Historic Deerfield

[robinsnest]

Rob and I went up to visit my sister in Northampon MA this weekend. Rob actually had a shooting job up there, it's with a company he regularly works for, and it's way out of his normal shooting range, but they basically paid us to go visit my family and we'll never turn that down.

So while Rob was gone all day Saturday, and my Brother-in-Law was at a track meet the cross-country team he coaches, Molly took me to Historic Deerfield. HD is a group of historic houses and accompanying museum. Mostly the houses are shown by tours, where an ancient woman talks to you for an hour about things that sound just a bit off.  Molly isn't nearly as snarky as some of my other friends so we quickly found the house tours boring and only did one. 

HD does have a museum they built to house some of their collections, and they have an on-going exhibit of textiles, which they even allowed non-flash photography in. And I've been playing with my BIL's DSLR and let me tell you it takes WAY better pictures in low lighting!!! I took over 200 so I'll just include a few of my favorites here.



I don't have any great need for Regency stays, but boy this makes me want a pair! 


It was very elegant, I especially liked how they had to piece the train.





They describe it as being almost identical to one in the collection of Colonial Williamsburgh and donated by the same collector. 




What I found especially interesting about it was sleeve flounces and shirred trim  were made out of a totally different-but very similar fabric. So similar that it took me a bit to realize they weren't self fabric.





The oldest piece they had was this sweet bag dated 1590-1610, but they also had several beautiful embroidered pictures, samplers, and accessories.

  


In total I took almost 200 pictures so if you want more details of an item or to see some lovely shoes you can go to the whole album on photobucket. 

Comments

[fiofiorina.livejournal.com]

Wow!!! thank you for sharing!
I love the muslin gown!

[sewloud.livejournal.com]

Isn't it elegant? I was amusing myself pondering the piece on the end of the train, perhaps someone not as graceful stepped on it and ripped off the previous point?

[fiofiorina.livejournal.com]

or it got caught in a slamming door, or a spark too close at the fire?
I love dresses with a story. And it's so elegant!