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Costume History Books


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I was browsing one of my local favorite flea-markets yesterday and came across the two volume set of Two Centuries of Costume in America, 1620-1820 by Alice Morse Earle, first published in 1903. These are a boxed set of paperbacks put out by Tuttle from Japan in 1971. There ar several art prints, lots of period descriptions, and some witty rhymes and poems concerning habits and dress. The bes part is (besides the fact they are ine excellent condition) I only paid $4 for them! I am not smart enough to work the scanner function on my printer, nor would I be able to figure out how to enlarge the images if I did know how to operate the damn thing. Blondie was thrilled when I found the Pennsylvania Dutch clogs that are just like the modern ones, (wooden soles and leather toe caps) and that she will be able to wear them instead of shoes and moccasins, her being a Dutchie girl and all. The ones shown were ca. 1730, so she should be good to go for our usual period of dress. There's tons of info in these.

I am going to browse through these and record some of the information that I am most interested in, then I am probably going to let them go to some of you more stitchity types with more techno-abilities than me, so the information can be shared. I want to make it kinda like a "pass-it-on" library loan so as many as want can glean the info. Kinda like the sketch-book thing you artsy-fartsy pyrates are doing. ;):D

Anyhow, I was pretty jazzed about this find and wanted to brag it up some.

Bo

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wel now.. seems you have a few choices here....

one option could be to send the book to a person who you know can scan them and post them all !! I VOLUNTEER SILAS!!!

hahahahahahahaaaa!

teasing you---

perhaps if you have a really good digital camera, take pictures of the pages and then post them... our digital camera is able to do this..... is yours?

perhaps the instruction manual of your printer can tell you how to do this?

cant wait to see them Bo!! cant wait.....

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You can scan them, probably the best way to get books into a digital format. Hey Bo I could scan them for sure. I wonder if they're still under copyright? If not then perhaps I can make them into a PDF for download..... I'm very interested to see what they have in them.

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Well then. in that case; how do we find out if the copyright is valid or not? I think everyone should have access to the information in these little jewels and we need to get it out. I have found a couple of discrepencies in her statements, but the first-hand stuff is great! In one case she refers to the famous Blackbeard sketch as Thomas Teach instead of Edward. The period rhymes about social habits and dress are really cool. There's a really good photo and descriptions of jackboots like I've never seen before too. Lots of little things like that throughout. I am going to be so busy with schoolwork til May that I won't really have time to go through it all. Perhaps I should let either Jack or Silas scan this thing and get it out, then I can get them back for summer browsing between making hay and riding green horses? It would save some folks from having to spend four times what I have in them anyhow. (providing we don't infringe on copyrights of course :D ) Let me know how to go about this and we'll do it if we can.

Bo

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi Gang:

Just so you know.

Further research has shown that Alice's ideas were not always spot on.

Those who read her must do it with further research, because there are many errors in her thinking,

that have been disprooved with further research.

That saying, I have a paperback version of hers, and they are fun to read. But do further research, through

internet, Colonial Williamsburg's printings, etc.

Spitfire.

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Oh... btw... I have this entire volume in HTML format with the plates in the text and in a seperate folder. tongue.gif

No copyright issues

PM with you email if you would like a copy

Edited by Liam McMac

_Liam McMac

Celtic and Pirate Tailor

Beware the Iron Brigade!

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