There've been some great book recommendations on the list lately --
and that reminds me that I never sent my review of "Cutting for
All! : the sartorial arts, related crafts, and the commercial paper
pattern; a bibliographic reference guide for designers, technicians,
and historians" by Kevin L. Seligman.
As we suspected, it's an annotated bibliography. As with all such
products, its usefulness decreases with time. And this was published
in 1996 -- before a lot of us had internet access. There are other
ways to acquire this information now. That's not to say that this is
a bad book, just that it's not an essential purchase for a home
library. It's worth a look if you can find it in your library or get
it on Inter-Library Loan.
The first chapter, on the "History of the development of the
publication of books, professional journals, and the emergence of the
paper pattern industry" is 46 pages long, profusely illustrated, and
quite interesting. The author tells us that the "earliest surviving
work on cutting" was published in 1580 in Spain; that the first
French work is dated 1671, the first English work appeared in 1789
and the first in America in 1809. So most of the chapter deals with
the 19th century, with just a page or two on the 20th century.
The second chapter is "Chronological listings" and has exactly 3
publications listed for 1500-1599, one of which is Alcega in the
original and one of which is the English translation published in
1979... oh well. There are 3 Spanish publications and one French
listed for 1600-1699. There are a whopping eleven listings for
1700-1799 but 2 of them are 20th century articles about extant
garments. For the 19th century, he subdivides by decade with just a
page or two at first then it really takes off by 1880. The chapter
ends with 1989 (another drawback to bibliographies is that they are
often slightly out of date by the time they see print!). Aside from
the exceptions noted above, the listings in each chronological
section are contemporary works *not* historical treatments that
happened to be published in a particular decade. Works by Janet
Arnold, Dorothy Burnham, Jean Hunnisett, Blanche Payne, et al.,
appear in the "Costume and dance" chapter later in the book.
Other chapters list "Professional journals" (American and English)
published for the professional tailor and dressmaker; "Journal
articles" (American, English, Other) from costume related
professional journals that feature pattern drafts as part of the
article; and various subjects such as "Folk and national dress",
"Millinery" and "Commercial pattern companies, periodicals, and
catalogs". The indexes are extensive. Each entry is brief, with
only a sentence or two to describe the work; sometimes he lists a
specific library that has the work (the U.S. Library of Congress,
Harvard, The British Library, the New York Public Library, etc.); non-
English language materials are noted but there's very little coverage
of non-English language journals (I was surprised that I could only
find one of Janet Arnold's Waffen-und Kostumkunde articles). The
indexes are extensive -- about 40 pages worth. I would have liked to
see some cross-references (in the chronological listing for 1944, I
found "Short-cuts to sewing success" by the DuBarry Patttern Company;
in the chapter on pattern companies, I found that DuBarry Patterns
were manufactured by Simplicity as the house brand for Woolworth's
from 1934 to 1946 and no mention of their other publication) but
that's probably because I'm lazy. ;-)
My final observation is that there is no attempt to evaluate any of
these sources. They are all presented without comment as to their
veracity and/or usefulness. He did borrow annotations from other
bibliographies but these are indicated by letter codes that are
explained in the Introduction.
Questions?
Suzanne
On Oct 17, 2007, at 4:44 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Does anyone know anything about this book?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0809320061/thecostumersmani
Zuzana
_______________________________________________
h-costume mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
