Mini book review and a Nickleby bonnet peek
First off, here's a book i just finished that's of note, which i read as part of my class prep for this semester!
Footnotes: On Shoes, edited by Shari Benstock and Susan Ferriss, is a collection of fourteen academic essays on the history and social significance of shoes. Topics range from the broad to the specific, from footwear as a means for establishing character in silent film, to the meaning of the brogan in African American culture and the stiletto in Latina culture, to a piece on painters who choose shoes as their subject, to a comparison of pointe shoes and lotus shoes, to the use of footwear in museum display (both in the context of the Bata Shoe Museum and at concentration camp memorial exhibits). I am a total fool for semiotic analysis of fashion--especially accessories, for obvious reasons--so much so, in fact, that i almost pursued it as a career instead of costume crafts. There was a time when i thought i might be a dramaturg with a specialization in cultural and social significance of costume. So, if that sounds like your bag, this book is for you. Not all the essays are equally great--a couple are sort of ho-hum or of dubious relevance--but overall, it's a great read. It's a particularly good commute book, in that you get through them pretty fast.
I'm up over on nicknickleby this week--my next post goes live tomorrow on the beginning process of an unusual hat we're making. It'll be kind of like when i follow a project from design to stage in here, but a bit less practical detail since it's for a general audience. I might write companion posts over here on method, we'll see how it's received.
So, in advance of that post over there, i thought i'd give y'all a sneak-peek into some bonnetry that's moved through my shop already.
These two bonnets aren't ours; they are borrowed from Wake Forest's costume collection. (Incidentally, because there are 63 hats in this show, i am actually making fewer hats than i would on a smaller show, since it's my responsibility to make sure all our rentals are both stageworthy and trimmed out according to plan.) When they arrived, their poor crowns were rather the worse for age.
Lest you think i'm bagging on WFU for their hat quality, i'm definitely not; unless you have an enormous amount of space, it's hard to store lots of hats without crowns getting dented and crushed, and these were no exception. If they're essentially decent hats (which, these are), you can freshen them up with some steam and even reblock and resize them to like-new crispness!
That's what my assistant, first-year Kaitlin Smith, and i did for these. You might remember from about a year ago, that i had a porkpie-esque divot-top block made by woodworker Robert Coleman of Charlotte, on which my student Candy McClernan blocked this 1910 fulled wool toque. We used the same block to refresh the crowns of these Wake Forest straw bonnets! The bonnet on the left is a really nice black parasisal straw, and the one on the left is a deep navy spiral-stitched vintage onionskin braid.
Aren't they sweet? I love how they look so brand-new now! I should have taken a "Before" pic, but given the size of nicknickleby, sometimes things happen lightning-fast and i don't know that i will be able to take all the process shots i might like. But, i feel that you guys can imagine these bonnets with crushed crowns while looking at them now. And, i like how you can contrast them with Candy's toque for a great example of how milliners can create many diverse hat styles using a single well-shaped block.
In other news, next week brings the first round of glove projects in my Decorative Arts class, and we're going to be moving on to parasols next! (That's a change, since i like to do shoes after gloves, but we can't do footwear without respirator training, and it's not going to get scheduled in time.) Exciting stuff! I can't wait to share their projects; they're all turning out lovely.
Footnotes: On Shoes, edited by Shari Benstock and Susan Ferriss, is a collection of fourteen academic essays on the history and social significance of shoes. Topics range from the broad to the specific, from footwear as a means for establishing character in silent film, to the meaning of the brogan in African American culture and the stiletto in Latina culture, to a piece on painters who choose shoes as their subject, to a comparison of pointe shoes and lotus shoes, to the use of footwear in museum display (both in the context of the Bata Shoe Museum and at concentration camp memorial exhibits). I am a total fool for semiotic analysis of fashion--especially accessories, for obvious reasons--so much so, in fact, that i almost pursued it as a career instead of costume crafts. There was a time when i thought i might be a dramaturg with a specialization in cultural and social significance of costume. So, if that sounds like your bag, this book is for you. Not all the essays are equally great--a couple are sort of ho-hum or of dubious relevance--but overall, it's a great read. It's a particularly good commute book, in that you get through them pretty fast.
I'm up over on nicknickleby this week--my next post goes live tomorrow on the beginning process of an unusual hat we're making. It'll be kind of like when i follow a project from design to stage in here, but a bit less practical detail since it's for a general audience. I might write companion posts over here on method, we'll see how it's received.
So, in advance of that post over there, i thought i'd give y'all a sneak-peek into some bonnetry that's moved through my shop already.
These two bonnets aren't ours; they are borrowed from Wake Forest's costume collection. (Incidentally, because there are 63 hats in this show, i am actually making fewer hats than i would on a smaller show, since it's my responsibility to make sure all our rentals are both stageworthy and trimmed out according to plan.) When they arrived, their poor crowns were rather the worse for age.
Lest you think i'm bagging on WFU for their hat quality, i'm definitely not; unless you have an enormous amount of space, it's hard to store lots of hats without crowns getting dented and crushed, and these were no exception. If they're essentially decent hats (which, these are), you can freshen them up with some steam and even reblock and resize them to like-new crispness!
That's what my assistant, first-year Kaitlin Smith, and i did for these. You might remember from about a year ago, that i had a porkpie-esque divot-top block made by woodworker Robert Coleman of Charlotte, on which my student Candy McClernan blocked this 1910 fulled wool toque. We used the same block to refresh the crowns of these Wake Forest straw bonnets! The bonnet on the left is a really nice black parasisal straw, and the one on the left is a deep navy spiral-stitched vintage onionskin braid.
Aren't they sweet? I love how they look so brand-new now! I should have taken a "Before" pic, but given the size of nicknickleby, sometimes things happen lightning-fast and i don't know that i will be able to take all the process shots i might like. But, i feel that you guys can imagine these bonnets with crushed crowns while looking at them now. And, i like how you can contrast them with Candy's toque for a great example of how milliners can create many diverse hat styles using a single well-shaped block.
In other news, next week brings the first round of glove projects in my Decorative Arts class, and we're going to be moving on to parasols next! (That's a change, since i like to do shoes after gloves, but we can't do footwear without respirator training, and it's not going to get scheduled in time.) Exciting stuff! I can't wait to share their projects; they're all turning out lovely.