La Bricoleuse

Judy Adamson's period pattern class is doing 20th Century Women's Wear by decade and they presented their first round of projects last week! Take a look:
( Read more... )

Classes are officially over and many of our students have already left for their summer jobs, but there are a trio of period pattern half-forms in the hallway from their last project, so i thought i'd photograph them and share them.

I've got some ideas brewing for a series of Ask LaBricoleuse posts coming up. Our 3rd-years are graduating, one of whom did her MFA with a Crafts Artisanship focus, and they're my first class of students who are going out into the job market having taken craftwork classes with me. I was thinking to myself (because i will miss them and cannot wait to see where their careers go), what do i wish my professors had told me when i got out of school? What advice would i go back and give myself, if i could, and what knowledge do i want to impart that i haven't already?

Because the courses i teach cover skills, artisanship, artistry, and craft--how to do things, how things were historically done, how to create beautiful costume items that will hold up for stage and screen. I don't get to cover practical information about working in this field, stuff like the value of recordkeeping or tips on working various kinds of jobs at various levels of production, etc. I don't presume to do anything on a "Randy Pausch's Last Lecture" sort of scale--i'm not dying and i'm speaking from 15 years of professional experience, not like, on the back end of a 40-year career or whatever. Still, 15 years has taken me a lot of places, so like i said, it's brewing.

But i digress! Pictures!

( smart ladies dresses from the teens )

Sometimes i like to go to the university library and just peruse the shelves, looking for some serendipitous treasure of information. I'll look up a book on a given topic in the catalogue to give myself a starting point, then just wander around browsing the shelves in its aisle.

Wandering in the vicinity of an old millinery book turned up an unusual treasure of period information: an extensive survey of the dressmaking and millinery trades conducted by the Survey Committee of the Cleveland [Ohio] Foundation in 1916, written by a woman named Edna Bryner.

Sounds dry and full of statistics, doesn't it? Well, it's got its share of tables of facts-n-figures, but Ms. Bryner is a surprisingly engaging writer for a surveyor of trade and industry, clearly taking pleasure in sharing little elements that humanize her subjects, quotes and quirks and quibbles, even the odd literary reference! She expresses a care and concern for worker safety and child labor that seems unusual for the period, identifies a trend toward what might now be considered industrial espionage, and in skimming through the book i grew to wonder about its author--how old was she, had she a husband and children, was she paid well for her survey work, and had it any positive effect in the industries it addressed?

The book is actually full of fascinating information on the millinery trade of the time--hats were quite literally huge in the teens, and the way the industry is adapting to mechanization and big business is both fascinating and sad (since we know that the days of millinery as a common trade are numbered). Ms. Bryner's survey affords a comprehensive look at what a wide range of employment and specialization options were available for milliners of the era, as well as the challenges faced by various ares of the industry.

The entire publication is nearly 135 pages long, and much of the dressmaking information is irrelevant to the focus of La Bricoleuse. However, i thought my readership might enjoy the portions devoted to millinery, so i have decided to transcribe them here.

Because this publication dates from 1916, it is considered part of the public domain, so reproducing portions of it here infringes on no copyright. Credit for its contents belongs to Edna Bryner and the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation. (I'm sure everyone involved is now quite dead, but regardless it's best to place credit where credit is due.)

I hope that you find it as interesting as i do! Due to the length and breadth of information, i'll be posting it in two parts--part one is a general overview of the millinery business at the time of the survey, and part two addresses working conditions for milliners.



The Millinery Business in Cleveland


The mention of millinery immediately brings certain ideas to mind: Easter, spring hats and fall hats, small shops, flowers and feathers, and ingenious hand work. Each of these suggests an important aspect of the millinery business. For the small milliner, Easter is the most important day in the year. The mention of spring hats and fall hats makes the self-supporting worker remember the rush work of busy seasons and the unemployment of slack seasons. Flowers and feathers are typical of the immense amount of small "fixings" that go to make the hats for the feminine world. The peculiar kinds of artistic and skilled hand work demanded constitute for many ambitious workers the lure of millinery. Because of the difficulties of the work, advancement to positions offering steady employment and good wages is slow, and yet to many these same difficulties constitute a strong attraction despite the many unsatisfactory conditions that must be faced in entering millinery as a wage-earning occupation.

( If you ask in the small shop what millinery means, many milliners will tell you in the familiar phrase that 'It is making something out of nothing.'  )

* * * * *

That's it for part one! I wonder what Ms. Bryner thought when she was engaged to compile this survey and went around visiting the 45 millinery shops. Had she previously known what millinery involved "behind the scenes"? Was she excited by the process? Did she know anyone in any of the shops already? And what sort of hats did she choose to wear while surveying? I like to picture her as someone with a smiley-friendly demeanor, but shrewd and observant, taking notes in a small notebook, wearing a fairly sensible ladies boater but secretly coveting some of the undoubtedly fanciful and fabulous "'fluffy' theatre and party hats" that she saw.

What a fun combination of historical research and frivolous speculation a browse in the library has led to. Hope you enjoyed perusing it as much as i did, and if so, keep an eye out for part two, "The Conditions of Work in Millinery," which will be posted in the near future.