....We are all aware, right, that this book is not proper
documentation, being nothing but re-drawings from unidentified sources?
Maggie Secara
~A Compendium of Common Knowledge 1558-1603
Available at your favorite online bookseller
See our gallery at http://www.zazzle.com/popinjaypress
Chimene's CAVEAT: The following is not meant to rant or peck at
anyone, just a statement of our opinions and interpretations.
Thank you, Maggie, for pointing out that Wilcox is RE-DRAWING.
Lovely little pictures, but where we are from, 30 years ago anyway,
the Mode-in books were considered very doubtful sources. All of
them. Fashion, Footwear, Hats & Hairdressing, etc. On a par with
Iris Brooke, fer heaven's sake.
Sources like Wilcox, Norris, etc. can be very difficult to evaluate.
They are relatively very available. My 16yo has listened to his
parents rant enough that HE knows "not to believe everything you
see/read in a book", but lots of people haven't had his advantages,
<G>
Many people, from many different backgrounds, arrive at an interest
in costume history with an uncritical faith in the accuracy of what
you find in books. It's not their "fault," and one can be educated
out of such an innocent POV, but it can be a difficult and delicate
process -- yes, even when done in person <G>
I now realize just how very lucky I was that when I really found the
SCA, the group was still strongly under the influence of the "grad
student research-wonks" who had founded it. (That's a
self-description from my best friend, who was a late-comer... she
attended the second event!) Actually, for my first few years the
handful of founders who were still in town were also pretty much the
entire population of the group! So that was the "culture" I "grew up
in".
This was decades before the Internet, and I was a librarian anyway,
so I already knew how to do book research. I think that this is an
area that a LOT of people get out of high school, and even college,
these days, with not much experience in how to do it at all (book
research), let alone the idea that you CAN and need to evaluate
sources.
Also, I have learned that many people don't know much about using
public libraries either. One often hears that people are far from
university libraries, but most towns have some sort of public library
access. It seems that lots of folks get to be adults without knowing
about "inter-library loan", whereby you can get your public library
to get books for you from university libraries in the US and
sometimes from outside the US! As a library user from early
childhood, let alone working in them all my adult life, it took me
many years to realize that there are perfectly intelligent and
well-educated folks in the world who do NOT really understand about
libraries.
I'm not sure this thought is complete yet, but I think I'll call it a
day. For something we're not really interested in at all
(Elizabethan hats), this question has occupied a LOT of our time and
emotional energy the last few days! <BIG G>
NOTE: In the course of writing this up, my DH and I have been having
quite a discussion about whether Wilcox's feminine face is Carole
Lombard (1930's), or something more '50's. My public library catalog
says Wilcox was born in 1888, FWIW. And of course, Norris's drawings
look distinctly Victorian/Edwardian, AND he was a professional
theatrical costume designer. Of course, it took me about 30 years to
REALLY recognize the Victorian nuance in his drawings.
Chimene & Gerek
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