This is a sneaky peek at one of the object storage cases at the Museum of English Rural Life. Frances and I took out every single smock, photographed and measured it, and took lots and lots of notes.
Now the task is to type up all of those notes, which is one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging much lately. I haven’t been doing much sewing or knitting because I’ve been hanging out at the museum, typing. Apparently there is no limit to the number of times you can type the word “smock” in a single paragraph.
I’m about half way through now, so the end is (sort of) in sight, and there are plans afoot for possible new displays in the future.
I do have some close-up pictures of a couple of the really fine and delicate smocks that we looked at, so I’ll post those for you very soon.
I would love to see those – I toyed with the idea of mentioning smocks in my thesis (on needlework in literature), but in the end ran out of space and time, but the reading I did made me really interested in learning more.
Pomona x
Ooh… which books did you read? That sounds like a really interesting thesis. 🙂
Some of them are on my blog profile – 19th century novels, major and minor, and also 19th century needlework manuals, which are just wonderful! I started from a literary point of view, but it all really sparked my interest in the practical side as well.