Excuse me if someone else has already thrown out this suggestion, but my impression is simple - the 1995 cataloguer just plain wasn't knowledgeable about historical clothing! The VCR was a good old "antique" video recording - probably lost to posterity - and possible a good thing. They probably hired someone out of a community college program or even a "friend" who needed a job. Then they looked at a couple of local public library books (and some public libraries have decent costume sections and other are pathetic) and jumped to that conclusion. I'm not dumping on them - they did the best they could with what they had and for what they were paid. For example, in a heritage review of our neighbourhood, a student once labelled our home as a "saltbox". They had little idea of what a real saltbox looked like. The "saltbox" addition was an incomplete 1980's addition - besides the fact that real saltboxes are rare in Canada. I could go on and on about museums or historic houses we've visited that have misidentified items. Closer to costume, my husband is on a special assignment (essentially curatorial) with Parks Canada. It's probably the equivalent of the U.S. National Parks Service?? Reviewing the Parks Canada collections and records, he's full of stories of misidentification and incomplete records of original artefacts and donors, etc. etc. On the other hand he's very knowledgable about militaria, as well as "material culture" in general, so he's having the time of his life examining and properly identifying artifacts. I'm so jealous I could puke ;-) The frightening thing is the number of people with 30+ years of experience who are going to retire and be replaced by young people who have no "eye" and no experience or knowledge. But that's how it goes. You have to start somewhere. Right now, a person with half a clue needs to look at those items with a fresh eye. There are a variety of titles on men's shirts out there - but I have to work tomorrow! Sheridan Alder
From: WorkroomButtons.com <[email protected]> To: Historical Costume <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 11:29:50 AM Subject: [h-cost] Need information on "sacque" garments (NOT the dress) Back at the Reed Homestead... we are moving on to the next pile -- stacks and stacks of shirt-like garments with no closures (other than a few with ties at the neck). We hired a woman in 1995 to start pulling clothing literally out of garbage bags and start cataloging. (Sadly, we still have pieces from 1809 still in garbage bags -- yes, the black plastic kind.) She called these shirt-like garments "sacques" and this is want she wrote about them... "...I would like someone after me to write the word "sacque" which is what we're going to use for the generic term. A sacque is a garment which hangs from the shoulder down without interruption, without darts, without a waist seam, so a man's sacque coat is one that was not cut in at the waist. And that seems to be a generic form for this style if garment, no matter how it's being used, but as I said before and you got on the VCR I think, these can be used as a working garment with a skirt, held in place with an apron. They can be used as a short nightgown for hot weather and when somebody is ill and is using a bedpan. They can be used over your dress when you're doing your hair and that's probably about it. Oh, yes, and the other thing is for maternity, when it's an expandable top for when you're pregnant and obviously can be used for nursing as well. And nobody has as many as you have." We have attempted to locate information about this type of garment, but clearly we're looking in the wrong places because we're coming up empty. We can find "saques" certainly but they don't look like ours. Any ideas? Dede O'Hair _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
