Posts Tagged #behind the scenes @ the henry ford
When host Mo Rocca offered Marc Greuther, chief curator at The Henry Ford, a sample of “Monnaise” on the set of The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation, it was difficult not to laugh out loud. We were filming in the Heinz House in Greenfield Village, among original artifacts documenting some of Henry J. Heinz’s earliest innovations and successes. Mo’s plastic condiment containers with their silly labels (fabricated by the show’s producers as props) looked absurd in this setting, to be sure! But looking back, they weren’t as out of place as it might have seemed. Continue Reading
TV, 19th century, food, The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation, Heinz, Greenfield Village buildings, Greenfield Village, by Saige Jedele, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford
Legends, Literature and Lots of Fun: Inspiration for Hallowe’en in Greenfield Village
“Mystically spooky.”
That’s how Jim Johnson described Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hallow.” The 1820s short story is the inspiration for the grand finale of sorts at Hallowe’en in Greenfield Village – where visitors cross the bridge and encounter the infamous Headless Horseman.
Irving’s story, Gothic literature, legends and other spooky tales are fundamental elements for much of the fun at Greenfield Village’s annual Halloween event.
“After the renovations to Greenfield Village, we decided to lift our Halloween event to a new level,” said Jim Johnson, who is senior manager of creative programs at The Henry Ford. “With the village as our backdrop, we wanted to find our own niche that had something for everyone and was family friendly.”
Just being in the village at night is a unique experience, and it provides the perfect setting for a Halloween event inspired by the past.
Jim said they looked at how the holiday evolved. “We found interesting things about how the celebration of Halloween changed over time,
“Customs started to take shape toward the at the end of the 19th century and almost click through a process that takes us to where we are today - where we decorate our homes and go house-to-house for trick or treating.”
Coming into the 20th century, Halloween wasn’t necessarily a kids’ holiday – other than they commonly pulled pranks like knocking over outhouses, putting wagons on rooftops, etc., Jim said. In order to curb the kids’ enthusiasm for a little mayhem, municipalities got into the action by planning themed parties and offering games and treats as a diversion from the destruction.
To meet the party trend, at the turn of the century and into the 1920s and 30s, there were a multitude of Halloween party guides and booklets published mostly by women, and candy and novelty companies.
A popular inexpensive resource was Dennison’s Bogie Books. Dennison’s sold crepe paper used to decorate and make costumes. Jim Johnson keeps these reproductions on hand for reference and inspiration.
Adventure stories and Gothic literature were popular at that time and have sustained elevated interest at Halloween time. Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventures of buccaneers and buried gold in Treasure Island continues to inspire as seen in recent movie tales of tropical pirating. At Greenfield Village, pirates with sensibilities old and new populate the Suwanee Lagoon and walk among visitors, giving them a taste what it might be like conversing with an 1880s-style high seas treasure seeker.
With a nod to Gothic literature, Dr. Frankenstein has a perfect workspace - setting up shop in Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park Laboratory.
Mary Shelley’s story of Frankenstein still holds the attention of audiences today, even though the book was first published in the early 1800s.
Another famous character from Gothic literature is making his debut at the village this year. A silent film based on Bram Stoker’s 1887 Dracula is shown near Sarah Jordan Boarding House.
Visitors are captivated by the large projections of the 1922 vampire film Nosferatu (Dracula).
Works of the master of the macabre – Edgar Allen Poe – are highlighted in two prominent stops.
The ravens resting on the railing at Eagle Tavern are treated to the eerie tale twice: narrated once by a famous actor and once by a fictitious man. Visitors can hear the chilling story told by actor Christopher Walken and again by cartoon character Homer Simpson.
Poe makes another appearance near Town Hall where actor Anthony Lucas provides a mesmerizingly haunting performance of the mad man at the center of the Tell-Tale Heart.
A first person account of the Brothers Grimm tale of Hansel and Gretel (with a surprise twist) keeps audiences of all ages intrigued.
Throughout the village – authentically or whimsically – many costume creations are inspired by characters from famous stories of old. Hunchbacks, witches, Little Red Riding Hood, mermaids, fortunetellers, strong men, Merlin the Magician...
… and even a character from Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser.
Near the end of trick-or-treating through the village, visitors can take a seat and listen to the tale that sets the scene for the remainder of their journey – through the dark candle-lit tangles of the Mulberry Grove (not-too-hauntingly) transformed into Sleepy Hallow.
Actor Seth Amadei gives a riveting account of the series of events that led up to the mysterious disappearance of schoolmaster Ichabod Crane in Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hallow.
Visitors just have to pass through the hallow and over the bridge …
Hallowe’en in Greenfield Village - inspired by old, new, mystical, whimsical and just the right amount of spooky.
Additional Readings:
- Hallowe'en in Greenfield Village
- Eagle Tavern Harvest Supper
- Halloween Greeting Postcard, 1907-1912
- Hallowe’en Fairy Tale Feast
20th century, 19th century, holidays, Hallowe'en in Greenfield Village, Halloween, Greenfield Village, events, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford
Just weeks before Henry Ford Academy students returned to their school inside Henry Ford Museum, one of their classrooms was transformed into a small furniture study gallery as The Henry Ford hosted visitors on a mission, hoping to bring clarity to a very important time in American furniture making.
Patricia Kane, the Friends of American Arts Curator of American Decorative Arts at Yale University Art Gallery, along with Marcia Brady Tucker Fellow, Jennifer Johnson, traveled to Michigan in August as part of an ongoing research project to identify pieces created by woodworkers from Rhode Island. The Rhode Island Furniture Archive seeks to document all furniture made in that small state from its beginnings into the early 19th century. To collectors and appreciators of 18th century furniture, the most important town in 18th century Rhode Island was Newport. There, the craftsmen of the intermarried Goddard and Townsend families created furniture with a unique look and construction. Their work is not only sought after but tells us a lot about that fashionable Rhode Island town during the 18th century. Indeed, their distinctive style was emulated by craftsmen not only in Rhode Island, but also in neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut. Continue Reading
research, making, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford, by Lish Dorset, furnishings, decorative arts
As most of you who follow The Henry Ford know, television crews have begun filming the Saturday morning educational show, The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation. Some visitors also may have actually seen the production crews in Henry Ford Museum or Greenfield Village several weeks ago as they shot footage for upcoming episodes. This has not been the first time The Henry Ford has played host to national television aspirations. Nearly 60 years ago in 1955, television crews invaded our campus on three separate occasions to broadcast live remotes. And like today The Henry Ford staff was there to help things run smoothly. Continue Reading
Michigan, Dearborn, 20th century, 1950s, TV, The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation, popular culture, music, Greenfield Village buildings, Greenfield Village, cars, by Andy Stupperich, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford
The Henry Ford is busy with many projects right now, including an ongoing two-year grant awarded to us by The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to digitize and rehouse our communication collections - things like TVs, radios, phonographs, computers and typewriters. We have about 1,000 artifacts to process. With a project of this size, it’s important for the many people contributing to this project to coordinate and organize each step to make sure every artifact is processed correctly. Here is an overview of the steps that we are using:
Discovery: The artifacts are currently stored in our Collections Storage Building, so the team must first pull all the objects off of shelves systematically. Once that is done, our Curator of Communication and Information Technology, Kristen Gallerneaux, determines which objects are considered part of the grant using our proposal for reference. Continue Reading
digitization, photography, IMLS grant, by Clara Deck, by Cayla Osgood, collections care, conservation, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford
As a homeschooling teacher of 11 years and a middle school teacher before that, it has been clear to me for sometime that children learn not nearly as much from textbooks and tests as they do from reading, writing, seeing, and doing. And so, when I saw that The Henry Ford was putting on a writing contest, I knew that this was a great opportunity for learning--to learn about innovative Americans who began as just shop keepers and, through perseverance, became the first in flight. Continue Reading
#Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford, childhood, teachers and teaching, educational resources, education, Wright Brothers, by Monica Grimm
You might have heard that we are partnering with Litton Entertainment to create a brand-new TV show, The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation, premiering on CBS later this year. As we worked with Litton to develop story ideas that might be featured on the show, we also wanted to make sure we digitized a variety of artifacts from our collections related to those stories. To that end, we’ve just digitized a couple dozen photos of the Rosa Parks Bus before and during its 2002 restoration. As former curator Bill Pretzer relates online, the bus had been left in a field and used as a storehouse for decades, leading to the significant condition issues that you can see in this photo of the driver’s seat. See more newly digitized photos of the restoration process by visiting our collections website, and learn more on Innovation Nation this fall!
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
#Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford, 21st century, 2000s, women's history, The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation, Rosa Parks bus, digital collections, conservation, collections care, by Ellice Engdahl, African American history
The Brill streetcar, located near the model railroad layout on the far side of the Allegheny, received received a little TLC from our Conservation Department this spring. The car has a varied history, which explains its current yellow paint scheme. Continue Reading
research, Ohio, 21st century, 2010s, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford, 20th century, 1910s, 19th century, 1890s, Henry Ford Museum, conservation, collections care, by Clara Deck
Imagine a time when having one television set in your home was a big deal, you saw the programs in black and white, color television was brand new, and you'd never heard of TVs in the classroom.
This was the mid-1950s and The Henry Ford (then called Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village) began using the technology of television to reach into the classroom. It was a way to further our educational mission by assisting social studies teachers and sparking students' interest in the past. Continue Reading
Michigan, Dearborn, communication, 20th century, 1950s, TV, The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation, technology, teachers and teaching, popular culture, educational resources, education, by Cynthia Read Miller, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford
One of the core features of the Civil War Remembrance program are the nearly 450 living history re-enactors that come in and literally camp in Greenfield Village. What many guests don’t know, and is often a question that is asked of these participants is, “Where do you get your clothing and equipment?”
A rather robust industry of proprietors, merchants and cottage business people have emerged over the past several decades to make and provide reproduction clothing, equipment, accouterments and just about every other imaginable article from the Civil War (and other) time periods. These merchants have created their own living history impressions known as sutlers. Sutlers were mobile stores and merchants that followed the armies and set up shop, usually under large canvas tents and temporary structures, to provide articles and goods that the army did not issue or supply to the troops. Today, re-created sutlers follow re-enactors to events across the country, including Civil War Remembrance, to sell reproduced living history items.
Many of the re-enactors purchase most, if not everything, from these sutlers and proprietors, but a small group of living history people make their own items. This group of living historians, both men and women, examine originals articles in museum collections, draft patterns and notes, conduct primary research and then go about re-creating said article to the exact detail. Often times this requires searching far and wide for the correct and appropriate fabric, notions and materials to create an absolutely faithful recreation that they will then wear and use. Often is the case that many of these items, including the specific fabrics, have to be made from scratch as they cannot be found at your local fabric shop. For some, this “obsession” with the period details, may seem like too much work, but for those who have embraced such aspects of the material culture from the time period their work has added immeasurably to understanding the time period and the details of everyday life for both soldier and civilian through one of the most universal and common aspects of our ancestors of the past and with us today – clothing! Everyone has done in the past, does today, and will probably for the foreseeable future, wear clothing!
Those of us who have researched, examined originals, and then set out to recreate accurate period clothing and attire from a particular time period have found that it goes well beyond generic fabric choice, color, etc. It is a must to have not only the correct weight, content, and properly (authentically) dyed fabric, but it is also cut, construction technique, thread use and more. An example of this may be a re-created Federal Fatigue Blouse commonly called a four-button sack coat. The army issued nearly 3 million of these and it was the most basic article of clothing for every Federal soldier (and even many Confederates that captured supplies from wagon trains, battlefield pick-ups, etc.). Although there were some variations in the fabric and construction techniques due to the various contractors making them, the regulations called for the fabric to be made of flannel (a lighter weight/utilitarian type wool with a distinct diagonal wale/twill) that was indigo dyed, cut in a specific manner/style, and constructed with #30 logwood-dyed linen thread. Although many were machine sewn, especially by contractors, many fatigue blouses were completely hand sewn, including the button holes. Government clothing depots issued kits to civilians to sew for contract pay – to make it equitable to all since not all had machines, they insisted they were completely hand sewn. So depending on the style of fatigue blouse you are re-creating it needs to be entirely hand sewn or a combination of machine/hand sewn.
Does all of this make a difference in building an authentic and accurate impression? Yes, it does. The jacket hangs differently off the body, the stitching is noticeably different, and looks nearly indistinguishable to the originals sans age. These differences, in conjunction with all the other aspects of putting an accurate impression together, really do create the, “that person looks like they just stepped out of a Civil War photograph,” comment.
Women and civilian impressions are equally wrought with attention to details down to the exact style of stitch to create a specific look on the bodice of a dress or a knife-pleat on waist seam. Creating the ever important then, and equally important now, proper silhouette starts with the appropriate and accurately constructed foundational undergarments for both men and women. Constructed appropriately and with the correct fabric, an exact look can be created from the time period. Whether it is the fine detail of tiny stitch revealed 5" from a skirt bottom, where the false hem was sewn in by hand, on the inside or the reinforced top stitching along the outer edge of the side back seam on a woman’s bodice, these are all the important details that many of the living history pursue to create a most accurate window to the past.
It's all in the details and the outcome of such can be profound. A photograph taken using a 1860s wet-plate process of a colleague taken years ago illustrates this point exactly. Robert Lee Hodge, noted living historian and Civil War battlefield preservationist, had created an impression of an early-war civilian soldier. Wearing accurately constructed period clothing, sporting period facial hair, carrying a battle knife, and even crossing his eyes slightly, you would not know if this man is alive today or if it was taken of a Missouri or Kansas “cut throat” or “boarder ruffian” from 1861. Rob’s accurately constructed drop-shoulder cotton plaid work shirt (or battle shirt), fancy silk cravat, jeans-cloth trousers – all with a great deal of wear patina – make this image indiscernible if was taken within the past ten or 150 years. Rob was one of the subject matters in Tony Horwitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Confederates in the Attic and this image was used on the paperback version of the book.
Volumes could be written on the material culture aspects and the use of such understanding for recreating clothing and articles of the past and it all begins with the study of originals. During Civil War Remembrance we are very fortunate to have material culture experts and historians bring in their magnificent collections for display in the Village Pavilion (the “Civil War Resource Center”) as well as provide special presentations sharing their deep and extensive knowledge. We have experts from Michigan, Alabama, Maryland and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania here over the weekend. The fashion show, “What We Wore – Clothing and Uniforms of the 1860s,” has been expanded this year and will be co-presented by local historian Beth Turza and Brian Koenig, material culture export from Pennsylvania. Both Beth and Brian construct exquisitely detailed period clothing.
Through researching, understanding and re-creating accurate clothing and articles from the past, we can get a clearer picture of the people and time period we seek to know. We are indebted to those who keep the skill, expertise and craft of the past alive and relevant. A quote that emerged from presentation workshop we conducted here years ago seems very appropriate for those who make period clothing for living history uses:
“We teach our hands with yesterday so the eyes of today will see the hearts of long ago.”
Brian James Egen is Executive Producer at The Henry Ford.
#Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford, events, fashion, research, Civil War, by Brian James Egen, Greenfield Village, Civil War Remembrance
