sovay: (Rotwang)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2025-11-11 09:41 pm

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] 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.
asakiyume: (highwayman)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2025-11-12 03:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Tsk, tsk, Sovay! If your devotion to crime and fashion were high enough, you would have spirited off the coat, kidnapped a tailor, and then asked them to create a replica for you.

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.