the air.  It also drew the moisture out of my threads.  Problem #2, my having to constantly starch the thread lead to there being far too much starch on the thread.  This lead to the cardboard quality of the fabric, but also may have, most likely had, contributed to the looseness of the weave structure.  No matter how much I beat the weft threads into the course before, I could not get the fabric to weave tightly enough.  The resulting fabric has a characteristic of cheesecloth, only really heavy cheesecloth.  Reducing the size of the weft threads might help negate this issue. I am planning to try with the remainder of the shirt warp, once I get back to weaving again.

Problem #3 came from how I was taught to wind a warp on to the back beam of a loom.  I was taught to use paper between each course of winding, to separate the threads.  The studio used cardboard, which was waffled in the middle.  This waffling lead to the cardboard collapsing, which I had learned on another warp, and so with the shirt warp, I went back to paper.  Because the warp was so long, and so wide, the paper could not handle the task of keeping the threads neat and tidy.  My shirt warp slid off the edges of the paper.  Angel #1 told me that I should be using sticks to separate the warp.  That wood will not collapse, and will hold the threads properly.  The studio was full of sticks, as you use pairs of them to keep threads separate in the back of the heddle harnesses.

Angel #2 returned from the UK and did email me.  It turns out that she was a sheep farmer, and a weaver.  When she bought her current farm, she found an older model, colonial box loom from LeClerc.  She had several looms already, and would I like to have this loom?  My family and I drove up to her farm, spending the afternoon with her before bringing my loom home to Halifax.  While there I learned about the sheep she bred.  How those heritage breed sheep were black when they were young, and then as they got older, they turned white.  This would start me thinking about what I had learned about Norse clothing years before.  I also learned that she has waste warps on her looms, that run from the back beam through the heddles and reeds, and that she ties her warp threads to these waste threads to making threading much faster.  Since most of what she weaves is similar in threading, she just reused the waste threads over and over again.  Each loom had a different threading.

That winter, Ross Farm museum had a flax production day.  Garth and my family decided we needed to attend.  We learned about how flax is grown, harvested and processed into fibres and then spun into linen thread.  Garth and I both were able to spin for a bit, and I learned that I could get a far finer thread with my very limited background in spinning than I ever could buy. 

This trip also got me thinking about the ‘when’ of how fibres are processed, and how this may influence textile production.  When you really begin to think about the ‘when’ of things, it starts to make sense how the problems arose in my own production.  Linen is harvested in the Fall, it is then laid out to basically rot in the sun and the rain, separating the fibres from the reed it grew as.  These fibres are then spun in the early winter months, and fabric can be woven in the wettest period of our year in Nova Scotia, the late winter.  Sheep are sheared in the spring, and the fibres are spun then and weaving this fibre may happen in the late spring, when the weather begins to dry up, but it is still not hot.  Summer months are for sowing, caring for and harvesting crops.  There is usually not enough time in the day to be spinning or weaving cloth, but there may be time to sew clothing.  In fact, the summer months are my most favourite times to sew, as my hands stay nice and warm, making it easier to hold the needle.

The time of year, coupled with the problem of the air conditioning made for an uncomfortable summer of textile production for me.  I knew how to weave.  I knew how to reproduce the patterns from the historical text.  Until I encountered the issues that I had with the shirt warp though, I did not fully grasp all of the concepts of historical textile production.  The difference between the “knowing how’ and ‘knowing that’; skill and knowledge going their separate ways” (Kramer and Bredekamp, 2013, p. 26).  In the Siegert article, the author tells us that ‘cultural techniques always have to take account of what they exclude” (Siegert, 2013, p. 62).  There was a lot that was not taken into account with the historical text, the least of which was the assumption that I would have had a firm enough background in weaving to know that I should not be weaving in the hot or dry conditions.  I am now a firm believer in the importance of practice based research, in that I would not have fully understood the research I had undertaken to that point if I had not taken into consideration the daily practices of farming and producing textiles myself.  I will never again have air conditioning in my studio.  I will be mindful of the tasks I complete and the time of year.  In the future, I also hope to grow my own flax and produce my own threads to weave with, so that I may have a better understanding of how much clothing is ‘worth’.  That first shirt project was meant to study the production of cloth into shirt, and then how long that shirt would last through wearing.  I know now, that the shirt will not last as long as a more tightly woven cloth would.  The looseness of the weave structure is already producing stress points that will contribute to the wearing out of the shirt.  We will see if I can get a tighter weave structure out or future attempts with the remaining warp threads.  I hope so.

Works Cited

Bredekamp, S. K. (2013). Culture, Technology, Cultural Techniques - Moving Beyond Text1. Theory Culture Society, 20-29.

Siegert, B. (2013). Cultural Techniques: Or the End of the Intellectual Postwar Era in German Media Theory. Theory, Culture and Society, 48-65.

Sterne, J. (2003). Bourdieu, Technique and Technology. Cultural Studies, 367-389.