Sensory Overload: a Living Historian Steps back in Time

My timing was off on the way to class this evening. I entered the metro just as the wall of end of day travellers hit the top of the stairs. I stopped next to the wall and waited for them to pass, but it was too late, I was already feeling the effects. The grey was closing in. I’m getting a migraine.

It’s early morning, the day is cool so far, and really bright.  The harbour smells fresh, so the tide must have just come in. The waterfront is quiet, people walking to work, walking their dogs. I go into the locker-room and get dressed for the day. I am working in the Robertson’s Store, Ship Chandlery for the day. It will be quiet too, separated from the museum and yet an integral piece of the history of the waterfront. It actually existed, closed in the early twentieth-century, and fully donated to the museum. I am wearing the clothing of the early Great War. My corset is snug, but not constricting. It is not what is annoying about the outfit, not what is oppressive about the period. It gives my body a smooth appearance and supports my clothing, that is all. I have to take baby steps when I am dressed in this period’s clothes. My stride is restricted, I am wearing a hobbled skirt.  The hem at my ankles is very narrow, I have no kick pleat. I prepare for my day. I take the hand crank out and lower the awning on the front of the store so that it stays somewhat cool inside on this August day. I am careful not to raise my hands too far over my head, so that I’m not having to readjust my blouse when I am finished. Take my time. At the end of the day, Pierre notes that my eau du rope cologne is especially strong, that I must have been working in the store. He loves the scent of hemp rope and floor oil that permeates my skin and hair on a warm day. He is a sailor after all.

It has been a long day. It is September 11^th, and all hands are in costume. We have several cruise ships in the harbour. One of the boys runs down the demi-ditch and skids to a halt just shy of my door. He runs back in, feather bonnet askew. Have you heard, he yells. The Trade centre has been bombed. And just as quickly, he disappears out my door again. I’m not usually in costume, just special events and in the off season. At the Citadel, I am in charge of looking after about a hundred other people in historical dress.  Today though, I was dressed in the half hour and on the parade square. Dressing so quickly, my stays aren’t quite sitting right, I think I missed an eyelet or something. Ugh, I’ll deal. These tourists don’t know yet, what has happened to their country. I grab the box of tissues and bring it upstairs. In Victorian dress, I am large and imposing. Much like the soldiers, we stand out in the crowd of tourists pouring through the sally port.

Again, early morning. I lay in bed listening to the fog horn in the distance. The guys have the fire started, despite the damp, and are making coffee. I am going to learn how to make lace today. We are in my favourite place on earth, Louisbourg. I get up and slowly get dressed. My stays are a bit more constricting in the eighteenth-century than they are in other time periods, they hug a bit tighter. I have full range of movement in my eighteenth-century clothing though, and I stand in ballet’s first position. I am straight, my shoulder blades are slightly pulled back, my arms rest on my side hoops, palms up. My hoops have a sprung reed though, and its point digs into my leg when I wear them. I must remember to put my extra petticoat on first, to keep that point from nagging me. I have to concentrate today.

This time of year is sometimes lonely for a living historian. We need to deal with modern life far too much. Museum work is often seasonal, living history in the summer, for the tourists, mending and research in the winter months to prepare for new programing next summer. Little things will take you back to the moments of history, Le Fumoir at the grocery store, smoking hams for the customers, stitching eyelets on your new waistcoat, thinking of Christmas presents that you really should get started on so that they are finished in time to mail out. Living history, for me, is all about the senses. The smell of wood smoke, the scuff of hobnailed shoes on gravel streets. The click, clack of the loom as it creates the cloth, the young man practicing tin whistle outside the window, the sound of the noon gun, or hourly chime of the bells at the church. The senses are an intimate part of how I understand history, the way my body moves in the different period’s clothing, how what is first expected, is not the oppressive thing about what I’m wearing. When I am stressed in my modern life, it helps to imagine those fragments of sense to get me through the day. It really is too bad that someone hasn’t actually made Eau du Rope, or Eau du Woodsmoke perfume, I bet it would be a hit amoungst living historians

You can’t afford to shop anywhere but Walmart. I ask if we, As a Society, can truly afford Walmart?

I am often asked why I don’t ‘go into business’ selling my clothes.  These questions arise more often just after I have finished a collection for a school project, or have completed a new historical outfit.  They are often prefaced by the compliment that my work is so good, I could make good money at it.  Then I ask what people would pay for the skirt I’m wearing, and inevitably they come up short.

So let’s break down the cost of the skirt I am wearing right this moment.  It was designed as part of my MA thesis collection and is based on research on Vivienne Westwood’s Bondage wear, an integral part of the early Punk scene in the UK. The denim fabric cost 15$/metre, and there is about a metre in the skirt, if I cut very carefully. Then there is about another 20$ worth of notions; the buckles, vintage buttons, waistband tape, zipper, hem tape, thread. The skirt itself took two days to sew. If I was to charge just 10$/hour, that’s 160$. So the skirt cost, at minimum, almost 200$.  Questions arise in my mind when I lay out the figures like this. First one is that I am worth far more than just 10$/hour. I have a Master’s degree and almost 30 years of experience. And so I ask how much money the person asking for this skirt makes in their job? How about their Dad? What should a person earn who has a Master’s degree and 30 years’ experience?

And then, what would Walmart charge for a denim skirt?

Cotton is one of the most expensive fibres to process, both financially, but also expensive for the environment. The amount of pesticides used on cotton fields would make any hipster vomit at the idea. It is often produced in Third World countries where environmental concerns are non-existent, so who cares about the environment, or the farmer? Farmers of cotton live with this every day, and they only earn pennies for the cotton crops they produce. Yes, pennies. The cotton crop is then sent to another Third World country for processing. Indigo in its natural form is too expensive, so synthetic indigo is used for dying cotton denim.  The excess dye is often dumped into the local water source to be taken ‘away’. The processors are also often only paid pennies for the cloth they have produced. That processing includes scrubbers, dyers, weavers, and finishers, before the fabric is ready to be cut into pieces to be made into clothing. The finished fabric is then sent to Bangladesh to be made into jeans and other denim clothes. The film we are currently watching, The Last Train, is an older film.  Manufacturers are now sending contracts to Bangladesh because the work can be done even cheaper, and yes, the labour and environmental laws are non-existent. The machine operators who construct our clothes are paid by the piece, usually fractions of cents per seam.  They sit at sewing machines all day and sew one seam of the garment, often for years, one. Seam. This works out to roughly 10$/month in salary. Then when the cost of their meals and housing is deducted from that wage, you get the drift. Garment workers in Bangladesh cannot afford the clothes they create, they don’t earn enough money. All the clothes they make are sent to western markets, where we buy them at Walmart, Forever 21, H&M, for rock bottom prices. And I am not even going to dig into how little sales associates are paid to work in those stores and sell you those clothes.

The clothes we buy are what is known as ‘Fast Fashion’. High turnover of styles in stores feeds an appetite for more. Our clothes are only supposed to last 10 weeks before we are expected to throw them away because they have become too worn out, or too out of fashion. Often times, North Americans will only wear an item of clothing once before it goes into the trash, or sent to the second hand market. Fashion is the second dirtiest industry in the world, second only to oil. Think about that for a second.

There is an internet full of articles on the subject of fast fashion, I’ll give you a quick link to a good one here http://jcooper.co.uk/fast-fashion-toxic-facts/ to start you off. There are far too many reasons to dwell on why I don’t ‘go into business’ and sell my clothes, but the main reason is that we’ve been conditioned to think we can only afford fast fashion, and so, you cannot afford me.

And then I ask again, can we really afford Walmart?

Facebook as Panopticon: I am not doing well. Do you care? Or am I self disciplining?

Friday, 21 October 2016, 7:23 AM

 

When I was young, government surveillance was something out of post-apocalyptic novels like 1984. Something that happened beyond the iron curtain, in the Soviet Union. Something scary, best to be avoided. Surveillance here in the West started innocently enough, bar codes being scanned at the grocery store so that the store could keep track of inventory through their point of sale system and so could ensure that the products we liked to buy would be on the shelves. Then came airmiles, so that the industry could keep track of our purchases...
Here we are in 2016, and our whole lives are under surveillance.  Cameras on the street catch us walking through the city in our daily lives, 'point cards' are the thing taking up the most amount of space in our wallets. The wildly successful TV show 'Person of Interest' has just finished up a run of five seasons about how our lives are under constant surveillance, and how we willingly let that happen.
But how did we let that happen? When did government surveillance stop being a thing to be feared, and started being a thing we bought into?  You cannot say that it was 9/11, because we were on that path long before then. There is not a waking moment when my son does not have his smart phone in his hand, checking social media.  He laughs at me, as I rarely know where my phone is, let alone if it has a charge left in the battery. His entire world is in his phone.  My grandchildren are the same, constantly asking for the phone to play with.  They cannot build simple wooden block structures, but at 5 and 3, both can find their way to their favourite programs on YouTube from a seemingly locked phone.
While I am not the most technically savvy person, my 'life' revolves around social media.  Most of my friends and peers are in far flung places around the world. We spend 'morning' coffee together, sharing ideas, talking about our lives, discussing the latest research project, editing each others papers for publication in journals. I'm also able to watch their kids grow up alongside my own. Our lives are online.
We often self edit what we say on Facebook though, what do we think our friends can handle as far as information about our daily lives. How are we doing really? One can put up a brave face, or just stay in the shadows, lurking through a rough spot. Nobody will know, because they can't see our faces on a daily basis, they only see the carefully composed selfies. Do our friends really 'know' us?
I know I share far too much on social media.  There are times when I feel as if I am shouting into the wind. I talk about the things that I wish other people would talk about, so that I would know that I am not alone in how I feel about grad school, about academia. This term, I have canned my way through the stress I have been under, 40lbs of beets one weekend, 20 lbs of apples another. Reading my friends status updates and blog entries for school have lead me to suspect that many of my friends are feeling the same way, as they too are processing far too much food for one winter, for one person. Doing something tangible and productive when the words just will not flow. We are all skirting around the real issues we are dealing with, self disciplining our Facebook pages to show the world that we are doing well.  But are we really?

Photographic Evidence: Dating Historical Photographs

What happens when you think you’ve found that key piece of information that proves your theory, and it turns out to be not what you had first expected? Often times, dress historians are asked to date photographs. The person doing the asking often has a preconceived idea of who is in the photo, and also often what year it was taken based on family ‘history’. Often times, those preconceived notions are misguided, and we have to tell them that they are wrong about the photo.

Case study: “Skutching Flax, Pictou County 1847”

novastory.ca/cdm/singleitem/collection/phps/id/1699/rec/2

Pictou Historical Society

As you can see, at some point in the photograph’s life, someone added the date and label to the photograph. When catalogued, the registrar added this date and description to the catalogue file for the photo. Straight forward, yes? Well, no, not really. What first stood out to me was the appearance of the photo.  It may be a digital image of the original photo, but there are tell-tale signs to question the original dating. Photographic imaging in 1847 was carried out through the daguerreotype process.  This produced an image on a glass negative and is printed on metal, which, even when digitally copied, still resembles a glass photo printed on metal.  The photo above did not resemble this process, rather it resembled a photograph printed on paper. I then looked more closely at the image itself.

In Gilliam Rose’s article, she quotes Joan Schwartz arguing that “photographs are complicit with particular ‘visual agendas’ that they should be seen as ‘social constructs capable of performing ideological work” (cited in Rose 2000, 555). There were things that seemed ‘wrong’ to my eye if the photo had indeed been taken in 1847. Take for instance, the clothes on the woman in the front.  Her skirt and blouse were a dead giveaway that the photo was more likely from 1887 instead of 1847.  First of all, she was wearing what we now call ‘separates’ instead of a ‘dress’, as would more likely have been worn in the 1840s. Her skirt is cut in an A line shape instead of a full, gathered rectangle shape. Her shoulder line is square, with the sleeve cap gathered into a little puff at the top to accentuate that square line.  Women of the 1840s preferred a rounded shoulder line, and the armscye of the sleeve was worn down on the arm, not up on the shoulder point, to accentuate that rounded shoulder.  The neckline is also more in keeping with the 1880s, being high and tight to the neck instead of cut lower on the bosom and in a more rounded shape.  This woman exhibits all the fashionable ‘tailored’ garments of the 1880s, not the more ‘feminine’ styles of the 1840s.

As Rose mentions, she wants “to insist that photographs cannot be used as neutral evidence of the way things looked” (Rose 2000, 556). This very quickly discussed photograph could be case in point.  The researcher was hopeful that it proved that linen production occurred in Nova Scotia in the 1840s.  It was heartbreaking to inform them that I believed what we were looking at was more of an early ‘re-enactment’ of historical practice for the purpose of the photograph.  As a living historian, I have often wondered how the reproductions we use in our programing will be seen by researchers in the future.  With this photo, I am now wondering how the photographs of our programming will be viewed by those very same researchers. And in viewing this particular photo, I was also struck by how little importance was given to getting the elements of clothing correct, especially in a period where the wearing of ‘old clothes’ was an important social function through masquerades.  The correct clothing could have been obtained and worn by the participants in the photo, and that alone may have fooled more of us here in the ‘future’.

Rose, Gillian. 2000. "Practising photography: an archive, a study, some photographs and a researcher." Journal of Historical Geography 555-571.

finally finished weaving

I have learned this summer, that when it comes to weaving linen, your best laid plans should be set aside, as linen is a difficult mistress, prone to getting her own way. In John O’Neil’s Improved Method of Weaving Linen, I learned that “eight yards of calico is a fair day’s work, and two yards and a half of linen” (O'Neil 1810, 166). O’Neil also seemed to back up my thoughts on the dryness of the air having an effect on the linen threads (O'Neil 1810, 167). In the article Atmospheric Conditions and Industrial Efficiency, I learned that “the weaving of fine linen is one of the most trying industrial operations known in this country, as it has to be carried on in a hot and very moist atmosphere, in order to reduce the breakage of the yarn to a minimum” (Atmospheric Conditions and Industrial Efficiency 1923, 36). I managed to accomplish my own weaving in one of the hottest August's on record, I also think it was one of the most humid. I learned to not use a single ply thread in the warp.

The ladies at Colonial Williamsburg that I had been chatting with about my project quipped, “It’s only thread…” and I used a lot of thread this summer. But I am happy with the final product. I ended up using an Egyptian linen 2/16. A bit heavier than I originally wanted, but I also wanted to get this project completed this summer. After about a metre woven with the 2/16 as the weft thread, I was close to running out of the 2/16 and so switched to a spool of thread from my stash marked only as #10.  I have halved the number of threads in the check through the weft than are in the warp so that my check stayed an even square.  The threads were packing in nicely, and I am finally happy with the cloth. I ended up weaving about a metre per day, working around my mum's much needed naps due to chemo recovery.  I then processed the fabric by washing it in hot water, hanging to dry on the line, and then steam pressing it before using it. I only broke two threads, one on each selvage, which I then fixed by bringing new threads through the heddles and weaving them in.

Given that the eighteenth century was full of turmoil for the residents of Nova Scotia, with the deportations of the Acadien people, immigration of the Planters from America before the Revolutionary war, and then a second wave of immigration through the refugee crisis of the Loyalists, it is easy to understand why textile production does not seem to have become widespread until the mid-nineteenth century. Extant newspapers from Halifax, Shelburne, and Saint John all contain many advertisements for goods and textiles that were imported and sold from all over the world. As I enter into the time of year when I am processing the year’s harvest, I can understand why the production of food would be paramount in a settler’s mind, certainly one that may or may not have the skills needed to create textiles. I will continue my explorations of weaving linen, but with a different focus. I do not feel that it is a necessity to weave one's own cloth for the accuracy of cloth when used in garment construction, certainly not for men’s shirts or women’s body linens. We are still able to buy reproduction fabrics that are of good quality for much cheaper than I can even buy the thread.  I will weave apron fabric in linen only, as the width of the fabric will be noticeable when made up. I think that my eighteenth century counterpart would approve.

My bibliography for the summer, and the resulting paper 

1769. The Nova Scotia Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser . Halifax: Henry, Anthony, January 31.

1769. The Nova Scotia Chronicle and Weekly Advertiser. Halifax: Anthony Henry, August 8.

1923. "Atmospheric Conditions and Industrial Efficiency." The British Medical Journal 36.

Baumgarten, Linda. 2011. What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Bolt, Barbara. 2007. "Material Thinking and the Agency of Matter." Studies in Material Thinking 1-4.

Goodrich, Eugene. 2016. "Domestic Textile Production in Early New Brunswick." St. James Textile Museum publication.

Hood, Adrienne D. 1996. "The Material World of Cloth: Production and Use in Eighteenth-Century Rural Pennsylvania." The William and Mary Quarterly 43-66.

Johnston, A.J.B. 1995. "From Port de Peche to Ville Fortifiee: The Evolution of Urban Louisbourg, 1713-1758." In Aspects of Louisbourg: Essays on the History of an Eighteenth-Century French Community in North America, by Carol Corbin, William O'Shea Eric Krause, 3-18. Sydney, Nova Scotia: The University College of Cape Breton Press.

Lawson, Murray G. 1950. "The Domestic Exports of Halifax, 1754-1757: A Ststistical Summary." The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 419-421.

Nellis, Eric G. 1986. "Misreading the Signs: Industrial Imitation, Poverty, and the Social Order in Colonial Boston." The New England Quarterly 486-507.

O'Neil, John. 1810. "Improved Method of Weaving Linen." The Belfast Monthly Magazine 166-167.

Rees, John U. 1999. "Some in Rags and Some in Jags, but None in Velvet Gowns: Insights on Clothing Worn by Female Followers of the Armies During the American War for Independence." ALHFAM Bulletin 18-21.

Shammas, Carole. 1982. "How Self-Sufficient Was Early America?" the Journal of Interdisciplinary History 247-272.

Tryon, R.M. 1916. "Household Manufactures in the United States: A Quarter-Century of Developments 1784-1809." The Elementary School Journal 234-249.

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. 1998. "Wheels, Looms, and the Gender Division of Labour in Eighteenth-Century New England." The William and Mary Quarterly 3-38.

weaving, an exercise in frustration

Well, I've finally woven about an inch of cloth.  I am completely not happy with the result.  When I last posted, I was threading the reed at 3 ends per dent.  It was causing me to have a very holy cloth, but also not packing in tight enough.  The ladies at Colonial Williamsburg mentioned that I should be packing in the reed a bit tighter than expected, and so this morning I rethreaded the reed to 7 ends per dent.

Now I am definitely getting a warp faced fabric, still with holes in it, as the reed is keeping small spaces in the warp.  I'm also not getting a good enough pack to the weft threads, and my selvages don't pack at all, which is making me very cranky.

I think I may need a finer reed.  I will ask if I can borrow one from school...if so, I might be weaving again by Friday, if I'm lucky.

At least the shed is opening this go around!

Getting ready to weave: Shirt warp, number three...it's only string, right?

I began this project a few years ago while doing an artist residency at the Centre for Craft and Design in Halifax.  If you go back and read the entries there, you'll find that the shirt warp gave me no end of grief. In the end, I saved what I could of that warp to use later.

Later was this summer.  I dug out my original warp and washed the starch out of it, fully intending to put it on the loom and use it.  Then I realized that the cross had not been saved, and it really was a horrible, tangled mess. I stuck it in the corner of my room and let it contemplate it's messiness while I wound a new warp from the remaining cones of threads I had from that original project.  This time around, my plan was to not use starch, rather, if need be, I'd just spritz the threads down with water.  I was also going to be weaving in the right time of year for linen, in the warm, humid months, and in a naturally conditioned space...meaning no air conditioning.

The second warp was finally wound on the back beam of the loom, and the loom threaded about mid June of this summer.  When I began to weave, the shed just would not open.  The linen fibres were so fluffy they were sticking together tight, fast.  I'd try to open the shed and the whole warp would move as one.  I thought maybe I'd done something wrong when I set up my loom in the Fall, did I tie something up wrong? Nope.  It's the thread.

Part of the problem that I've been having with this shirt warp, part one and part two, is that in an effort to create fairly fine cloth, the threads I have been using were single ply. When I broke down in tears at not being able to open the shed, my Mum and I started searching for solutions.  Plied thread was the only viable solution.  And so, when Pierre started his vacation, he and I day tripped up the thread store in Brassard, QC, and bought new thread.

During this Spring and Summer, my mum has also been battling lung cancer. Since the end of June, my brother and his family have been here for a week, mum has had to endure a particularly bad Chemo cycle, our son and his family have been here. And finally, last weekend, Pierre and I went off to Fort Ticonderoga for our wedding anniversary, and also so that we could get some living history time in this summer. July has been busy.  Needless to say, no weaving has gotten done, as my room has to play double duty for housing extra people when we have company...our house is small.

Pierre went back to work Wednesday morning (yesterday) and I went back to work on the weaving project.  I am now using 2/16 Egyptian linen thread, with a 2/16 cotton in the blue. I am winding six repeats of 20 white, 4 blue, 20 white, 10 blue, 10 white, 10 blue, 20 white, 4 blue, 20 white, 6 blue, 6 white, 6 blue, 6 white, 6 blue. I would have liked to have used a finer thread, but I just cannot buy any in Canada at the moment, and I really want to get this done this summer. I need to get it done for my course work for school.  It will be good apron weight cloth, not fine shirt weight like I had hoped.  But I'll plod along and get it done and possibly publish an article on my research.

While I work, I like to watch documentaries on youtube.  I've 'watched' nearly every Time Team episode, lots of documentaries on the 18th and early 19th centuries in North America, I've also re-watched the miniseries John Adams, and then there is my favourite, Tales from the Green Valley.  This morning, I was looking for something new to listen to and stumbled upon an early 2000s series called Colonial House.  I think it was a BBC production, where they send 17 modern Americans and Brits to live for the summer in a recreated 17thC colony based on Jamestown and Plymouth.  I had forgotten how drama filled this series was.  These people went into the experience with modern agendas, not really wanting to see if they could do it properly.  I was left wondering if that was when Ruth Goodman and crew approached the BBC and asked to try something similar, only trying to do it right. I ended up shutting off the Colonial House about half way through episode3, the modern drama llama holding no appeal to me as I stand here winding a warp, trying to weave cloth in a historically accurate manner. Trying to figure out how my 18thC counterpart would have felt at having to produce her own cloth for the first time in her colonial life as part of a 'revolutionary' act.  So used to being able to purchase fine linen cloth, I'm feeling a bit disheartened at how thick and rough my cloth might turn out. And I'm using purchased threads...I wonder what I'd be able to accomplish using my own produced and spun threads? That will be an experiment for another summer, and I suspect, another year.

Anyway, one more repeat to wind.  Then I can sit and embroider for a couple of afternoons.  I need Pierre's help getting the warp on the loom, and I need new stocking garters, so the indulgence of embroidery is also a necessity.