FOR DECEMBER 31 –

GETTING DRESSED IN EARLY MARYLAND EXHIBITION AT HOMEWOOD HOUSE MUSEUM – NO CUTS –

WD/jl set 12-22 #613914

BALTIMORE, MD. — A new exhibition, “What’s in the Wardrobe?: Getting Dressed in Early Maryland,” will open at Homewood House Museum on Thursday, January 6, with a reception from 5 to 7 pm, and will remain on view through Thursday, March 31.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Homewood presents “Costume a la Mode,” a performance and illustrated lecture on Friday, January 7, from 6 to 8 pm, and again on Saturday, January 8, from 2 to 4 pm. A special exhibition tour and Madeira reception will take place on Thursday, February 3, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. All are paid admission events.

If Harriet Chew Carroll, the original mistress of Homewood in the early Nineteenth Century, were to walk across the Hopkins campus today, her attire might raise a few eyebrows. “Although people assume that women during this era dressed with modesty, even prudishness,” said Homewood curator Catherine Rogers Arthur, “women’s clothing at the time was actually pretty risqué — even by today’s standards. What’s actually ‘in the wardrobe’ in 1801 may be surprising to our visitors.”

“What’s in the Wardrobe” examines the type of clothing known to have been worn by the Carroll family and other residents of Homewood in the early Nineteenth Century as a means to better understand the lives of the people who resided there.

The fragility of textiles combined with the fact that clothes in the 1800s were expensive and generally worn until they were worn out means that there is little surviving clothing from this era. Arthur’s investigation into the Carroll’s wardrobe therefore involved numerous sources. Research into the family’s ledgers, receipts and correspondence provided descriptions of clothing, fabrics and buttons purchased by the Carrolls. Printed advertisements from the early 1800s in Baltimore furthered the research, offering a sense of what would have been available. Details about fashionable fabrics and design were also gleaned from paintings, drawings and prints of the Carrolls and their contemporaries.

“The process,”  said Arthur, “is something akin to a historian 200 years from today attempting to recreate my wardrobe based on Gap advertisements, my Visa bill, a photo of my neighbor and a thank-you note I sent about a sweater. It allows us to make informed, but not necessarily exact, guesses.”

On display in the exhibition are a Baltimore-made wardrobe from circa 1800, the type of cabinet in which the Carrolls’ clothing would have been carefully protected and stored. Detailed documentation of prices can be found in the 1825 probate inventory of Charles Carroll Jr, where it is noted that a “mahogany press” or wardrobe is valued at $10 and “wearing apparel” at $75 — equal in price to his “black mare.” Because of its value, the care, mending and storage of clothing was extremely important and will be addressed in the exhibition.

Copies of the documents and images that Arthur used for research will also be on display along with reproduced articles of clothing, sewn by textile historian Margot Cur-ran. Using historic patterns and fabrics similar to those available in the early Nineteenth Century, the clothing represents what may have been worn by Homewood’s inhabitants and includes examples of one of Harriet Chew Carroll’s dresses, a small girl’s dress, Charles Carroll Jr’s suit based on a portrait at Homewood House, a boy’s “skeleton suit,” a male servant’s livery and a slave’s dress, based on information provided from a watercolor of the period.

Programs related to the exhibition will take place at 6 pm on January 7 and at 2 pm on January 8 and include a dramatization of the letters of the Mistress of Riversdale performed by Cherie Weinert of Theatre Hopkins, including descriptions of the European fashions ordered for her oldest daughter’s debut followed by an illustrated talk on clothing and undergarments in the Federal era by Kristina Haugland, assistant curator of costumes and textiles at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Reservations for these programs are required and admission is $25 a person.

On Thursday, February 3, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm, visitors are invited to tour Homewood followed by a Madeira wine tasting in the wine cellar. Admission is $15 a person.

 

 

Book Review, North Carolina Pottery

North Carolina Pottery: the Collection of the Mint Museums, edited by Barbara Stone Perry, published for The Mint Museums by the University of North Carolina Press, PO Box 2288, Chapel Hill, NC 27515; 2004, 212 pages, hardbound, $39.95.

North Carolina’s unique pottery tradition is lavishly illustrated in this catalog of the collection of the Mint Museums of Charlotte, N.C. Each potter’s biography, genealogy and work history is included with an example of the work of each as well as details about individual pieces, such as size, glaze, distinguishing marks, provenance and intended use. 

 The collections include traditional utilitarian wares from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, transitional or “fancy” wares made during the first half of the Twentieth Century and contemporary objects. The collection includes objects from the four major pottery-producing areas of the state: Moravian settlements, Seagrove, the Catawba Valley and the mountains.

Essays by collector and patron Daisy Wade Bridges, scholar Charles G. Zug III, gallery director Charlotte V. Brown, potter Mark Hewitt and curator and editor Barbara Stone Perry survey the history and significance of one of North Carolina’s best-known art form.                            —AK