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BECKY FIFIELD
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Becky Fifield
Dec 30, 20152 min read
Samuel Adams’s Mother Was a Fifield
RL Fifield vacuuming samplers with a dental vacuum in the old Textile Conservation Lab, MFA Boston, 2001. Back in the early aughts, I was...
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Becky Fifield
Nov 5, 20152 min read
Thomas Bewick, Newcastle Wood Engraver (1753-1828)
Oil painting on canvas, Thomas Bewick (1753-1828). Cherryburn, Northumberland, National Trust. NT 530359. In digging through the British...
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Becky Fifield
Jan 1, 20152 min read
New Year’s Day – A Great Day to Run Away
Der Wöchentliche Pennsylvanische Staatsbote 9/17/1773. RL Fifield Photo. Library of Congress. Many of us choose some aspect of life to...
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Becky Fifield
Jun 10, 20142 min read
Transportation Tuesday – B&O Centenary Pageant, 1927
Ladies in nymph-like attire twirling and leaping through fields – sounds like the turn of the century pageantry movement to me. The...
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Becky Fifield
May 9, 20143 min read
Don’t Confuse Geisha and Courtesans (Oiran and Tayu)
Images of geisha and courtesans are often mislabeled. For those unfamiliar with subtleties in the styling and wear of kimono, obi, and...
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Becky Fifield
Nov 20, 20132 min read
A Philadelphia Servant, 1787
The Accident in Lombard Street. Charles Wilson Peale. Winterthur Museum. 1962.88. A pie lays broken in the street, a distraught servant...
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Becky Fifield
Oct 28, 20132 min read
And So It Goes: The Fall Crunch
September and October have been full of professional commitments. For those readers not familiar with museum work, this is often the...
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Becky Fifield
Aug 29, 20132 min read
Catering to Clients in an 18th Century Philadelphia Shop
I spent July at a Research Fellowship at Winterthur Museum, Library, and Garden. This mainly meant identifying manuscripts and object...
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Becky Fifield
Aug 1, 20131 min read
Digging in the Archives: Swarthmore College’s Friends Historical Library
My time here at Winterthur is wrapping up. I took yesterday to visit two incredible local institutions, the Friends Historical Library at...
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Becky Fifield
Jul 25, 20131 min read
A Squeal of Delight at the Indianapolis Museum of Art: Miniature Dresses
RL Fifield. I attended the American Institute for Conservation’s Annual Meeting in Indianapolis at the end of May. The opening reception...
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Becky Fifield
May 31, 20131 min read
Fun with Fraktur – Women’s Dress in a Drawing from Winterthur Museum
An embroidered apron at LACMA, similar in concept to those depicted in the Winterthur fraktur below. M.2007.211.131 I’m not a...
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Becky Fifield
May 30, 20132 min read
What I’ve Been Reading: Buying Into A World of Goods by Ann Smart Martin
Read this great book on 18th century commerce in the backwoods of Virginia. Ann Smart Martin’s Buying into the World of Goods: Early...
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Becky Fifield
May 21, 20132 min read
Trans. Tuesday: We Survived The Parade of Trains
Just barely. RL Fifield 2013. Dr. V. indulged my whim to visit the assemblage of historic trains at New York’s Grand Central Terminal...
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Becky Fifield
Mar 1, 20131 min read
Haplessly Crafty: Block Printing
A few samples of historically recreated printed textiles using modern materials. The folded squares at the front are handkerchiefs....
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Becky Fifield
Feb 27, 20132 min read
Wanderlust Wednesday: Sewing in Sheffield
Stitchers inside Dewey Memorial Hall, Sheffield, Massachusetts. Sheffield resident Lisa R. and I met through Revolutionary War...
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Becky Fifield
Jan 28, 20132 min read
(Music Plays) Lydia, The Tattoed Lady – An eighteenth century woman’s tattoo
The New Yorker Photo Booth blog highlighted tattoed women and a book about them Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and...
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Becky Fifield
Dec 21, 20122 min read
Shifting Garment Styles, 1750-1790: What Research and Sketching Have in Common
I roll over this analogy in my mind as I work with my study of 1,000 runaway indentured and enslaved women and their 6,000 garments,...
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Becky Fifield
Sep 30, 20122 min read
Eighteenth Century for the Weekend
RL Fifield, 2012. Last weekend, The Brigade of the American Revolution hosted an Authenticity Event at Don Carpentier’s Eastfield...
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Becky Fifield
Sep 29, 20122 min read
Halloween Comes to Downton Abbey
I predicted in this post from April that people would be hot to trot for Downton Abbey influenced costumes this Halloween. True to form,...
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Becky Fifield
Sep 11, 20121 min read
Transportation Tuesday: A Moment on the Baltimore and Ohio
I was inspired by this salted paper print from the 1850s of people posing for a photograph on a Baltimore and Ohio engine. I thought...
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