Exhibits

First Exhibit- Walking in the Shoe’s of a …

In the first exhibit (Fall) I chose to group  (opposite side of glass class) the shoes, card case, and in the glass case the assembly gown, 18^th century waistcoat and 19^th century waistcoat, day dress, dolman, and half of the quilt. The reason that I picked these items first was because in the second exhibit excluding the quilt that is in it everything has to do with weddings. I thought that viewers can go through the exhibit as a title of “Walking in the shoes of/at a…” and depending what the object is a person can relate to it how it fits them.  Examples:

Shoes- Walking in the shoes of a…Centennial Celebration

Assembly Gown- Walking in the shoes of A..Woman celebrating the Centennial

19^th Century Waist Coat-Walking in the shoes of an upper class man

Day Dress- Walking in the shoes of a woman an upper class woman

Dolman- Walking in the shoes of a..Single woman- 1884

18th-Century Waistcoat-Walking in the shoes of a Captain

Exhibit 1

Second Exhibit- Wedding Theme

In the second exhibit (Spring) I choose to group all the items that had something to do with a wedding. The top hat, corset, combination of wedding gowns, the 1850’s wedding gown and the trousseau dress. This would obviously be a wedding theme, along with having the quilt being there too. In this display however, we would display the entire quilt.

Exhibit 2

Smelling an Exhibit

In today’s society we find distinctions betweens social classes, races, genders, etc. mainly by seeing these things with our eyes. Did you ever stop to consider that smell is also a factor in these distinctions? According to Mark M. Smith and his book Sensing the Past he describes in his chapter about “Smell” that we do and people have for hundreds of years classified things, objects, people, and events according to smell. Here is an example to better understand this notion. Imagine you are walking in a park and you smell garbage the entire time you are there. You might not stay long at the park and you might assume that the park is not kept clean due to the fact that the neighborhood/town it is in does not have a lot of money. Therefore the up keeping of the park is poor. Now imagine that you are in the same park and you smell flowers instead. This would probably cause you to stay longer and to assume that the neighborhood/town has money to keep the park clean. Without consciously realizing it these smells have caused you to associate social/economically issues in the surrounding area of the park and assuming things because of a smell.

Odors that are pleasant to smell are usually associated with wealthier people. Whereas odors that make you want to hold your noise or even gag are associated with the lower class. These distinctions have been going on for years. We don’t often think about it but when we do carefully we can see how we often judge others and create stereotypes depending on what we smell.

It would be pretty neat if we could find a way in our exhibit that created a smell to relate with each object or the exhibit as a whole. You could take that many different routes to this approach. Perhaps you can have the smell of the event or place the person was wearing the object at. You could also have the smell of the place they purchased it at. It would be pretty interested to somehow incorporate a smell or smells in the experience of an exhibit. In the case of my dress since it was worn by Fianna Grube who lived on a farm the smell would probably unfortunately be manure. However luckily for the exhibit the wedding was in January and most likely you wouldn’t be able to smell anything on the farms. 

Hide and Seek: The truth of your body

In the Book The Prosthetic Impulse by Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra there is an essay called “The Vulnerable Articulate which I found to have an interesting relation to certain objects we have and use today in our world. This essay has a letter in it from 1907 from a woman who had just received a prosthetic leg and how grateful she was for it. Her friends did not even recognize her since she had been known to always have a crutch. What struck my attention was when Smith said, “This is a perfect instance of the history of the development of prosthetic technology as it stands and falls on its ability to play hide- and- seek with the truth.”(49). Playing hide-and –seek with the truth, isn’t this something that most of us do? For the prosthetic leg is helping the woman walk and she can cover it up with her clothes. The process of putting the leg on is in the privacy of her home. Unless she verbally tells someone who she does not know that she has a fake leg nobody but herself would know that under her pants or under her skirt is a prosthetic leg. However this leg makes her feel good inside that she can now “pass” as being or at least looking normal to those on the outside.

This brings me to the article “Active Ingredients,” by Dan Rose. Rose talks about a man taking a shower and the process of showering when he then gets shampoo in eyes. This causes him to then look at the shampoo and read the directions and to see that is named Head and Shoulders by the Proctor Gamble Company. Washing your hair with a specific shampoo can actually have the same affect as a woman putting on a prosthetic leg. Here is how: The act of taking a shower and washing your hair is done privately. While in the shower it doesn’t matter what shampoo you use but it cleans your hair. Once your hair dries afterward your hair looks clean and can even make it glow. There is a process of getting your hair to have that affect and to most likely make you feel good about yourself and that act takes place in the privacy of your home.

Objects ranging from all kinds from prosthetic body parts to shampoos and body cleansing products there are company’s creating objects that are used privately in order hide the truth. We all use products that hide the truth and people have been for hundreds of years. Think about a woman’s corset. A woman wore a corset to change the shape of her body. I’m not sure if Fianna Grube wore a corset with her wedding dress but considering the year she was married 1856 it wouldn’t be surprising. The way her dress was tight at the top and the skirt flowed could have also shaped her body and was able to hide the truth of her body as well.

Blue Jeans

Who would think that there is so much to uncover behind a pair of blue jeans? I would have never even thought about any type of relationship to blue jeans and people if it wasn’t for the book Blue Jeans, The Art of the Ordinary by Daniel Miller and Sophie Woodard. Blue jeans are something that a lot of us wear frequently. Not only blue jeans but clothes in general. What is it that influences us to wear what we wear? One of the ideas that Miller talks about is the relationship between parent and child. I agree that parents have an influence on what children wear. As the child grows up their choices still might reflect the influences of the earlier years one way or another. Darren is a man who is interviewed in the book along with his father about their clothing choices. Although the two men might not now wear the same type of thing, both of them tend to wear things that make them stand out. Darren’s father claims that this is because of him and that his son now does that same thing, wearing clothing that makes him stand out. That influence of Darren’s father when he was a kid is the reason that Darren dresses the way that he does now.

When I think about the Fianna Grube’s wedding dress, I am curious if her mother, father, or even fiancé at the time had any influence of the color, style etc of the dress. Perhaps her mother wore a dress such as the one that she did. Maybe Martin Peiffer preferred his bride to be in blue and brown and that is why she chose those colors. Fianna could have be influenced not by a person but by fashion in her day from reading Godey’s Lady Book and Magazine. We will never know for sure why Fianna chose the dress that she did, perhaps it was just because she liked it and it was comfortable for her.

In Miller and Woodard's book he finds out something that most of the people who he interviewed had something in common and that was that jeans are comfortable to wear. People wear certain things because that is what makes them feel comfortable. This feeling of comfort then eases the mind. Interesting, how the articles of clothing you are wearing can make you feel a specific way. Think about the clothes that you choose to wear and how they make you feel. Fianna’s wedding dress may have been comfortable for most brides it was probably made not for comfort but for her to feel beautiful. 

Captions..Deciding on a Theme

The girl next door, Fianna Grube wore this handmade wedding gown at age the of nineteen. She married her neighbor Martin Peiffer 18 years older than her in Salunga, Pennsylvania on January 22^nd, 1856 prior to the Civil War. Mennonite farmers, fairly wealthy, raised six children on their Lancaster Co. Farm.

In this caption I tried to depict a more overall story of the people and the place of  where the wedding gown came from. I chose my first words to be “The girl next door” because I think that those words could interest people considering it is a common phrase that is used. And due to the evidence Fianna was the next door neighbor to Martin Peiffer in Salunga, PA. I think that putting the age may capture the interest of the audience as well, putting a “wow” factor into the statement. This could cause some humor thinking that, the girl next door was really the little girl next door to Martin Peiffer. Having the date in the caption is extremely important in order to give viewers an idea of the time. Also mentioning that they were Mennonite farmers gains viewers who do not know what Mennonites are to want to learn and helps others who know what Mennonites are to understand better their way of life.

Here comes the bride! All Dressed in…Not White! Nineteen-year-old Mennonite woman, Fianna Grube wore this fashionably handmade wedding gown when she married her farmer neighbor who was 18 years older than her during the winter of 1856 in Salunga, PA. Mennonites are known to be plain, simple, and farmers which indicates the simple and plainness of the gown.

I used a different approach to this caption with the first sentence trying to capture attention from the audience using the song that goes “here comes the bride, all dressed in white.”  I still find it important to mention how Fianna and her husband were neighbors and were Mennonites so I added them into the description as well.

This handmade wedding gown was worn by a nineteen year old woman in 1856 who was married by a Mennonite Reverend in Salunga, Pa. The bride’s Mennonite religion caused her to choose blue and brown silk for her wedding day to a man on a neighboring farm.

This caption I decided not use any names of the people who were involved with the wedding dress. This makes the story a little less personal than the ones above. I think that after our class on Monday and our discussion in class I will have a better idea of the caption that I think will be the best fit for the exhibit. I also think that I might inquire some more information about Fianna Grube and her family that I may choose to change my captions around.

The Girl Next Door

           When assigned the blue and brown wedding gown from Drexel University’s Historical Costume Collection, there was an article that went along with the dress. The article is from The Richmond News Leader on August 26th of 1974. The article talks about how Mrs. Donald Buckley formally Martha Elizabeth Lees wore this gown that has been passed down through the generations but making her only the second woman to wear the dress. The article has the name of the married woman who originally wore the dress on the date of January 22, 1856 in Lancaster, PA. The woman’s married name was Mrs. Martin Peiffer. ("Wedding Dress Spans Generations" 1974) Newspaper records from the Lancaster Examiner and Herald and The Lancaster Intelligencer and Weekly Advertiser confirm that on the 22^nd of January in 1856 that Martin Peiffer of West Hempfield, PA married Fianna Grube of East Hempfield, PA. The originally owner of this wedding gown is Miss Fianna Grube.

            According to the records in the “Personal Records of J.J. Strine” the Mennonite Reverend Strine married the couple on the date of January 22^nd, 1856. It does not say or suggest where the ceremony took place and how many people attended. During this time era you did not need to have a Pennsylvania marriage license to get married. Strine was known to always be ready and willing to marry people that you could knock on his front door and he would marry you there. Due to the fact that Reverend J.J. Strine was a Mennonite other evidence provides us to believe that both Fianna Grube’s family and Martin Pieffer’s family were Mennonites as well. (Weiser et al. 2001) Mennonites have been known to be people who live a simple life where most live and work on farms (Durnbaugh 2003).

            When researching Fianna Peiffer (formally Fianna Grube) in the 1880 East Hempfield, Lancaster, PA Census it displays the Peiffer family members, their age, and occupations. The document indicates that this information was recorded on June 1^st, 1880 in East Hempfield Township, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This lets us know that Martin and Fianna have been married for twenty-four years since they were married in 1856. It shows that Martin Peiffer (Fianna Grube’s husband and the head of the household) at age 61 and his occupation is a farmer. Fianna is listed at age 43 as the wife and her occupation is “keeping home.” There are five children listed on the census. Emma Peiffer (age 22), Martin Peiffer (age 20), John Peiffer (age 19), Fianna Peiffer (age 12), Mary Peiffer (age 11). All of the children are listed as “at home”. Another woman was listed on the census as Elizabeth Grube (age 81) under “Mother-in-law”. There was one last person listed under the Peiffer household and that was Annie Becker (age 22) under “servant.”  (CENSUS)

            After finding this information I was able to find the 1864 Bridgens’ Atlas of Lancaster, Co. that had the names of families and where they lived. As I found the area of Salunga, Pa and East and West Hempfield, there was something extraordinary to the story of Fianna Grube. The name Grube and M.B. Peiffer are located right next to each other on the map. This could mean several things. Considering this map was recorded in 1864 the couple had been married for almost ten years. It could have been a possibility that Fianna’s father had moved next to the Peiffer farm within those ten years or that the Peiffer’s moved next to the Grube’s farm. However the likely case is that the Peiffer and Grube families had lived next to each other and that is how and why Fianna and Martin Peiffer met and came to marry each other. Fianna could be considered as “The girl next door,” to Martin or “The little girl next door” considering the census records displays that the couple was 18 years apart.

            Since the wedding was in January of 1856, I looked back at newspaper articles in 1855 to see if I could find anything that had to deal with fashion and why Fianna might have had a wedding dress as she did. I came across a small article in the Lancaster Intelligencer on November 6^th, 1855 titled “Still Greater Attraction.” This article discussed a book and magazine that was basically a guide for women. The magazine is called Godey’s Lady Book. The article described the upcoming magazine stories that would be out in January 1856 where it talked about fashion. Considering that Fianna was getting married then, this means she would have had to get her dress made before that Godey’s Lady Book Volume 52 came in out. With this information I then looked up “Godey’s Lady Book Volume 51: From July to December 1855.” Since the Lancaster Intelligencer was a newspaper that was available to Fianna it would be possible that by seeing the ads for Godey’s Lady Book she decided to get the issues herself.

            With Godey’s Lady Book and Magazine we are able to compare the style, design, and color to Fianna’s wedding gown. There is a picture in the magazine that has the same style of sleeves that Fianna has on her gown. The sleeves are layered with fringe on each layer just as Fianna’s sleeve are. There is also another picture of a woman wearing a dress with the skirt of the dress alternating colors just as the skirt of Fianna’s dress is. The designs on Fianna’s under sleeves match designs that are displayed in this magazine issue. All of this indicates that Fianna’s gown was fashionable. Although we can not be sure if it was her who saw these designs or a friend or family member, we can be sure that she was fashionable due to the fact that her gown resembled pictures in Godey’s Lady Book. Along with that we can not be certain if it was Fianna or another member of her family or friends who made this dress we are pretty certain that the dress was handmade. The stitching in the dress is not straight resembling that this was not factory produced. Having a dress such as the one Fianna had means that most likely her family had a good amount of money in order for us to be able to compare it to designs in Godey’s Lady Book and Magazine. (Hale et al. 1855)

            In the article from 1974 from the Richmond News Leader along with the dress there is a reference of a woman who was the owner of it at the time that it was given to Drexel University and the name was Miriam Kendig. However the name Miriam Kendig was then crossed out. This could possibly be the previous owner since I found in the book Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage that Emma Peiffer (the oldest daughter of Martin and Fianna Peiffer) married Benjamin Emmet Kendig a doctor in the Salunga area. This could mean that Fianna passed down her wedding gown to her oldest daughter Emma and it was then kept in her family and passed down to her daughters making its way to Martha Elizabeth Lees of Chester who was the second person to wear the dress before it came to Drexel University’s Historic Costume Collection.

Works Cited

1. Bridgens, H.F. “1864 Bridgens’ Atlas of Lancaster, Co. Penna from Actual Surveys by H.F. Bridgens and Assistant. H.F Bridgens No. 38, Hudson Street Philadelphia. Pg 26.

2. Durnbaugh, Donald F. “Mennonites.” Dictionary of American History. Ed. Stanley I. Kutler. 3^rd ed. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003. 309-310 Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 27 Oct. 2012.

4. Hale , Sarah J., and Louis A. Godey. Gode'ys Lady Book and Magazine: Volume LI.From July-December 1856 . Philadelphia: 1855. http://books.google.com/books?id=K8ZMAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0

5. "Marriages.." Lancaster Examiner and Herald (PA), January 30, 1856.

6. "Marriages.." Lancaster Intelligencer & Weekly Advertiser, January 29, 1856.

7. Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage Volume 25-Number 1. Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society, 2002.

8. "STILL Greater Attractions." Lancaster Intelligencer & Weekly Advertiser, November 6, 1855. http://digitalnewspapers.libraries.psu.edu/Default/Skins/civilwar/Client.asp?skin=civilwar&AW=1351450368212&AppName=2 (accessed October 26, 2012).

9. “Wedding Dress Spans Generations." Richmond News Leader, Monday 08, 1974.

10. Weiser, Fredericks, and Debra D. Smith . Personal Marriage Records of Reverend J.J Strine 1815-1870. Apollo, PA: Closson Press, 2001.

11. Year: 1880; Census Place: East Hempfield, Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Roll; 1141; Family History Film: 1255141; Page 1A; Enumeration Disctric; 122; Image: 0004.

Clothing: It Does Speak To Us

Have you ever looked at someone or a picture of someone and judged them by what they are wearing? Most likely we are all guilty of this. This has been going on for hundreds probably even thousands of years. We go back to the story of Marx’s Coat by Peter Stallybrass and how in the 1850’s Marx, who had to pawn his overcoat knew that it would affect his status in society and even opportunities. Since it was winter time and the weather was cold, without an overcoat to wear people who did not know Marx would classify him as a poor, unworthy, uneducated man. Although he may have been poor Marx was a writer, which meant he was at least somewhat educated. Marx needed to make money and he needed to go to the British Museum in order to research to help him write.  However without that overcoat he would not be allowed in. This reminds me of certain places we have today. Certain places such as restaurants, dance clubs, country clubs, and lounges have dress codes. If you are not dressed a certain way than you are not allowed in the establishment. Even if you have a ticket you will be denied access and most likely judged by people around you who are going in and out, just as Marx would be without his overcoat.

This brings me to the other reading from this past week and that is the “Clothing as Language: An Object Lesson in the Study of the Expressive Properties of Material Culture” by Grant McCracken. Think about the first three words of this chapter, “Clothing as Language.” Isn’t it true? Clothing is like a language. When you see an article of clothing anywhere, whether in a store or on a person, does it not speak to you in some way? You interpret something from it. In McCracken’s research he surveyed several people by showing them articles of clothing and gave them a list of vocabulary words to choose from to identify what type of person they think would wear it.

The first time I saw the wedding dress assigned to me I thought about who I thought would wear this. Since it is blue and brown and somewhat shiny I thought that probably a middle class woman wore it. That was all just going off what I first saw. When we first see an article of clothing we get a first impression. We need to remember that just like a first impression with a person that after the first impression with an article of clothing there is still so much we do not know. If we take the time to get to know and research the piece we may uncover things that have been waiting to be uncovered for years. This past week I went to the Historical Society in Lancaster, PA where I have uncovered things about the dress that by just looking at it you would never be able to tell.

8 Outfit Changes a Day!

I used to think I was crazy when I would change my outfit three times of day, when I went to work, when I was working out, and clothes to wear after I was done working out. After reading Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century by Philippe Perrot I am enlightened to know that changing my outfit three times a day is nothing compared to the amount of times women in the nineteenth changed their outfits. These women of “high society” changed their outfits anywhere from seven to eight times a day. They changed them depending on the time of the day. Outfits differed from breakfast to walks to lunch to shopping to dinners and so on. There was an outfit for every occasion. These is really fascinating considering that in our costume collection that will be exhibited at Drexel University we will have on display many of these types of outfits that women changed into throughout the day.

Another thing that caught my interest that is discussed in Perrot’s book along with the article “Dress” in the Oxford Art Library is the garments that were made in order to shape a person’s body, especially women. Going back to all of those women who changed their outfits numerous times a day there was a process to all of this madness of dressing and looking the way they did. Before they put on the outer garments they put on garments underneath, garments that shaped their body to what was in style at that time. In my opinion the most outrageous garment was the corset. The corset shapes the mid section of the body changing throughout the years. Although it might have made the woman look beautiful and elegant it wasn’t always that safe. It could and in fact did damage the bodies of young girls and women. There will be a corset on display in the costume collection at Drexel University.

When analyzing the wedding dress that I am researching I can only imagine that the bride was very petite considering that an article I have on the dress describes it being a size 5. Could it be that the bride was actually a size 7 or 8 but was squeezed into a corset? Absolutely, considering this dress was worn in 1856 and corsets were worn more often than not during that time. 

Here Comes The Bride

When I was a child I was never interested in museums except for the ones that were hands-on especially when museums where I didn’t have to read much. However as I got older I began to appreciate museums and wanted to learn from the exhibits and displays that were in them.

It takes a lot of time, thought, and dedication when it comes to putting a museum exhibit together. Museum exhibits want to create interest in people in order for them to learn about the object or objects and somehow relate to them. That is very difficult to do considering every person has different interests. That is why labels are extremely important when creating an exhibit. Museum labels are not as easy to write as someone might think. There are label-writing competitions in order to help writers enhance and get ideas on how to create labels that will interest their visitors.

In Exhibit Labels: An Interpretive Approach by Beverly Serrell, she talks about how title labels are what captures a visitor to become interested in reading more about the object. This got me thinking on what I should title the wedding dress I am studying in order to really gain the interest of the visitors to want to read and learn more. Perhaps something such as “Here Comes the Bride.” I’m thinking that this could lead people to get the song in their head that goes “Here comes the bride all dressed in white,” and as they sing it realize this dress is not white, why not? This could cause them to wonder and want to read more as Ken Yellis points out in is an important factor in “Fred Wilson, PTSD, and Me: Reflections on the History Wars.”

This interest can cause a person to become so interested and want to know everything about the dress, which is the goal. In the article “Exhibit Makeovers: Do-It-Yourself,” by Alice Parman, she describes the theories of Alfred North Whitehead and his ideas on how a person who falls in love with an object will want know everything about it, which he calls the stage of Romance. In order for a person to read any further into it they need to fall in love with it. I think that if you first look at my wedding dress you would not think that it was a wedding dress. When I first saw it I was shocked at the colors it was, brown and blue. Since today’s society tends to think of a wedding dress as white or ivory I think that the title of “Here Comes the Bride,” will intrigue visitors to read more on what they are seeing.  

A Rose Blanket: Response to Readings

There are so many things in the world today that we overlook not realizing that if we take some time we might find some history in them. Things such as architecture, the objects inside of the structure along with landscape. These things can provide us with information of the way people lived, what they did, and how or why they did things.            

I found it to be quite shocking and interesting when reading “The Architecture of Racial Segregation: The Challenges of Preserving the Problematical Past,” by Robert Weyeneth and “White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia,” by Dell Upton. The reason I find it to be shocking and interesting is because this is the first time that I thought of how architecture and landscape have the ability to be objects of study and help us learn about history, especially the topic of segregation. Both of these articles discussed the different ways in which architecture and landscape segregated blacks and whites. For instance on plantations the main house was for the white owner and the other smaller buildings around the main house were used for slaves for either work or their living quarters. By studying all of these objects we can get a glimpse of how both whites and blacks lived on a plantation. The things that were used in these buildings can help us identify how life was different for whites and blacks. Not only is a plantation example but also at the time the Jim Crow Laws were enacted and “separate but equal” was considered to be fair we can see that by certain architecture, objects in these structures, and landscapes that everything was not equal and fair. That is an important part of our history but one many do not like to bring up or talk about. However, the evidence of these objects speaks more than written documents.

Going back to the 1800’s objects that were used in homes and/or businesses explain to us a lot about history as well. For example, the spinning wheel. The women of New England used the spinning wheel to create clothes, fabrics, and other “fancy works” that were used in that time era. The object that I studied in the book The Age of Homespun, by Lauren Thatcher Ulrich was a rose blanket. The rose blanket was becoming quite popular and they were being seen and sold all over the country due to production factories with power machinery. However the particular blanket in this book was a homemade one determined by the fact that there is a center seam, which identifies it was homemade. The person who created this blanket had probably seen friends or neighbors with one but couldn’t afford to buy one and therefore made one. This makes me wonder if the wedding gown I am researching was homemade because the women couldn’t afford to buy one. Therefore through my research I will be looking to find similar wedding gowns made in the 1850’s that were produced in a factory by machinery. This will be able to help me perhaps understand the reasoning for creating the homemade wedding gown the way it is. 

Response to Readings

 Kenneth L. Ames did a fantastic job in describing the layout of a 19^th Century Victorian house in his article “Meaning in Artifacts: Hall Furnishings in Victorian America. I was able close my eyes and specifically visual the hallways with furniture and the décor that was most likely displayed in these upper-middle class homes. The piece of furniture that I found to be appealing was the hallstand. This piece of furniture was huge and usually in the front of the hall placed where everyone who entered the house could see it.  The residents hung and placed objects on the hallstand that were used frequently such as coats and hats or displayed items of some type of sentimental value to them on the shelves for all to see. Mirrors were also sometimes attached to the hallstands enabling those to get a glimpse of their self when entering or exiting the house.

Since hairwork was extremely popular in Victorian American I envisioned that perhaps a friendship album or hairwork album discussed in “Love Entwined, The Curious History of Hairwork in America,” by Helen Sheumaker would be an object placed on a hallstand. Hairwork would represent a person so intimately since it was a piece of their body. Depending on friends who might have sent the resident of the house their hairwork with their hair and a personal note attached, a friendship album or hairwork album could be a tremendous object to show off to their guests their status in society by the people they knew.

Hairwork was something that was handmade and usually made by women.  This gave extreme value to it especially if it was made for someone as a gift, such as hair jewelry or a hair wreath made of family members hair. Handmade objects meant that time and hard work was put into. It made that object have a personal meaning for the person who was receiving it. The 1856 wedding gown that I am researching this semester was handmade. Perhaps the woman who wore the wedding gown had a hallstand in her home and was able to get a last look at herself before she exited the house on her way to her wedding ceremony.

Women would create their hairwork pieces at home but once completed some were lucky enough to have their items displayed in public. Whether or not the entire town had a chance to see their work they would still display it in their homes allowing all of their guests to admire it’s beauty. This reminded me of the wedding gown. Although it was made at home and took time and hard work it was made for the bride to wear in public for people to notice and admire it.

As Karin Dannehl describes in her article “Object Biographies,” every object like a person has a story of how it was made and the purpose for which it was made. The object when we see it now will never again be like the object it was when it was first created because it has gone through its stages of life. However we can still get a grasp of the purpose and history of the object.

My Response to "In Small Things Forgotten" by James Deetz and "Building in the Wood in the Eastern United State; A Time-Place Perspective" by Fred B Kniffen & Henry Glassie

 It wasn’t until the first day of this class that I had ever really thought about how objects play a huge role in understanding a culture. The saying that comes to my mind is “maybe what you are looking for has been in front of you the whole time.” I find that to be especially true after reading the book “In Small Things forgotten,” by James Deetz and the article “Building in Wood in the Eastern United States: A Time-Place Perspective,” by Fred B, Kniffen and Henry Glassie. In “Small Things Forgotten,” Deetz chooses several objects to analyze and explains how we can learn about a culture from it. Sometimes if you’re lucky you can pick up an object and there might just be a date on it. How about that for a start? However, that is not always the case. Deetz talked about ceramics, houses, and what I thought was most interesting, gravestones and how we can analyze these objects to understand a culture.

Most but not all gravestones have the date of when a person was born and the date that they died. Having the date that they died is extremely helpful in understanding why types of gravestones, materials, and designs might have been made during that specific time. We can only assume that the gravestone was made around the date in which the death occurred. That is something that I had never once thought about but that is truly in the reach of our hands to explore and research. Deetz takes us through several carvers’ designs and the evolution of them throughout the 1700’s in the New England area. Each carver was from a different area. Some carvers may have only been several miles away but the technique they used was sometimes completely different from the other. Back then they did not have technology to communicate with one another about what they were doing or how they were making their gravestones. Think about today, once you create something new you can instantly put it online and someone from all the way across the world can adapt your idea. Do you think that in the future the objects that we use today can be studied to understand our culture too?

This past week when I saw for the first time the wedding gown that I will be researching, I got lucky! Why? Because there was a tag stitched inside the gown with the name of the woman who wore it and the date when she wore it, January 22^nd, 1856. Sometimes all we have to do is pick up something and look at it. From an article that came with it, it stated that the women was married in Lancaster, PA. I will be able to research that specific area and perhaps generate the information on why the dress was made the way it was for a woman living there.

It is these things that are right in front of us that are clues waiting to be unveiled to give us a better understanding of how and why people lived and did the things they did. 

Object Analysis Method

After reading the articles that were assigned to us in class I was able to learn and become familiar with different types of methodologies that have been used in studying material culture. I find it interesting that there is not one concrete way to research this field but the ways that are discussed in these articles are very similar to each other. My approach is to take ideas and steps from several of the articles and to combine them in order to create a multi-step method in researching the history of the object that I have been given, a wedding gown. I particularly took steps that related to clothing or steps that I felt could be great guides when researching an article of clothing.

The first step that I will use is “Description” which comes from Jules Prown, “Mind in Matter; An introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method.” This first step is simply looking at the dress and describing in the best detail what I see first hand, from the material/materials that were used to colors and details on the gown. I will also incorporate from Joan Severa and Merrill Horswill’s article, “Costume as Material Culture,” the Design and Construction step they have in their outline. This step by Severa and Horswill is a great guide for analyzing particular areas of a dress and in this case a wedding gown. The basic elements which include bodice, sleeve, and skirt will be the sections where I focus on the shape and measurements. This step only focuses on the dress itself as an object.

The second step will come from E. McClung Flemings article, “A proposed Model,” and it will include one of his five properties, “History”. Since I was provided the year of the wedding gown which is 1856 I will research any more information I can find out about that year with women’s dresses, and specifically wedding gowns. I will look to research the person who made the gown and who they were making it for. Perhaps I will be able to use “fashion plates” as mentioned in Severa and Horswill’s articles to get an understanding of the style during that time period.

Following the “Description” and “History” step, the next step will come from one of E. McClung Fleming’s operations, “Cultural Analysis” which is also from the same article, “A Proposed Model.” This is the time where the description of the gown and the history of that time period cross over one another. Here is where I will analyze the relationship between the two forming hypothesis’s of the culture in which it was created. Crossing those two subjects over can tell you a lot about a culture. For instance depending on the stich of material we might be able to tell if it was stitched by hand or perhaps a machine. All of this stuff relates back to the people and the culture that they were living in at the time the gown was created. In this step I will also take several other wedding gowns and compare them with the one I am researching. I intend to particularly look at the colors chosen in the gown and what they might resemble. Doing this will help me to find similarities and differences which could ultimately lead to information to the social status of someone who might have worn a gown such as this one. My main interests lie in determining the social status of a women with this particular wedding gown.

The final step I will use in my method is again from E. McClungs Fleming’s article “A proposed Model” and it is also his final operation step which is “Interpretation.” Based on all of the information found about gown, the history, and the culture, at this point I will interpret the meaning of everything, from my perspective on the facts I have researched. Depending on the person who researched the object the interpretation can differ depending on their interest. That is why studying material artifacts is important when researching the history of cultures.

            Since the goal of this research is to ultimately create an exhibit, I have chosen steps from methods that I feel will best suit the research of my specific object, a wedding gown. All of the methods that were mentioned in the articles are all great guides when studying any material object to find out the history of its culture. However, some steps I felt were not relevant in researching my object in the amount of time that will be given to do it. Therefore I chose steps that I felt would provide my audience the best history of the gown when admiring it as an exhibit. 

Statement of Purpose

           In December of 2011, as I graduated from Temple’s School of Tourism and Hospitality Management, I felt a great amount of joy and pride in the achievement of my bachelor’s degree in Sports Management.  While being in the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management with a concentration in Sport, I was able to research and explore the sports industry. As I was required to complete a 600 hour, 10 credit full-time internship along with a 3 credit research project, I took the initiative to explore an unfamiliar place to me. I decided to approach Arizona State University about inquiring an internship that was not yet a position. They accepted my offer to be an intern in the Athletic Equipment Department and  it was there that I was able to take what I learned in the classroom and apply it to the sports industry. The purpose of my research project was to show the need for a full-time intern in the athletic equipment department at Arizona State. After months of thorough research I was able to present my results to the ASU Athletic Department, not just as an academic project but as a true proposal. This project was my proudest achievement at Temple and it allowed me to see how much I enjoy doing research that ultimately will benefit others.

            Recently I have become a Graduate Extern for the Athletic Equipment Department at Temple University.  Since I was lucky enough to find a job I love in the industry that I studied during my undergrad I felt it was time to pursue another passion of mine, poetry. The Master of Liberal Arts program was the perfect fit for me. I believe that poetry is created through any type of inspiration. The idea that I can take so many different classes and learn about a wide variety of topics and issues will only open up my world to more inspiration. This well rounded view should one day help me to achieve my ultimate goal of one day publishing a book of poetry. Taking Studies of American Material Culture class is giving me the opportunity to explore an area that I have never studied before. I am extremely excited to research about the history of an object from Drexel University's Historic Costume Collection and to work with people who’s passion is in American material culture to help create an exhibit to be on display for all to see.  There is no question in my mind that engaging in this class and working with passionate people will be a huge asset through the journey of my poetry inspirations.