Becky FifieldDec 30, 20152 minSamuel Adams’s Mother Was a FifieldRL Fifield vacuuming samplers with a dental vacuum in the old Textile Conservation Lab, MFA Boston, 2001. Back in the early aughts, I was...
Becky FifieldNov 5, 20152 minThomas 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...
Becky FifieldJan 1, 20152 minNew Year’s Day – A Great Day to Run AwayDer Wöchentliche Pennsylvanische Staatsbote 9/17/1773. RL Fifield Photo. Library of Congress. Many of us choose some aspect of life to...
Becky FifieldJun 10, 20142 minTransportation Tuesday – B&O Centenary Pageant, 1927Ladies in nymph-like attire twirling and leaping through fields – sounds like the turn of the century pageantry movement to me. The...
Becky FifieldMay 9, 20143 minDon’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...
Becky FifieldNov 20, 20132 minA Philadelphia Servant, 1787The Accident in Lombard Street. Charles Wilson Peale. Winterthur Museum. 1962.88. A pie lays broken in the street, a distraught servant...
Becky FifieldOct 28, 20132 minAnd So It Goes: The Fall CrunchSeptember and October have been full of professional commitments. For those readers not familiar with museum work, this is often the...
Becky FifieldAug 29, 20132 minCatering to Clients in an 18th Century Philadelphia ShopI spent July at a Research Fellowship at Winterthur Museum, Library, and Garden. This mainly meant identifying manuscripts and object...
Becky FifieldAug 1, 20131 minDigging in the Archives: Swarthmore College’s Friends Historical LibraryMy time here at Winterthur is wrapping up. I took yesterday to visit two incredible local institutions, the Friends Historical Library at...
Becky FifieldJul 25, 20131 minA Squeal of Delight at the Indianapolis Museum of Art: Miniature DressesRL Fifield. I attended the American Institute for Conservation’s Annual Meeting in Indianapolis at the end of May. The opening reception...
Becky FifieldMay 31, 20131 minFun with Fraktur – Women’s Dress in a Drawing from Winterthur MuseumAn embroidered apron at LACMA, similar in concept to those depicted in the Winterthur fraktur below. M.2007.211.131 I’m not a...
Becky FifieldMay 30, 20132 minWhat I’ve Been Reading: Buying Into A World of Goods by Ann Smart MartinRead this great book on 18th century commerce in the backwoods of Virginia. Ann Smart Martin’s Buying into the World of Goods: Early...
Becky FifieldMay 21, 20132 minTrans. Tuesday: We Survived The Parade of TrainsJust barely. RL Fifield 2013. Dr. V. indulged my whim to visit the assemblage of historic trains at New York’s Grand Central Terminal...
Becky FifieldMar 1, 20131 minHaplessly Crafty: Block PrintingA few samples of historically recreated printed textiles using modern materials. The folded squares at the front are handkerchiefs....
Becky FifieldFeb 27, 20132 minWanderlust Wednesday: Sewing in SheffieldStitchers inside Dewey Memorial Hall, Sheffield, Massachusetts. Sheffield resident Lisa R. and I met through Revolutionary War...
Becky FifieldJan 28, 20132 min(Music Plays) Lydia, The Tattoed Lady – An eighteenth century woman’s tattooThe New Yorker Photo Booth blog highlighted tattoed women and a book about them Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and...
Becky FifieldDec 21, 20122 minShifting Garment Styles, 1750-1790: What Research and Sketching Have in CommonI 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,...
Becky FifieldSep 30, 20122 minEighteenth Century for the WeekendRL Fifield, 2012. Last weekend, The Brigade of the American Revolution hosted an Authenticity Event at Don Carpentier’s Eastfield...
Becky FifieldSep 29, 20122 minHalloween Comes to Downton AbbeyI predicted in this post from April that people would be hot to trot for Downton Abbey influenced costumes this Halloween. True to form,...
Becky FifieldSep 11, 20121 minTransportation Tuesday: A Moment on the Baltimore and OhioI was inspired by this salted paper print from the 1850s of people posing for a photograph on a Baltimore and Ohio engine. I thought...