Word: homespuns
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...lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband, dressed in a homespun threadbare suit, walked timidly into the Harvard president’s outer office...
Here’s hoping future historians of this century follow Ulrich’s example in The Age of Homespun...
...Homespun, Ulrich studies what 11 objects from colonial everyday life have to say not only about their owners but also about the development of an American icon—the home-based rural economy in which virtuous women spun clothes and household linens while virtuous men tilled the soil. Each object—from an Indian basket dating from 1676 to an unfinished stocking of 1837—was specially chosen for its particular ability to flesh out the romanticized notion of “the age of homespun” that Horace Bushnell coined during the centennial celebration...
...writer become evident as she delves into the shapes, textures and stories of her 11 objects. Her clean, crisp prose and scholarly bent do not obscure, but rather enhance her delight in her subjects. We delight as well. Part history lesson, part jigsaw puzzle, The Age of Homespun spins yarns about colonial life and the people who lived it from the most ordinary of jumping-off points. For example, the Indian basket demonstrates new contact between English settlers and Algonkians in what is now Providence, R.I. and the subsequent blending of the cultures’ fabrics. Hannah Barnard?...
...These homespun pieces are not just nostalgic reminders of a simpler time, long replaced by factories and Gap.com; they have a lot more to say about where we have been. Women occupy a special place in Ulrich’s research; they often appear as both the creators and preservers of these everyday objects. Their place at the foundation of the home-based economy indicates that even though “women’s liberation” as we understand it is an innovation of the twentieth century, colonial women, too, found ways to assert themselves...