Clothing the Californio: The Lecture -- part of CoCoVid and Virtual FrockCon 2020, and other news

Elizabeth Urbach in
Californio costume. 

Hello again!  I have a few pieces of news to share! 

First thing: The Cup That Cheers is now also a YouTube channel!  I've gotten some messages over the years, telling me that some readers wish they could see me make the historic recipes and some of the historic costumes, that I've written up and posted here on the blog, and this spring and summer's time spent in lockdown gave me more time to think about creating educational videos.  Since I work at an elementary school which will be starting the school year online, some of the videos will be aimed at elementary and middle school-aged children and the time periods that they study in Social Studies, but others will be aimed at an older audience, and will include making historic recipes and costumes, as well as costume history.  I also taught beginning hand-sewing at my school, and I will be translating that class into a series of videos for the channel. 

Clothing the Californio title card for
YouTube videos. 
Creator: Elizabeth Urbach

Historical Sew Monthly -- Procrastination (how appropriate!): A pre-Gold Rush California day dress

Version 1.0 of the California day dress ca. 1838.

The Challenge: Procrastination (January 2016), Out of Your Comfort Zone (June 2015), and Stashbusting (March 2015).  I didn't realize it until last month, but I neglected to publish the blog post in 2015 for the Out Of My Comfort Zone and Stashbusting Challenges, which were part of the original reason for this dress being made!  7 months is quite a procrastination, although I still don't consider this dress finished ...

California history, especially domestic history, has been a major passion and research topic for me for the past 15 years or so.  Part of my research has involved re-creating typical daily outfits for California women, from the early Spanish settlement period in the late 18^th century, to the early 19^th century Rancho period on the eve of the Gold Rush.  Unfortunately, comparatively little of the European, English, and North American fashion information from that time is widely applicable to California during the same period, due to the distance – both physical and cultural – between the people of California and those in the rest of the Western world before the Gold Rush. 

_Mexicains_ by Emile Louis Vernier, ca. 1850.
 New York Public Library Digital Collection.

Beginning in the 1760s, Spain established frontier settlements in California, but all contact with Spain ceased between 1810 and 1824 during the Mexican War for Independence; when the fighting ended, California's settlers benefited from the free trade that resulted.  Trade with England and the United States enabled the people, now calling themselves Californios, to enjoy many of the products and luxuries that had long been available to more settled parts of the former Spanish empire, with closer ties to Europe.  Even now, however, shipments did not usually include fashion magazines or any ready-made articles of women's attire, unless specifically mail-ordered.  Almost no non-Hispanic women arrived in California to influence the local fashions during this time.

Clothing the Californio, part 4 -- the Gold Rush era.

Governor Don Pio Pico, his wife, and nieces, ca. 1850,
San Diego Historical Society.

By the time California entered the United States in 1850, the social and political climate of the state was radically changing.  Hispanic immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, entered California and headed to the gold mines, bringing their own culture with them.  Non-Hispanic immigrants to the state no longer acclimated themselves to California's previous culture, and they competed with the Californios for land, status, resources, and political clout.  Many Californio women married non-Hispanic men during this time period not only because the newcomers were different and exciting, but because to do so helped secure their property (an English-speaking man to manage their affairs as local law became much more English and American in influence) and social status.  During this time, Californio families began to identify themselves with Spanish European culture, in opposition to the non-Californio residents' characterization of all Hispanic people as Mexican and therefore "non-white", as well as to avoid association with the political and social unrest happening in the Republic of Mexico.  Californios began to wear the same styles and garments that other Americans wore, and look just as Victorian as someone from the East Coast during the same time period.

Back from the Alviso Adobe!

the front and side of the Alviso Adobe, built as a
one-storey home in the 1830s, expanded with a second floor
in the 1850s, a private residence until the 1980s.

Well, unfortunately some of the people who were going to meet at the Alviso Adobe in Milpitas couldn't make it at the last minute, but my friend and I had a nice afternoon and we almost had the park to ourselves. Here are some photos from the day:

me standing on the porch.

the back of the house from the garden.

Mrs. Burnett's dress, part 2.

Harriet Burnett's dress,
ca. 1849
Photo: Elizabeth Urbach

Wow, I hadn't realized how long it's been since I last posted!  I've been keeping busy, though, with historical things.  Researching Harriet Burnett's governor's ball dress (see photo at left) has been really interesting.  Unfortunately, I couldn't find any period description of the dress at the ball in any of the contemporary newspapers, because San Jose didn't have its own newspaper until 1851 and the ball was in 1849.  The nearest local papers were out of Monterey and San Francisco, and relied on the mail bringing news from San Jose in order to publish the Legislative happenings.  Unfortunately, the winter of 1849 was so rainy and stormy that the roads were unusably muddy and no news could get out of or into San Jose!  It took until the end of January 1850 for the rain to let up and the roads dry out enough that the mail could get through to Monterey and San Francisco, so by that time any excitement about the ball had died down, and the papers recorded the inauguration of Governor Burnett, and mentioned, almost as an aside, "there was a ball in San Jose." 

There was no further description or mention of the event itself, although an interview with someone who was there, done many years later, and published in 1941, has the woman recalling that the ball was "the" event for the Bay Area for years afterwards.  I think the only place where I could find a fuller description of the ball, would be in the letters or journal of someone (a woman) who was there, but I don't know of any journals or letters from 1849 in San Jose that have been published, or are available to the public!  I think I'm at a dead end in verifying the provenance of the dress, so I've just made a record for it in the museum database, saying that the dress "is said to have been worn" at the Inauguration Ball.  I'll have to leave it at that for now.  It's been really fun reading all those old newspapers, though.  I found a website, the California Digital Newspaper Collection, that has scanned the papers into digital form and made them readable (you can enlarge the printing from the teeny-tiny original size!). 

Orange Jelly from 1852

Image from MorgueFile.com

Happy New Year!  I hope 2013 has been good to you so far.  In my research (see my last post from December 28th) I've been re-reading a lot of Gold Rush-era American newspapers and magazines (Google Books is my friend!) including Godey's Lady's Book. Because of letters to the editor from "California correspondents", we know that Californians were reading the Lady's Book during the Gold Rush, and probably followed the recipes printed in each issue.  Oranges will be coming into season in Northern California this month, so here is a ca. 1852 recipe from Godey's for a good midwinter dessert: Orange Jelly.

Yay! New history research project!

ca. 1840 silk dress in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art.

O.k., I've been volunteering in the Collections Center at the history museum where I'm on staff (in a different department) off an on for the past few years (mostly during the summers), but steadily once a week for the past 6 months.  I'm assisting the Registrar in various tasks having to do with restoring, labeling, identifying, photographing, storing, and making records for various artifacts in the collection.  All very cool because I, as a part-time volunteer, get to work directly with the artifacts with very little supervision (the perks of working with a small museum that is underfunded and understaffed, and yet has a huge collection to maintain).  The Registrar knows of my interest in and experience with historic textiles and fashion history, so he's assigned me to work primarily with the textile items that need processing and care.  It's been really fun and interesting!

Mid-Victorian sheer muslin dress inspiration

ca. 1850 fashion plate.

So, I'm slowly but surely working on my sheer dress for the GBACG Mid-Victorian Summer Picnic at the Fallon House at the end of next month.  Originally, I wanted to make my dress more ca. 1848 because I like the simple lines of Gold Rush-era styling, and I like the fact that not as many people do 1840s and 1850s costume as 1860s.  Not that more people shouldn't make the earlier Victorian styles, but I like being a little "different" from the majority, and with the popularity of Civil War re-enacting in the area, 1860s styles are much more frequently made.

New costume plan: a sheer dress from the 1840s!

Image from Wikipedia.

Well, I've settled on the 1840s as one of my favorite fashion eras, and now that I've made a nice wool gown from 1848-ish, I need a sheer gown for summer, right?  Of course.  My costume guild's upcoming Victorian Picnic in the garden of the Fallon House in San Jose gives me the perfect excuse reason to make what the Victorians called a "clear muslin gown".

New costume finished: 1849 day dress.

Photo: Virginia Urbach.

This is a costume I've had on my "to do" list for quite a while.  Although I don't really have a favorite period of history, I do have a few favorite fashion history periods, and the late 1840s are one of those favorite periods.  Other people think the 1840s are boring because the styles are comparatively plain, but my taste runs to the simple, and I find the fashion of other parts of the Victorian era way too over-decorated.  I think the 1840s are elegant, and the styles flattering to almost everyone's figure: petticoats add softness to people who are too thin, and conceal hip, butt, and stomach bulk for the rest of us, and corsets control and smooth out the lumps and bumps everyone else has, plus make you stand up straight, which makes you look thinner anyway.  It's not about having an 18-inch waist (we all know teeny-tiny teenage girls who are that small naturally), but smoothing out the figure and above all, *optical illusion*!  I look like a blob in my regular clothing, but in a corset and petticoats, I have an hourglass figure.  It's like a magic trick!