Women's Clothing-Black Theme

I moved onto Ladies clothing, keeping in one color, black. I have gone through many black tops or bodices as they were called that would go with long skirts. Many were missing the skirts to them, but there have been some pairs as well. I have found in the black women's clothing that there are many capes. This brings up the question of why have so many people donated capes. The one I could find a donating file for was from a man, probably a husband or son who donated it. This is interesting to me because it was not just women donating capes, but men as well. Its a curious reasoning for why we, Americans, keep certain things to late donate then others. Capes, maybe like top hats, were worn like an everyday jacket we have today. I wonder if they were simply kept because of this everyday use or possibly because they had a special fancy appeal that was worn only for special occasions, this might have compelled people to save them because they were only used for special evenings out.

Most of the capes are in good condition and a lot of them are of velvet fabric some with sleeve holes and others without. The black capes will be an interesting part of the collection to see assessed. I wonder if in our files and research we will find a cape worn by a prominent lady in Lancaster society back in the late 19th century, where most of them are pin pointed to come from. With each part of the collection that I catalog and research there will be interesting questions like these that will help lead me to my own assessment of the collection. The five hundred pieces or so that a yet to come may help answer questions about pieces in the beginning. I am excited to see my knowledge build.

Military Uniforms and Processes

My cataloging began with Military uniforms. The uniforms were some what unorganized as far as pieces that were donated together. I first had to pick a process of cataloging, which entailed more tags and my own IC # that I could identify. This was because there are other numbers and descriptions on the uniforms/clothing from years before. My job was to decipher whether the uniforms were from a certain war or just those who served in between. Many of the uniforms were from world war one and even some from the Spanish American war.

I found a very interesting peach type shirt that contained a very old sewing kit inside of it. It was just another small treasure that makes it neat to look through the clothing, even military uniforms that I never would have put on the top of my interesting clothing list.

The process is working well with cataloging and keeping a separate description with each piece I number. This descriptions contains the year, type of material, wearer, and donor. I include any other information that might help us to link the unknown pieces to other files later down the road. I have placed the military clothing in their own section at the beginning of the storage area. Some are put aside to make room for the next part of the clothing, which is women's clothing (black) now. I will be trying to organize by color and possibly style/year once mostly everything is numbered and organized better. I am moving through the clothing at a good pace and I am excited to see the next process come to life.

My only struggle is with the types of fabric. I am going to read up on different fabrics to get better at identifying them. Women's clothing will be a challenge in this respect because a lot of them are a mixture of many different fabrics. It is very interesting to have a puzzle to fit together and I am definitely up to the challenge.

Introduction to my CLothing/Material Independent study

I have begun my journey with cataloging and curatorial work. I started my independent study January 14, the same as my other in class courses. I volunteered here over the summer so I have a good idea of where most things are, which helped when I began to catalog the clothing collection. The decision was made, here at the Lancaster Historical Society, to catalog and organize the clothing so it can be assessed in August. This cataloging and organization is job with the help of the curator, Barry Rauhauser.

On my first day I jumped right into cataloging of the first rack of clothing, military uniforms. A lot of the jackets, shirts, and pants were with out specific owner tags or great accession numbers, so my job is to go on a research hunt for background information, without background information it will be hard to say whether a Naval Jacket from World War two is worth anything or not. Each item is special, not so much monetarily, but to Lancaster county in some way. This is most of what my job entails, finding out who, where, and why they wore it.

One of the first pieces I cataloged was a Red Cross uniform worn by a woman in World War one. The piece came with an envelope attached including a name written on the front. Inside the envelope was a picture of her and other women she served with during the war. This seemed so much more like finding treasures then just old pieces of clothing. When I describe my interest to family, friends, and fellow classmates I try to present it in that light because not everyone finds things such as these as fascinating as I do. Some day I hope to work in a museum to create exhibits or possibly serve the public as kind of a history informant. I like dealing with people so some how I want to be on the public aspect of historical or museum work. I hope this independent study will put me on a solid path to attaining a career that is right for me.