Book Review. Fitting and Proper: 18th Century Clothing from the Collection of the Chester County Historical Society by Sharon Ann Burnston, photography by George J. Fistrovich, Scurlock Publishing Co., Texarkana, TX, 1998 ISBN1-880665-08-X, hardback, 122 pp., $55.
This book is long overdue.
Among the original counties laid out by William Penn in 1681, Chester County is steeped in history, genealogy, and material culture, and one of the finest repositories for research in any of these areas is the Chester County Historical Society (CCHS).
Less accessible has been its historic clothing collection; but Sharon Ann Burnston's seminal work, Fitting and Proper: 18th Century Clothing from the Collection of the Chester County Historical Society, reveals this collection to a greater degree.
Burnston was an archaeologist for many years, as well as having a passion for historic clothing. Now the Director of the Daniel Webster Birthplace Living History Project in Franklin, New Hampshire, she was previously Executive Director of the Germantown (Philadelphia) Historical Society and Curator of the Colonial Pennsylvania Plantation, Edgmont, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.
Following in the footsteps of the late Janet Arnold, Burnston includes in Fitting and Proper black-and-white photographs, succinct written descriptions, and scaled drawings for women's, men's, and children's clothing as well as accessories such as hats, stockings, shoes, pockets, stays, aprons, caps, wallets, and pinballs (of which CCHS has 95). Scaled drawings are not provided for a cocked hat and two pairs of women's shoes. Twenty-one items are attributed to specific individuals, most of whom were Quakers (including the boy's breeches, believed to have belonged to Benjamin Bonsall, Jr. of Upper Darby, son of Benjamin Bonsall (1724-1807), son of Enoch Bonsall (1692-1769), son of Richard Bonsall (1641-1699) [original immigrant]; 2nd cousin 7 times removed of this reviewer). Twelve are possibly or believed to be Quaker with one definite attribution as such. Provenance for 8 items is unknown.
The instant a garment in a collection is selected for study, its becomes isolated from similar or related garments, as well as from its historical background, and is in danger of being interpreted as the norm or average. Students of 18th-century clothing will find this book intriguing, and interpreters in southeastern and south-central Pennsylvania will also find it useful for references to English or specifically Quaker clothing. Burnston's study will hopefully help restrain members of the reenacting and historic interpretation community at large from assuming that the garments in Fitting and Proper were commonplace outside of 18th-century Chester County. It would indeed be a disservice to Burnston's efforts if we all showed up at events wearing the same types of garments, offering this book as our documentation.
Many of the garments illustrated in Fitting and Proper have been presented elsewhere, principally in Claudia Kidwell's article Short Gowns which appeared in Dress (1998;4:30-65) and in Tandy and Charles Hersh's Cloth and Clothing 1750-1800, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and Burnston acknowledges these previous publications. Two garments, Items 2 "Woman's Gown" and 22 "Man's Banyan", were presentation topics by Burnston herself at two Tidy's Symposia, in 1998 and 1994 respectively.
The intrinsic value of this slim and pricy volume, even more than the photos and scaled drawings, emanates from the Appendix, "Survey of Clothing in 18th Century Chester County Estate Inventories." This section details the author's research into clothing itemized in estate valuations with statistical precision that may lull the costume purist into the arms of Somnus, but the content of this survey illustrates many important problems when studying historic clothing, such as the difficulties germane to historic clothing documentation in terms of sartorial nomenclature of another time and culture.
This is a book that should be read and studied diligently, with close attention paid to what it excludes as well as includes. The bibliography, while not extensive, cites 17 references relating to Pennsylvania or Quaker clothing. The garments with specifically assigned provenance as well as the five clothing inventories published in the appendix tell us nothing about the men and women to whom they belong. From my own personal genealogical research, I know that most of these people were Quakers. Short biographies of these individuals might shed additional light on how their clothing may have reflected their religious, social, public, or personal lives. Burnston's introduction, on the other hand, provides important clues to the beginnings of "the Quaker look" which did not really begin to evolve until the end of the American Revolution and the garments themselves gives ample evidence that not all Quakers were wearing grey or black but were as interested in fashion as their non-Quaker neighbors, and that style is and always has been simply a matter of degree.
Sharon Burnston has provided an important first step with the publication of Fitting and Proper. By her own admission it raises more questions than it answers, her comments about burial practices as one possible explanation for the remarkably low numbers of stays and caps in inventories is a case in point. And like any good archaeologist, she leaves plenty of ground for future exploration.
Karen Mullian
Past Masters in Early
American Domestic Arts
Fall, 1999
This review also published in Vol. 2, #2, Spring 1999, of Past Masters News.
Forthcoming in the winter issue of the ALHFAM Bulletin.
Initially posted to this URL 21 Mar 2000 by Sue Felshin with the permission of the author. Last modified 22 Mar 2000. Content of review unmodified from original supplied by the author.