Oysters, shards of glass from the sea
Tragedy: I saw this afternoon a late eighteenth-century frock coat in olive-green broadcloth that I could not heist because it had been tailored for a smaller man than myself. It was in the Concord Museum, where ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fleurdelis41 and I had gone specifically for Transformed by Revolution but the TARDIS-like galleries winding inside the externally compact brick and slate-roofed buildings were too compelling to breeze through, especially when filled with items like the Musketaquid-turtle formed of ten thousand stone years or the small brass-foxed mirror that belonged to a man who died free or a collection of objects once in the possession of Thoreau that I had no idea anyone had preserved, like a wooden box for geological specimens or a DIY Aeolian harp. A copper kettle that belonged to Louisa May Alcott. Flints dug up from the lines of battle at the not yet Old North Bridge. Embroidered scenes of the Book of Esther. A musket that was high-tech enough for the militia but not for the Continental Army. A lace-trimmed gown of India cotton in the Empire style. The gallery devoted to the Battles of Lexington and Concord was audiovisual without eliding the tactile artifacts of powder horns and flintlocks and a lantern of the Old North Church. The modern quilt was as resonant as the stone tool island. I liked the display inviting the visitor to guess from their textures the difference between imported and homemade textiles, of which the silk and the superfine were not the latter. I liked, too, Elizabeth Wentworth Roberts' Unloading Boats (1912). By our own estimate, it was our first time hanging out in person in four years. I left the gift shop with Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny by Papa (1851/2003) and a guide to trees by their leaves.
fleurdelis41 and I had gone specifically for Transformed by Revolution but the TARDIS-like galleries winding inside the externally compact brick and slate-roofed buildings were too compelling to breeze through, especially when filled with items like the Musketaquid-turtle formed of ten thousand stone years or the small brass-foxed mirror that belonged to a man who died free or a collection of objects once in the possession of Thoreau that I had no idea anyone had preserved, like a wooden box for geological specimens or a DIY Aeolian harp. A copper kettle that belonged to Louisa May Alcott. Flints dug up from the lines of battle at the not yet Old North Bridge. Embroidered scenes of the Book of Esther. A musket that was high-tech enough for the militia but not for the Continental Army. A lace-trimmed gown of India cotton in the Empire style. The gallery devoted to the Battles of Lexington and Concord was audiovisual without eliding the tactile artifacts of powder horns and flintlocks and a lantern of the Old North Church. The modern quilt was as resonant as the stone tool island. I liked the display inviting the visitor to guess from their textures the difference between imported and homemade textiles, of which the silk and the superfine were not the latter. I liked, too, Elizabeth Wentworth Roberts' Unloading Boats (1912). By our own estimate, it was our first time hanging out in person in four years. I left the gift shop with Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny by Papa (1851/2003) and a guide to trees by their leaves.
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Not to my satisfaction. You can see a slice of it in the banner for a past exhibition in which it featured. The buttons all down the front are the same size as the ones on the sleeve so that to a modern eye it looks rather ostentatiously rowed with silver, although the original material is pewter. Pockets fairly far down the sharply cutaway sweep of the coat. It's supposed to have been the model for the coat thrown over the plough in Daniel Chester French's Minuteman statue of the late nineteenth century. It has an online record in the museum's collections, but without a photograph, unlike the stockings which were part of the original ensemble, don't ask me why.
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Not before now, but it's great! Thanks.
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More seriously: thank you for the links to these images**! I love them and would love to see the ones you don't have images of, like the embroidered scenes from the Book of Esther. I have a friend who lives in Concord; maybe I can arrange a visit before the exhibit closes and go with her.
**Especially the Musketaquid turtle--loved it immediately.
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The last person who tailored eighteenth-century for me has their own health issues to deal with! I would feel bad kidnapping them!
More seriously: thank you for the links to these images**! I love them and would love to see the ones you don't have images of, like the embroidered scenes from the Book of Esther. I have a friend who lives in Concord; maybe I can arrange a visit before the exhibit closes and go with her.
You're welcome! It took me and
Especially the Musketaquid turtle--loved it immediately.
I love that one, and it is not the only contemporary Indigenous display in its room.
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Right? The color would go with just about everything I already own, too. Still need to improve my waistcoat game. (Still need a shipping fortune.)
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From the Civil War! You would like this museum.