RL Fifield vacuuming samplers with a dental vacuum in the old Textile Conservation Lab, MFA Boston, 2001. Back in the early aughts, I was a Collection Care Specialist in Textiles and Fashion Arts (TFA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. I was working on a National Endowment for the Arts grant to photograph and perform condition reports on 10,000 objects a part of their American collections. This work was undertaken in part to plan for a brand-new textile storeroom during the

RL Fifield. I attended the American Institute for Conservation’s Annual Meeting in Indianapolis at the end of May. The opening reception was on a steamy night at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). While the reception was welcoming, it was difficult for the conference attendees to fully forget during these festivities that IMA had just decimated several senior conservation staff positions, part 21 positions lost during recent restructuring. However, as I worked my way throu

RL Fifield, 2012. Last weekend, The Brigade of the American Revolution hosted an Authenticity Event at Don Carpentier’s Eastfield Village. A collection of two taverns, a store, a church, a doctor’s office, an assortment of shops, and a handful of houses were saved from demolition by Mr. Carpentier and assembled on the east field of the family’s farm. Long the site of an esteemed historic trades workshop series, the village is the perfect site for Authenticity Weekend. Stitchi

I predicted in this post from April that people would be hot to trot for Downton Abbey influenced costumes this Halloween. True to form, a lot of readers have been finding my blog by searching on “downton abbey halloween costumes.” I’m thinking that there will be quite a few Annas & Mr. Bateses, some Lord & Lady Granthams, and quite a few Marys & Matthews.  And I’m sure there will be a few Dowager Countesses chortling it up. (Anyone going as that tasty Turk?) But a Halloween

Online databases are incredible tools. While my museum career has mostly focused on textiles, dress, and ethnographic materials, I never know what is going to inspire me when I search mfa.org, metmuseum.org, emuseum.history.org (Colonial Williamsburg), and so forth. I’ve heard a lot of grumbling in the past from staff when directives to get our collections management databases online. “Our photography is old!” “How can we review all the data?” “How will we handle all those re

Manhattan is a special place, no doubt. I live on the Upper East Side in Yorkville, a formerly German and Czech community. I jokingly refer to the far east neighborhood as the “suburbs of Manhattan.” It’s not a scene. There are lots of families and doorman buildings, as well as a lot of tenements. I live by a school, so mornings are marked by a stampede of kids Mr. V and I ford on our way to work. I’m always stunned by the amount of tutus ported by the younger female set. I v

The summer is full of living history events, and moreso, the laundry that follows a hot sweaty weekend out in a field without a shower. While plenty of women I know want to get their stays (corset) off first after an event, my priority for removal are my garters (woolen tapes tied around my leg just below my knee, and most of all: my stockings. Stockings, MFA Boston, 99,842, a-b. http://educators.mfa.org/textile-and-fashion-arts/pair-mens-stockings-38242 Hannah Glasse advises

Der Wöchentliche Pennsylvanische Staatsbote 9/17/1773. As part of my research on 18thcentury working class clothing, I have been studying indentured and enslaved female servants who immigrated to the American colonies. I created a database that now houses records for 1000 women and their 6000 garments.  Runaway advertisements document not only clothing, but also physical characteristics, habits, skills, and other information. I started on this journey to study clothing, and t

Maryland Gazette, August 9, 1787. Library of Congress. RL Fifield photo. The Runaway Clothing Database project uses newspaper runaway advertisements to catalog the garments of indentured and enslaved women in the American colonies from 1750-1790. These advertisements are often the only glimpse of these women in the documentary record. Personal information, such as their physical characteristics, habits, and skills are included in the runaway advertisements. You can read an ab

Continental Journal. October 23, 1783. Photo: Newsbank, American Antiquarian Society. #costume #dress #England #fashion

New: see the full article online here. If it doesn’t come up, go to the home page and search again. Abraham Emmit labeled her “an ill natured, scolding, cursing, swearing, thieving servant Woman. Eleanor ran away at least six times, for which I’ve found four advertisements.  Below is a map that tracks where Eleanor lived during her servitude and the dates of her elopements, built from information given in advertisements for her return. The table below compares the garments sh

Baa. Cool it, already. Photo: Imaginactory. John Wily wrote the motivational pamphlet A Treatise on the Propagation of Sheep, the Manufacture of Wool, and the Cultivation and Manufacture of Flax, with Directions for making several Utensils for the Business in Williamsburg, VA, in 1765. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation reprints historic facsimiles of it in their historic area print shop. Prompting fellow Americans to contribute to the colony’s independence through their ow

I hear the occasional grumble. Why is that photo of that object so bad? Why isn’t there an online database? Why are only selected objects online? Why can’t museums get their acts together? Creating a structure to fit a mid-1770s gown. RL Fifield, 2003. I worked on a grant project for three years photographing a large chunk of a major art museum’s costume collection. In that time, we photographed 7,000 objects in three years. Pre-Columbian textile fragments. Black socks. Purse

A swatch preserved in the billet books at the London Metropolitan Archives. Thomas Coram Foundation for Children. Foundling number 12250, admitted April 2, 1759. In January of 2010, I arrived in London six hours late due to abnormal ice and snow conditions. One cancelled flight, one airport switch, and a six hour delay got me to the London Metropolitan Archives at 3pm. London was a mess – a shortage of snowmelt salt (which is a sickening pink) made all the sidewalks treachero

A swatch preserved in the billet books at the London Metropolitan Archives. Thomas Coram Foundation for Children. Foundling number 12250, admitted April 2, 1759. In January of 2010, I arrived in London six hours late due to abnormal ice and snow conditions. One cancelled flight, one airport switch, and a six hour delay got me to the London Metropolitan Archives at 3pm. London was a mess – a shortage of snowmelt salt (which is a sickening pink) made all the sidewalks treachero

A visitor at New Windsor Cantonment photographs reenactors at the Brigade of the American Revolution’s School of Instruction, April 28, 2012. RL Fifield photo. As living history interpreters, our role is to talk to the public about the past. We fill in the gaps in most schools’ history curriculums. Whereas they learned places, dates, and military maneuvers, I’m interested in filling in the details about social history and material culture during the eighteenth century. Needle

A visitor at New Windsor Cantonment photographs reenactors at the Brigade of the American Revolution’s School of Instruction, April 28, 2012. RL Fifield photo. As living history interpreters, our role is to talk to the public about the past. We fill in the gaps in most schools’ history curriculums. Whereas they learned places, dates, and military maneuvers, I’m interested in filling in the details about social history and material culture during the eighteenth century. Needle

For those of you who are scrubbing floors this weekend and taking down cobwebs from those hard to reach places, a morsel of knowledge from Hannah Glasse’s The Servants Directory, Improved, 1762: PART II. The House-Maid. Be up very early in a morning, as indeed you are first wanted; lace on your stays, and pin your things very tight about you, or you never can do work well. Be sure always to have very clean feet, that you may not dirty your rooms, and learn to walk softly, tha

For those of you who are scrubbing floors this weekend and taking down cobwebs from those hard to reach places, a morsel of knowledge from Hannah Glasse’s The Servants Directory, Improved, 1762: PART II. The House-Maid. Be up very early in a morning, as indeed you are first wanted; lace on your stays, and pin your things very tight about you, or you never can do work well. Be sure always to have very clean feet, that you may not dirty your rooms, and learn to walk softly, tha

While I think the city of Baltimore had little to do with inspiring the creation of this dance tune by Fred Rich and the Hotel Astor Orchestra, this 1928 ditty is well equipped to send us into the weekend. Click here to dance The Baltimore! Brooklyn Museum Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009.300.1364a–c. #AstorHotelOrchestra #dance #roaringtwenties #FredRich #TheBaltimore #costume