Hello history lovers! I’ve got something a bit different for
you all today. Part of the point of this blog is to showcase the many tricks of
the trade being taught to me over the course of my internship. While I mainly
focus my attention on the Center’s fine arts collection, occasionally I venture
forth from the art racks to delve into other areas of work. For instance,
textiles!
The History Center is in possession of a truly impressive
number of dresses, spanning not only decades but centuries. We’ve got a wedding
dress on hand that’s from the 1840s even. Something I’ve noticed in historical
preservation is that people hang on to what they deem important. Our story this
week revolves around a formal dress with a very noteworthy life and the work we
did to showcase this important piece of history.
A couple of weeks ago I got the opportunity to help out my
boss with photographing a long-trained formal dress, this one from 1885. What
makes this dress a bit different from others is that it was worn at President Grover
Cleveland’s inauguration. It’s a pretty awesome find and I got the chance to
help coax this dress on a mannequin.
The thing you have to keep in mind about working with
dresses from this time period is that the women who wore them were tiny. I’m talking less than 5 foot 5
inches and a size 0, if that. Charlotte Lowry, the woman who owned this dress,
was slightly taller than the mannequin we used (we know this based on how the
train lay) and with a smaller bust. If you look at the pictures I took, you can
get an idea of how small women were back then.
The tiny forms are only part of the difficulties that come
with displaying an old dress like this. A lot of care has to go into handling
and navigating the dress with as much care placed on avoiding stress to the
fabric as possible. This dress for example, has a very long train attached to
its bustle (the bump on the butt). It took three people to lift the dress over
the mannequin’s head so that the weight of the material wouldn’t stress the
seams. A lot of artifact handling is built upon patience and care because once
it’s ripped, that’s it. Thankfully we managed just fine with no casualties to
speak of.
Once the dress was finally on the mannequin, half the battle
was won. A cool fact about these dresses is that most were customizable. Fitted
dresses were pretty expensive back then and even the wealthy could only afford
so many. To save money and get the most out of what they bought, many dresses
came with different inserts and removable trim so as to make one dress look
like three. The pale pink apron, bust, and trim all had to be attached
separately from the main dress. Using a lot of care, ingenuity, and a few
well-placed hat pins, we were able to get a good idea of what the dress looked
like when it was worn. This actually came with a second set of attachments too,
a beautiful gold and black rose patterned themed set, but we were unable to get
photos of it fully inserted. Regardless, the creativeness of dress makers back
then is very commendable.
While this isn’t much of a mystery, it was a really fun
learning experience for me that I wanted to share with all of you out there. It
definitely made me think back on my childhood, seeing my mom’s wedding dress
neatly stored and full of memories.
Museum work is keyed toward preserving the past for the
future, and I think this formal dress resonates with all of us who have held on
to precious memories in all the ways we can, be it through memory alone or in
the clothing we wore when living it. Just think, one day that one concert
t-shirt or that signed jersey might be on a mannequin, preserved for the
occasions it witnessed and the memories it held.
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