RL Fifield vacuuming samplers with a dental vacuum in the old Textile Conservation Lab, MFA Boston, 2001. Back in the early aughts, I was...

Der Wöchentliche Pennsylvanische Staatsbote 9/17/1773. RL Fifield Photo. Library of Congress. Many of us choose some aspect of life to...

Images of geisha and courtesans are often mislabeled. For those unfamiliar with subtleties in the styling and wear of kimono, obi, and...

George Fredrich Handel. Public Domain. The Messiah, written by George Frideric Handel in 1741 and first performed in Dublin before its...

The Accident in Lombard Street. Charles Wilson Peale. Winterthur Museum. 1962.88. A pie lays broken in the street, a distraught servant...

I used to hate oysters. Typically, tidewater Marylanders pat oysters in cracker meal, fry them, and if you need a condiment, slather on...

I spent July at a Research Fellowship at Winterthur Museum, Library, and Garden. This mainly meant identifying manuscripts and object...

Nothing like a little research day on my birthday. Quarter Session Docket, June 1, 1767. Philadelphia City Archives. During my stay at...

My time here at Winterthur is wrapping up. I took yesterday to visit two incredible local institutions, the Friends Historical Library at...

RL Fifield. I attended the American Institute for Conservation’s Annual Meeting in Indianapolis at the end of May. The opening reception...

My research on indentured and enslaved servants’ lives has led me to mapping out their existence on historic maps of Philadelphia. I’m...

An embroidered apron at LACMA, similar in concept to those depicted in the Winterthur fraktur below. M.2007.211.131 I’m not a...

Read this great book on 18th century commerce in the backwoods of Virginia. Ann Smart Martin’s Buying into the World of Goods: Early...

Hello Readers of The Still Room! I’ve missed writing posts for the blog, but have been putting my energies into some projects that may be...

I was scooting through my apartment building’s basement (a wonder in systems and architecture) on my way to pick up a package at the...

Eddie Izzard puns on the Church of England: “Cake or Death?” For people found guilty of committing small crimes in England,...

The stepped structure of the Maryland State Archives on Rowe Blvd, Annapolis. For a building built in 1984, I think the Maryland State...

Collage of engraved portraits on exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in “A Will of their Own: Judith Sargent Murray and Women of...

The New Yorker Photo Booth blog highlighted tattoed women and a book about them Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and...

I roll over this analogy in my mind as I work with my study of 1,000 runaway indentured and enslaved women and their 6,000 garments,...