I had the honor of attending the opening of the new embroidery exhibit ‘Twixt Art and Nature‘  on December 10th.  The exhibit is a collaboration between the MET and the Bard Graduate School of the Decorative Arts.  If you look back at the comments for December 8th, one of our lacers, Devon, was also at the opening and did a nice review also.  Devon is a volunteer in the textile department at the MET and has provided us with valuable information on metal laces during the project.

I am bringing this exhibit up a few times as it has an intimate connection to the Plimoth Jacket project which I will detail in the next few blogs.  Also, it may be one of the only times you will see an embroidered jacket similar to ours that will be on display in the United States.  The exhibit runs from December 10th to April 12th, 2009 and it is located at the Bard Graduate School on West 86th Street at Central Park West.  The exhibit has three floors of the most amazing embroidery from 1580-1700.  Almost all the objects are from the MET’s collection and are some of the finest examples of their type.  As Susan Brown, Assistant Curator of Textiles at the Cooper-Hewitt, said that night – “I always think we have nice things, and then I see what they have at the MET!!”

If you want to see a few pictures of the jacket on display and a slide show of some objects in the exhibit, click on this review of the exhibition in the New York Times on-line.

Tricia

I thought you might like to see the left front and how close to being finished this
piece is.  Impressive is all I can say about it.  There are areas where the spangles
are now being filled in between the embroidery.  We had some extra visitors on
Friday to help us.  Actually, they came to talk about a possible visit by their
organization to the project.  But since we are all about inclusion and getting this
project done, we sat them down with needle and thread and had them start to
embroider on the pieces, adding spangles (also called paillettes or oes).

A few weeks ago we were going to have some close photos taken of the motifs and
so needed to add our first spangles with multiple stitchers.  So we were faced with
the question – where and how many per inch.  With spangles, its not a question of
too little or too many, but the number per inch.  We wouldn’t want to have one part
of the jacket have a much higher density of spangles than another.  So to make
sure that didn’t happen, we took the master pattern repeat and drew red dots in all
the places that we wanted spangles.  That is to be used as a guide to sew them on.

You may remember from last year that part of my Thanksgiving tradition is helping Die get into her Victorian dress for Plimoth’s 1863 dinners.

This year Die has a new outfit. Doesn’t she look great? There was less for me to do – no lacing the  black cord through the button shanks – but more time to admire. There’s one more Victorian dinner tomorrow afternoon so she’ll get to wear it again.

I don’t know why the thumbnail photo is not centered, but if you click on it you’ll get the whole image.

The next picture is the dessert table in the interpreters’ lounge. It’s a potluck meal with the main parts supplied by the foodways department and the sides and desserts by everybody. I especially love Marcia’s apples and cheddar side dish (of course it’d be a Marcia dish) and look forward to it every year.

If you closed your eyes in the lounge, you’d never know you weren’t home; people are sipping coffee, sampling dessert and discussing whether the Pats can get to the Super Bowl without Brady (even odds, which is better than you’d have gotten in the lounge a few weeks ago).

After a week of colder-than-normal temperatures, the Thanksgiving weather gods were kind and we had a mild day for our visitors to enjoy the outdoor sites. There was so much activity in the 1627 Village this year that I didn’t get to the Wampanoag Homesite. There were two 1627-style church services, Native men visiting Edward Winslow, and a staged fight between two colonists over a girl. They were fighting over Lydia Hickes (Whitney) who is getting married to one of the pugilists on Saturday (pretend wedding). This is the event for which I promised the pink waistcoat. Whitney checked on it this lunchtime. It’ll be done. I finished the stab-stitching today and I only have a couple of hours worth of buttonholes and buttons left to do. Apparently the other colonist (also a single man) made a comment about Lydia, which led to the wrestling match. I especially enjoyed the scolding they got from Captain Standish, who marched down the hill to break up the fight. (“Pick up your hats, Pick up your teeth, Stand up like men and don’t let me catch you at this again.” They were suitably cowed.

All in all, a good day. I hope yours was as well.

I’ll be posting new blogs as usual for the next couple of weeks, then every other day starting December 10th through the New Year, but will be taking some vacation from the office around the holidays. If you need to get in touch please leave a message in the comments or send a note to my home email jillmariehall@gmail.com

It’s funny Robbin should mention Aimee J in the comments as the person who shared a frame with Kris at the first embroidery session.

Yesterday I received an email from Marilyn, who came to the first session as Kris’ guest, on the last day when we had moved from the big workroom up to the wardrobe office. Marilyn is a Japanese embroiderer, as some of our other volunteers are, and has been trying to reach Aimee about a Japanese embroidery class.

Unfortunately, her contact info is out of date. She asked me if mine was any better, and it is not. I said I’d ask here – Aimee, if you’re reading, please send me a note jhall@plimoth.org and I’ll help get you in touch with Marilyn. I think the information is time-sensitive. If anyone else knows Aimee, please ask her to get in touch.

I got this from Tricia this morning:

I am writing this blog on the plane on my way back to the states from London. What can I say but “WOW”. I’ve been to London before and seen many embroideries in wonderful museums. This time was different, I was able to view the pieces up close that we have been working from since November 2006. It is a significantly different experience to examine period embroidery from a research view, as I normally do, and then from the new perspective of having tried to accurately reproduce the pieces. You come to them with the challenges you faced in organizing the work and having gotten inside the head of the embroiderers who worked on the original. You don’t see the forest anymore, but the leaves on all the trees and immediately the variations between them. You have an enhanced knowledge of it so you aren’t numbed by its sheer beauty, but can take a real critical eye and SEE things.

Before the readers of the blog wonder why we haven’t seen them before, because it certainly should have been the first step in mounting the project, I will explain. Through a series of circumstances, the project has been unfunded and therefore there was never any money to travel. This was my own personal odyssey and tacked onto a trip that I had planned for other reasons.

I spent Wednesday at the Embroiderers’ Guild viewing the panel which we believe was worked by the same workshop as the jacket. Then Thursday at the V&A viewing our jacket, 1359-1900. But I had the biggest surprise of my life, the Margaret Laton jacket had been taken off display and had been unmounted for research for an upcoming book. We placed the two jackets side by side and I took 750 photos. Maybe Jill* will blog about her surprise when I emailed from the storage room frantically hoping that they would get it before I was done. I emailed Wendy too – and she called Jill direct to let her know. A once in a lifetime opportunity to get pictures of the construction and lace before it is remounted. “What do you want to know??” I asked. A flurry of email came back with tons of fantastic questions. Thank god for the mobile devices of today!!

I think I will have easily a week of blogs for you. I so wish I could share the pictures, but I will describe what I learned and saw.

Tricia

*Jill here. My son and I have been playing a sort of (unintentional) roulette game, seeing how late we can get out of bed and still get him on the bus. Earlier this week the phone rang in the middle of the quick-quick-get-your-backpack-and-run routine. It was Wendy. She sounded sleepy. I know I sounded sleepy. She said she’d just opened a message from Tricia “the Laton is unmounted on the table in front of me! What do we want to know? Make sure Jill sees this!” Wendy had found the note about an hour and a half after Tricia sent it, so she wasn’t sure if Tricia was still in the room with the jacket. She sent off a note with what she could think of, then called me, which was very smart, since I never get around to opening emails until about 9:30 or 10, which would’ve been another hour at least. I mentioned as many things as I could think of, fretted that we must be forgetting something, and needlessly, I’m sure, said, tell her to take pictures of everything! “I hope she has extra memory cards,” Wendy replied, then hung up to send off another email. Luckily they both reached Tricia while she was still in with the jacket. 15 minutes later the Boy was on the bus and I was on my way to work, thinking the whole way about what she might be discovering. I can’t wait to see and hear all about it.

Not everyone can make the pilgrimage to Plymouth for the holidays . . . so we decided to produce a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring 1621 Plymouth anywhere in America! History will actually come home for one lucky eBay auction winner this Thanksgiving! From October 2 – 11 (Today’s the 11th!) we are putting two of our world-renowned interpreters up for auction. The interpreters, a Colonist and a Wampanoag, will go anywhere in the United States, in character, to spend Thanksgiving with the highest bidder.

Whether it be a single-family, a large group, or even a corporation, the winning bidder will share a Thanksgiving meal with a Wampanoag man dressed in authentic 17th-century styled clothing and portraying Hobbamock, along with one of Plimoth Plantation’s colonial interpreters portraying Edward Winslow clothed in his reproduction 17th- century wardrobe (you know where that came from). Check out this YouTube video, which introduces Hobbamock and Edward Winslow, and was produced by students of the Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University as part of their educational practicum.

Also check out www.plimoth.org for links to the video and the auction, and for more information.
Thanks, Wendy.

Saturday morning I was the hostess on duty for the embroidery session. I’ve done this before. I can make coffee, set out Marcia’s yummy snacks, open the office door so everyone can find the frame they’ve been working on. Well. This past Saturday, the Stars were aligned in Klutz.

I was running a few minutes late, which my loving family and friends will tell you is pretty much my usual operation procedure. I’ve come to accept this as a character flaw. Anyway, I thought, it’s grey and drizzly, I’ll get there before any of the embroiderers, they’ll be lingering over coffee . . . not so much. At 8:37 half a dozen cheerful volunteers were standing out front, enjoying the fact that it wasn’t pouring cats and dogs. They all were very forgiving of my lateness, trooped in and got right to work.

I set off to make coffee, but the water cooler was out of water. I’ve loaded the 5-gallon bottles onto the cooler loads of times, but today it just . . . got away from me. I dropped the whole thing, and as I scrambled to pick it up before it glugged over the whole floor, it bounced and the bottom broke right out. Glug, glug, glug.

This is a coffee-drinking group, so I left the water on the floor (couldn’t really hurt anything) for the moment, grabbed another 5-gallon jug, proceeded to spill about another gallon trying to tip it into the cooler, but did manage not to drop it. I poured out a pitcher of water, squelched out to the coffee maker, pour, scoop, turn on.

After a hurried search, I determined that there is no mop in this building. Mop handle, mop bucket, no mop head. Makes sense, who wants a dirty damp mop stinking up a closet? But a mop would’ve helped. I threw an armful of rags onto the fairly deep puddle, poured some milk into the carafe – what is that smell? Whew! The milk’s gone off. ‘Kay. Marcia called to let me know that she had to go out but the breakfast snack was on the table in the kitchen, which gave me the opportunity to ask if we may we have some milk, please? Yay. Marcia to the rescue, sent up milk with the really fabulous berry coffee cake.

Check the coffee. Why is there only a half pot? Yikes! the grounds overflowed, the basket is full of water and grounds, the pot is full of grounds. OK. Try the big coffeemaker in the kitchen. Pour the water, measure the coffee – here’s Marie!

Marie is one of our child volunteers. She had made previous arrangements to come up this morning to find some warmer clothes to take her through the autumn. I forgot. Set her up looking for wool stockings (thanks, volunteer knitters!) and then shoes that’ll fit with them.

Back to pick up the wet rags – wait! This pot is done, but still only half full. Grrrr. This is one of those pots where you put in water and it pushes out the water that was put in last time, which is already hot. Coffee faster. Unless there’s not enough water in from last time, which was what happened here. Put a little more water in. Panic. People want coffee. Put more water in. A little more. Ah, here it comes. Full pot – fuller pot – STOP! Switch pots. Taste coffee. This is acceptable. Leave the coffeemaker with a second pot to catch the overflow, leave the wet rags for now – set out coffee, the milk from Marcia, open the coffee cake, announce coffee’s ready! Wait, who is that?

Oh, no, is it 9:45 already? Again, previously made arrangements to meet with Vicki, newest Colonial Interpreter. Vicki was coming this morning to pick up her period clothes, get a little intro-to-period-plain-sewing lesson, and ask any questions about clothing in New Plymouth that came up during her pre-site training, pick out a hat, just odds & ends, but still, requires some brain power, which seemed to be in pretty short supply with me at the time.

OK. Get Vicki started, say goodbye to Melinda, answer the phone, PHONE? WHO IS CALLING ME ON A SATURDAY?

Things started to settle down about 11:30. By noon Vicki was dressed and heading to the Carriage House for lunch, Marie and her warmer clothes were long gone, the phone had stopped, the embroiderers were happily caffeinated and snacked and back to the frames, I was sipping my third cup of coffee (if you pour it and forget about it for a half hour you can then drink it pretty fast), the rags were halfway through the wash and the kitchen floor, which gets washed pretty often but still was no worse off for having had several gallons of water sloshed across it and then wiped up.

No, strangely enough, I didn’t think to take any pictures. You’ll just have to imagine it.

Update from the Day Job:

Penny’s been working on this pair of hand-sewn stays for the past many weeks. Working off and on, and having to do some alterations on the fit, but she’s really been plugging away at them for a lot longer than she wanted to be, you know?

And now they’re done! Hooray!

And here’s Arianna, our autumn intern, who is off to a fantastic start. Here she’s working on the last bits of a new lightweight waistcoat for one of our new interpreters, Vicki, who will start on Saturday.

Arianna had just had a very successful second fitting, and now only has to sew on the wings, finish the sleeves, and do the buttons and buttonholes and it’ll be done!

I’m also making a waistcoat for Vicki, a wool one,  but have a lot more than that to do. I’m also almost done with a smock for Vicki, and have done an initial fitting of a wool waistcoat for Jenna, another new interpreter. Jenna’s actually already started on site, but will need this as quick as I can pull it together.

Then we’ve got one more new interpreter, Molly, who will be working with the Education Department presenting programs in local schools. The stock of clothing was so totally picked over by Jenna, Vicki, and everyone who came before that Molly needs quite a lot of sewing…tomorrow Penny will be remaking the waists of two petticoats so they’ll fit Molly properly, as well as altering the neck/shoulders of a second smock for Vicki.