Lost in the folds of a shawl

Part of my job as a costume consultant for this project is to review the metadata for each item and make sure that the title, description and date are as accurate as I know how to make them. A week ago I sat down at my desk with the best of intentions, determined to work through a great pile of images and get them all done. Unfortunately, I had reached only the third one when I was led wildly astray.

The shawl that proved my undoing is a long and narrow stole-like garment, about 13” wide by 78” long that is preserved in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. The ends are patterned with five rows of “botehs,” the floral tear-drop shape we now commonly call “paisleys.” This shawl was made in Europe between about 1805 and 1825 to imitate the designs of shawls made in India and Kashmir, which were highly fashionable in the early 19th century.

What makes this shawl particularly interesting is that with its black ground and gray botehs it was probably designed to be worn by someone in mourning. Not that all black shawls are mourning shawls—a black ground can simply be a fashion color against which the brightly-woven borders stand out in strong contrast. But in this case, the patterned ends are not highly-colored. The little squat botehs are carried out only in shades of gray, one slightly pinkish and another slightly bluish, but all basically gray.

The donor’s name was given in the museum records as a Dr. Hardy Phippen. We know the approximate date of the shawl, and we are almost certain it is a mourning shawl, and therefore it is probably associated with a family death. With those clues, could I possibly trace his family back to a plausible owner?

And that is how I got hooked.

Many hours later, the better part of the day lost in a trance of internet research, I had an answer. Of course I cannot be sure it is the truth, but it is plausible, and it goes like this.
As anyone who works in a museum costume collection knows, most garments descend through a maternal line. Clothing and needlework were often the best ways to remember mothers and grandmothers who may have left little other record. Indeed, our museum costume and textile collections are the record of America women for periods when the men dominated the public sphere. So I was prepared to look back from mother to grandmother to great-grandmother.

The donor of the shawl, Dr. Hardy Phippen, was from a Salem family. He was born in 1862 and never married, so there was no wife to be traced. That meant I had only one or two generations left to investigate.

Thanks to the resources now on the internet, I found that Dr. Hardy’s father was Joshua Phippen (1812-1890). Joshua had two wives, Betsey Barr Holman and Eunice Louise Daniels. Neither of these women were old enough to have worn the shawl but their mothers might have been.

Betsey Barr Holman’s mother was also named Betsey Barr. This earlier Betsey was born in 1786, married Jonathan Holman in 1815 and died in 1827. The Essex Institute has a rare early Kashmir shawl marked “Betsey Barr Salem” that must have belonged to this Betsey, so it is quite possible that she also owned the mourning shawl. However, I have not as yet found a family death in the period I believe is most likely based on the style of the shawl (1815-1820).

After Betsey Holman Phippen died in 1856, her husband married Eunice Louis Daniels, who in 1862 became the mother of the shawl’s donor. Eunice herself was born too late to wear this shawl, and her family was from S Danvers and before that from Maine. I was not successful in tracing Eunice Daniels’ line, but the more tenuous connection with Salem makes it seem somewhat less likely, especially in light of other information about the Phippens.

Joshua of the two wives (Betsey and Eunice) had a brother, George Dean Phippen, who was the first librarian and last surviving founding member of the Essex Institute, which later merged with the Peabody Museum to become the Peabody Essex Museum. This suggests a strong family connection on the Phippen side with the receiving museum, and makes it very likely that Phippen family items would be given there.

So I moved on to the next earlier generation.

The father of Joshua and George Dean Phippen was Hardy Phippen, a sea captain (1778-1868). Captain Phippen was a man of standing in Salem, being the master and/or part owner of several vessels trading out of Salem, and at one point Chief Inspector at the Customs House. He sailed with the father of Nathaniel Hawthorne and with Nathaniel Bowditch when Bowditch was preparing his great book of navigation. Captain Hardy Phippen’s wife was Ursula Symonds (1775-1859), and she is another strong candidate as owner of the mourning shawl.

The interesting fact about Captain Hardy and Ursula Symonds Phippen is that their parents were married to each other. Captain Hardy’s father (another Joshua) and Ursula Symonds’ mother (another Ursula) had both been widowed, and they married each other in 1801, bringing their grown children into a single family. Hardy and Ursula, brother and sister by virtue of their parents’ marriage, then married each other in 1804 bringing the Phippen and Symonds families together again in the second generation.

In December 1818, the elder Ursula Phippen died at the age of 70. It is quite plausible that her daughter and son-in-law would have bought a mourning shawl to mark the death of the woman who had been “mother” to both of them, and the date is perfect for the shawl.
Why this date is so persuasive will have to be the subject of another blog entry, since I have now wasted the better part of the afternoon writing this one (and just trying to sort out maybe one more detail), with the result that I have a hungry husband and that same pile of images to catalog before I sleep. I’ll add pictures as soon as I figure out how. Next week!

Posted in Process | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Where it all comes together . . . historic clothing meets new librarianship

This gallery contains 4 photos.

This past March I found myself in a room with an amazing team of scholars, beginning to plan a project of epic proportions for the historic dress community: the project that has become HistoricDress.org. (some examples of the diverse materials … Continue reading

More Galleries | 5 Comments

yes yes yes and love love love

My email inbox, like that of most university faculty, receives a steady stream of requests to do something—give talks and attend them, promote conferences and distribute calls for papers, join writing groups and reading groups of various sorts. One year ago, as it happens, from this very date, my inbox received just such a query—a  message from Kiki Smith, someone I didn’t really know but was just then meeting, wondering whether I had any interest in helping create a Digital Learning Community that would contemplate creating an online resource grounded in the research of independent scholar Nancy Rexford, one of the region’s premier costume historians.

I wrote back immediately, and if email had audio, she would have heard a (loud) squeal of delight.  “Oh, yes yes yes!,” my reply began, noting what a great fit this was not only with my own interests as a historian of women and work in the clothing trades, but also because of our still-fairly-new digital history track in the Public History program at UMass Amherst.   The message ended “I’d love love love the chance to work with Nancy on this (or anything at all). Fantastic idea.”

I can’t believe a year has passed since that quick exchange, and the project has been everything I thought it would be and more.  I leapt at the chance to get involved partly because it can be challenging for university-based historians like myself to stay in close touch with artifacts.  My first book, The Needle’s Eye, had drawn on garments as well as the tools and spaces associated with needlework to better understand the artisanal nature of women’s work in the clothing trades before industrialization, and a second project—the first scholarly biography of the nation’s best-known, most misunderstood “seamstress” (Betsy Ross)—resulted in a museum exhibition at the H.F. Du Pont Winterthur Museum, but by and large, it is surprisingly hard for your typical university-based historian to keep a hand in the world of objects and artifacts—the real stuff of history—while meeting the day-to-day demands of a university job.   At a related event hosted by Smith College’s Kahn Center, Kiki pulled treasure after treasure out to show the group of esteemed scholars (all now oohing and aahing like schoolgirls, abuzz with sheer happiness).  As we looked at smart day dresses from the 1950s, elegant gowns from the Victorian age, and well-made stays that once confined eighteenth-century bodies, I knew this work, and the close contact not only with beautiful things made by capable hands, but also other scholars as passionate about them as I am, would feed not just my research agenda, but my intellectual soul.

As indeed it has.  To be sure, watching Nancy share her deep expertise on shawls, our first focus for the project, has taught me a good deal about the past, and I am so eager to spend more time, as the project unfolds, poring over her research files.  The work has energized my thoughts about teaching, too, as I’m now eager to develop a new course, tentatively titled “American History/American Fashion.” Meeting the terrific Five College undergraduates on board has been just as inspiring—hearing about their own career aims and plans is just so refreshing, and helps me remember what a wonderful time that is in a person’s life, when so many possible paths lie ahead.

So imagine my surprise to find myself deeply fascinated, too, by the digital aspects of this project.   Working alongside the talented people who lead that part of the project has opened my eyes to wider worlds that are completely new to me.   I’m fascinated not only to learn what the realm of the possible looks like at this moment in time, but what it might look like in the years ahead.  I joked at a recent meeting that those folks “could tell me anything had been invented and I’d believe it”—but it is genuinely exciting to hang out with them on the cutting edge of digital humanities.

The lesson so far?  If Kiki Smith sends you an email, open it. And then say yes.

Marla Miller is a historian of women and work in the U.S. before industrialization.  In a series of articles and in the book The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution she has explored gender and craft skill in the garment trades of early New England.  More recently, her study Betsy Ross and the Making of America sought to recover the life of the nation’s best-known and most misunderstood craftswoman.  As director of the Public History program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, she helps trains students pursuing careers in museum practice, historic preservation, and other venues beyond the classroom that engage historical insight

Posted in Process | Leave a comment

Technology won’t replace scholars, but how far can the technology get us?

This gallery contains 1 photo.

Today the Working Group was bursting with ideas … everything from applying Mechanical Turk workers to creating a virtual Nancy Rexford!  Can Nancy’s “Like-with-Like” methodology be simulated with computer aided recognition? How do we teach students how to see?  Technology … Continue reading

More Galleries | Leave a comment

It was perplexing how we were able to take a box of notecards and a binder full of fashion plates and digitize it.

Niani Tolbert, student participant, Mt. Holyoke College says:

It was a pleasure working in the Digital Humanities Archive Pilot project. As technology becomes more advanced, it is necessary that valuable information not get lost in the switchover. The digital humanities project not only allowed me and other girls to be able to preserve the long and dedicated work of Nancy Rexford, but we are now able to share this information across the world on a database.  After having the opportunity to get a crash course in historic shawl designs, I was able to distinguish and categorize special designs into a time period. The process of scanning, quality controlling, and inputting raw data into the database taught me the importance of project management and made me appreciate preservation even more. It was perplexing how we were able to take a box on notecards and a binder full of fashion plates and digitize it; now, we can search key terms and query those hundreds of pages and cards to our specific interest.

The information that I have learned within such a short time frame is unthinkable. This digital will be able to help others learn and understand historical dress efficiently, without having to look through storage and boxes of cards (That’s what we’re here for!).

Posted in Student Voices | Leave a comment

Commence the pilot project!

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Commence the pilot project!

A significant percent of the total group gathered this morning at 10:00 in the Smith College Theatre building to inaugurate this project. It was the first time the students had met us all.

Present: Nancy Rexford, Arden Kirkland, Elisa Lanzi, Marla Miller, Niani Tolbert, Megan Yeo, Kitty Casseti, Lydia Wilson, Kiki Smith.  Marla left for her previously planned vacation.  Elisa left to attend to other projects since this is her first day back from vacation.

We introduced ourselves and reviewed how the project had evolved.  Then Nancy began her teaching using her slides.   At first it was a process of learning to recognize and then express/describe details in patterns.  Gradually several terms and themes emerged:

Densely patterned, Naturalistic, Stylized, Meandering, Sprigs, Classical motifs, Bilateral symmetry, Radiating motifs, Repeats, Strapwork, Botehs, Tendrils on Borders and Fields

We are all dazzled by the rich details and Nancy’s encyclopedic knowledge.  And a bit brain fried.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

This morning we met back in the classroom of the Theatre Building.  Nancy showed a few slides, but then shifted to looking at some shawls from the Smith collection and some borders on 19th century.

We scurried up to the Imaging Center where Elisa had arranged for a videographer.  We videoed the students working with Nancy to identify and explain the features of several shawls.

After lunch, we began an intensive seminar on cataloguing objects, whether clothes, photographs or notes.  First we worked in pairs to examine photos of a dress, trying to determine data that might be important for the metadata of each object.  A few parts are fairly objective, but most rely on interpretation which is or can be subjective. It’s fraught with red flags.

Then Elisa taught us about the content standards, VRA Core and DC/vocabs.  She and Arden showed the LUNA Smith program and Pratt Institute Fashion Plate collection, Vassar.

Nancy left today, much as she and we would love to have her here indefinitely (Next grant!).  Megan left for a previously scheduled weekend visit.  SHE was feeling torn, too.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

More metadata instruction.  Now it’s learning the numbering/labeling system that Elisa and Arden established.  We looked at a sample Cataloguing Worksheet, showing the prescribed style for data in multiple categories as well as an example of an imaginary shawl.  The list, necessary for every object entered, is quite long.  We looked at the specifics of the OMEKA system, learning how to navigate sites, enter items, searching at the basic and advanced levels, setting and using tags, making exhibits and navigating the administrative backend.

We looked at a spreadsheet like the one we will be using.  There several points requiring quality control to make sure that the data entered is correct.  It will be easy to make an error.

Jonathon Cartledge taught us how to use the scanner- there are two available to us here.  Each card, page or photograph is to be scanned.  Elisa and Arden are going to start the numbering.  A few of us looked at a shawl from the Smith Collection to find out how we would catalogue it.  Now that we know more details, it’s hard to pare down to what is essential for the records.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Today we began the actual process, so that each student learns the steps.  It was a bit bumpy, but most of the glitches weren’t very big.  Between Arden and Elisa, those were solved.  And by now, the students are noticing flaws in the system and suggesting ways to improve the setup, just as we’d hoped.

This afternoon was Arden’s final session here, so there was some pressure to make sure that all the systems are documented and that work patterns are clear.  Again, we would love to have Arden here indefinitely  (Next grant!).

The students are AWESOME.  Everyone is impressed by them.

In general, we are all dazzled by the accumulation of knowledge, talent, determination, skills, never mind the mind-boggling research material that Nancy has assembled so carefully.  It feels essential to get this material recorded and available for all.  And so that Nancy can write articles about these observations.

Monday, August 20, 2012

We’re on our own today.  Megan flies back tonight, coming in tomorrow.  Elisa is out for meetings.  And Arden is in virtual residence.  Between the 3 students here, there’s some great exchange of information regarding details of the documentation.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Well, a week has sailed past and there’s 3 days to go.  All last week the dream team continued scanning and cataloguing photographs of shawls and the cards with Nancy’s notes.

By this morning they’d finished the whole box.  AMAZING.

Now they are numbering and scanning the images in the notebook on patterns.  This involves finding specifics about her sources, scanning for each pattern when often there are at least 4 patterns per page, naming and cataloguing each pattern.  And quality control.  Laborious work.

 

 

 

Posted in Process | Leave a comment

I knew that I was walking into an ambitious project, creating a database, even a small one, is a huge feat

This gallery contains 1 photo.

Lydia Wilson, student participant, Smith College, says: The first day of the project was absolutely the most intimidating day. I knew that I was walking into an ambitious project, creating a database, even a small one, is a huge feat. When I saw the … Continue reading

More Galleries | Leave a comment

What’s the difference between a swag and a meander?

This gallery contains 1 photo.

Kitty Cassetti, student participant, Hampshire College, says: I came into this project expecting it to be much bigger than it actually was. I was expecting to be neck deep in historical garments and be able to be up close and … Continue reading

More Galleries | Leave a comment

Cataloging became a game: hunting down all the information scribbled on cards and making it into a logical, orderly, beautiful compilation

This gallery contains 1 photo.

Megan Yeo, student participant, Smith College, says: The fascinating part about this project actually came as a surprise for me, in my enjoyment of the work processes. To be honest, I didn’t really know what I was getting into before … Continue reading

More Galleries | Leave a comment