Vacation time!

Wednesday I leave for vacation/a family reunion for almost two weeks.  The family reunion is for descendants of my great-great-grandparents in Akureyri, Iceland.  I've been lucky enough to have been once before and to be in a position to go again.  I won't have posts for the next couple weeks and after I return there will be at least one post about Iceland.  After that, I will try and get back to the historical topics, maybe with an Icelandic focus... :)  So, farewell for a few weeks and Happy Fourth of July!

More from the Bata

            Following up from last week… The Bata has a few other exhibits going on currently.  I only took one picture from Standing Tall: The Curious History of Men in Heels; the exhibit was a lot of military boots, royal heels, and some rock star shoes.  The one picture I took was of the kinky boots from a Kinky Boots production.

            The other exhibit I took a number of pictures of was Art & Innovation: Traditional Arctic Footwear from the Bata Shoe Museum Collection.  This exhibit was really cool.  It looked at footwear, traditional costumes, and tools from people from Greenland, Alaska, Siberia, Sápmi, and Canada.  It was fascinating.

Ivory and antler chatelaine.

Pieced sealskin.  This shows a few parts of the process, with a description.

Close up of the finished piece.

Woven grass socks from Alaska.

Fur inlaid boots.  The women that make these make sure the hair is all going the same direction across the different colors of fur, cut out the pieces, and sew them back together.  There were a number of other examples, including an eagle, and one showing the reverse of the piece.  It's fascinating.

            In addition to these, the Bata also has a shoe timeline, and shoes from different countries, religions, etc. to start you off in the museum.  There’s also a glass heels sort-of mobile down the stairwell.  I admit when I first heard of the shoe museum, I thought it was a funny concept, and yet I wound up really enjoying it.

Fashion Victims

Boy, this past month (and a bit) has flown by...  I'll have more on this and some thoughts for going forward later, but I wanted to share one of the things I've done in this time.

Last weekend (June 3-6) I went up to Hamilton and Toronto, Ontario to visit friends, but the catalyst was to see the Fashion Victims exhibit at the Bata Shoe Museum.  I don't know where I first heard of this exhibit.  I know I found out about the book, written by one of the people who curated the exhibit, last year some time before it came out in October.  With exchanges I had to do of Christmas gifts, I was able to get the book.

Whenever it was I found out about the exhibit, I knew I had to figure out a way to go.  When I looked at the website, it showed that it was at the museum through June 2016 (it's now been extended through January 2017).  So I brought up to my friends in the Toronto area that I was going to try to come and see that, and we should all meet up, etc.  So after planning where I was going to stay, and when I was coming, I went.  And I'm really glad I did.  (All following photos are ones I took at the museum.)

The exhibit was set up to look like a salon, where everything was on display, and you could pick out things you wanted.  I loved how it was set up.  The black and white floor, the wood (-looking) walls, the alcoves of items... It was gorgeous.  Then you actually start looking at the items...

Mauve shoes.  Ties in to my post inspired by mauve. :)

Arsenical green shoes.  Also ties into the earlier post.  I found out what those

weird shaped boots (bottom left), that I think are ugly..., are called: Adelaide boots.
The middle pair has actual gold embroidery.

Arsenical green dress.  

Lacquered embroidery box.  The sap from the lacquer tree is related to poison oak

and so would cause rashes on the people that created it.

A pair of Queen Victoria's mourning slippers, from towards the end of her life.  These have a butterfly embroidered on the top.  She gave these to a housekeeper.

Highly feminized, boudoir slippers.

More mauve shoes.

Button hooks.  I love the thistle-looking one.

A crinoline.  Crinolines were dangerous because they trapped air under them, and if a woman brushed too close to a fire, the air trapped inside would ignite, and engulf her.

Those middle shoes were one of the first pairs to have elasticized gussets.

Deerskin slipper uppers, with moose hair embroidery.  (Yay, Canada. ;) )

Mercury coated, beaver fur top hat.

I wish I had taken pictures of more of the panels in the exhibit - I don't remember why some things were "deadly" or created "fashion victims".  I wish I had taken more pictures in general.  There was a gorgeous Regency gown at the start of the exhibit that was deadly because the light, airy fabric easily caught fire.  There was also a pair of shoes and gloves that belonged to Empress Sissi, that were just unbelievably tiny.

If you're in the Toronto area, or can get there by January, I highly recommend seeing this exhibit.  I need to get back to reading the book!  Next week I’ll have some other pictures from the museum.

A little bit on process and where I've been

I think I mentioned that I was working on something at work and once it was public I'd share it.  Well, Friday my little thing went public.  I was offered the chance to do a blog post for Ohio Memory and of course I said yes.

I decided to pick something that I was interested in, rather than trying to find something that linked up to a particular event or person that has significance this time of year or this year.  I like the posts that do that (the person I've been working with did one a couple weeks ago on Shakespeare's 400th), but it wasn't what I wanted to do.

I chose knitting!  Surprised? ;)  Since I was writing for Ohio Memory, it was hoped/expected that I would tie it in to Ohio history in some way.  I decided to start with ChroniclingAmerica, the Library of Congress's digital newspaper database, and filter for Ohio papers.

Initially I looked at post-1900, since that's most of what I like and the post-1900 papers usually have more and better illustrations and photos.  Once I did that I just started note taking.  For the 500-word post I actually had taken about four pages, front and back, of notes.  Clearly this was too much, so I narrowed it down.

Most of what I had found hovered around the First World War, so it seemed like a natural focus.  From there it was really just choosing the topics I found interesting.  I focused on knitting as fashion and its influences on fashion (because, honestly, it's just so silly and fun), and then moved on to the war work women were doing at the time.  I found basic patterns written out in the paper, lists of times and places women were meeting, where you could drop off your knitting...  It was amazing!

So I wrote my little blog post.  I included links to the articles where I found the quotes and links for the images I wanted to use.  I didn't really know how to close the post, so I left that a bit vague to start.  I sent what I had to the person I've been working with, and we went over it all together.  On her computer she has the software for cropping the images and formatting the posts, and all that jazz, so she did all of that.  She edited the post so it would sound a bit more like the other posts on Ohio Memory, and helped write the conclusion.  She also didn't know what to call me for the footer (my position with her is temporary and doesn't have a specific title), so we left that blank 'til she could find an appropriate title.

And then I waited.  She found out what to call me, added that in, and then sent the post to the person in the department who actually does the posting for Ohio Memory, who gave it another once over.  And then Friday it went live.

It was such a great chance to share something I love with other people.  No one had thought of knitting as a topic before, and everyone really liked that that's what I had chosen.

All of this is to say, that's a bit of where I've been, a bit of what I've been doing.  I hope you all enjoy my post on Ohio Memory, and I hope the small insight into some of how I do what I do might help you to do it too. :)

Anzac Day

Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of Anzac day, which was established on the first anniversary of the landing of the Anzac troops in Gallipoli during the First World War (though unofficial commemorations had begun almost immediately after Gallipoli).

Here's the Stuff You Missed in History Class episode about Gallipoli.  And if you're interested, on AcornTV they have the Anzac Girls miniseries.

Happy birthday...!

Leopold Stokowski

and Clarence Darrow!

Mulready Stationery

            I’m back with a real post this week!  Yay!

            Last night I finished reading The Brontë Cabinet by Deborah Lutz, which I highly recommend.  It’s a joint biography of the Brontës through nine items.  One of the items was a letter Charlotte had written which had been torn apart and sewn back together.  The chapter about letters discussed them more broadly; the torn one was just a small part of the chapter.  In talking about letters, Lutz went briefly into the history of the postal system and different types of items that were used by the Brontës.  One of the items mentioned was Mulready stationery.

            This is probably going to be a shorter post since Mulreadys didn’t last long, so a bit of background on what was going on with postage at the time.  Before 1840 (when postal reforms went into effect), in England, postage was paid by the sheet of paper, with the envelope counting as a piece of paper; was paid by the mileage the item had to travel; and was paid by the recipient of the mail.

            In 1840, postal reform took place.  Both stamps and letter sheets were introduced.  Stamps were what you think they are, a small square you could stick on any item going through the mail, as long as it had enough postage.  Letter sheets were preprinted and prepaid sheets of paper that would be folded up to create the letter and the envelope in one.  If you’ve ever used or seen air mail sheets, the letter sheets were like that.

            William Mulready was the person who came up with the design that was printed on the letter sheets.  Mulready was a well-known Irish artist, living in London at this time.  He was commissioned to create the illustrations for the letter sheets.  His illustrations had Britannia at the top and center; on either side were symbols of Asia and North America, showing the reach of the British Empire.  The illustration also showed that the mail was prepaid, with different colors of ink being used for different postage: black for one penny, blue for two penny.  Because they were just blue or black inked images, a lot of people hand-colored them in.

            Rowland Hill was a postal officer and one of the men who helped with postal reform.  He was sure that stamps would be a folly and that Mulready stationery would take over.  However, almost immediately it became apparent that people preferred stamps.  Mulready’s design was overly complex and was mocked and caricatured almost immediately.  Stationery creators and sellers also didn’t like it because then they couldn’t sell their product, whereas stamps could be used on anything.  People thought the government was trying to control the supply of envelopes by developing the letter sheets, too.

            Mulready stationery went on sale May 1, and was valid in the mail starting on May 6.  By May 12, Hill realized it wasn’t going well, and within two months the stationery was being replaced by more and different stamps.  The supply of Mulreadys that were in shops were used until they were gone, but distributors weren’t distributing them anymore.  What was left of the Mulreadys were destroyed, eventually having the middles punched out so the part without printing could be reused.  These middles were sold as waste paper or were recycled.

            So that’s it about Mulready stationery.  They only lasted from May to November 1840.  They’re such an interesting part of postal reform and history; I’m surprised I haven’t come across them before.