Dolls representing the Bampton side (date unknown), including a musician figure with tiny fiddle, probably supposed to be William ‘Jinky’ Wells!! Alice, the Society Archivist at Cecil Sharp House, dug these out for me when I visited. Photograph courtesy of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

However, as I began to discover, tracing the stories of these somewhat peripheral items of costume allows a history of the Morris in Oxfordshire and a handful of remarkable characters to emerge. Shoes, actually, contributed to the decline of Morris dancing in the 1800s: Morris dancers were low-waged labourers who danced to supplement their income; following economic hardship in the first half of the nineteenth century, audiences no longer gave much money and “it got like begging”, as one old Morris dancer recalled. The dancers could no longer afford to buy shoes that they danced through regularly, since they “weren’t ‘patternised’ enough”.

Hats, lasting longer, tell a multitude of stories. Sides adopted styles of headwear largely based on availability: a type that each man had access to. At Eynsham during the 1930s the men wore ANZAC hats; at Headington Quarry cricket caps have been continuously worn. During the revivals (around the turn of the nineteenth century and again in the late twentieth century) top hats, in particular, suggested ‘tradition’. The revived Eynsham side of the 1980s chose top hats stuck with pheasant feathers in tribute to a famous forebear, Edward ’Feathers’ Russell.

Feathers Russell of Eynsham painted by William Nicholson in around 1901

[See image gallery at blogs.ashmolean.org]

Headington Quarry Morris Dancers threatening Doctor Who in 1971

Once a basic uniformity is established, however, hats are often altered and decorated, displaying individuality. Hats, like other garments, are worn in and worn out, handed down, adapted. Joe Marns’ hat, at the Vale and Downland Museum, is an autobiographical, battle-worn object covered with mementoes and insignia. Being particularly customisable, hats are adorned with flowers at Whitsun, studded with badges marking festivals danced at or affiliations to clubs or political views, bedecked with ribbons, pimped up with diamante, and, regularly, soused in beer from an upturned glass.

Eynsham Morris dancer, photographed by Suzy Prior. Image © Suzy Prior.

Women's Straw hat, early 20th century, worn on Langley Farm Leafield. OXCMS:1979.111.5

A few weeks ago the improvements to the documentation of hats at the Museums Resource Centre began.  Twenty Five hats were moved into the textile store photographed from specific angles and measured.  All information has now been added to the modes database.

The movement of the hats has sparked the imagination of staff and volunteers a like, “What was that hat worn for?” they ask, “I wonder who would have worn that” and then the conversation progressed “I used to wear hats all the time I don’t do that anymore, I should start wearing a hat again” Lots of sighing and excitement has been generated, bodes well for the future exhibitions.

 This week the rest of the hats arrived inside the Textile Store.

Cloche straw hat with purple silk ribbon decoration, 20th century. OXCMS:1964.5599

 

When we arrived we were warmly welcomed and shown the objects.  Unfortunately, the bowler hat and Elizabethan shoe are on display and unlikely to be lent to us.  The gold shoes were stunning, if a bit crackled with the passing of time, but they were worn by a bride in a village just outside Oxfordshire, so we are unable to justify using them for this project.  Very frustrating as there was photo of the bride too!!  Sam and I asked if we could have a glance at the other objects, mostly shoes that had been taken to the shoe repair section of a department store called Copes in Thame and never collected.  We were expecting a lot of boring, worn out shoes but to our joy there were some wonderful 1920s and 30s women’s shoes and a mixture of men and women’s Victorian and Edwardian boots and shoes.

Some of the early C20th shoes had beautiful details and fit perfectly with the collection at the Museum Resource Centre (MRC), where most of the objects will come from for this exhibition.  I want to have a section in the exhibition which mimics an early C20th shop front, showing these beautiful shoes off with shiny signs that say cheesy things like Comfort and Style, what every woman wants.

Some of the shoes at MRC (click to scroll through)  [See image gallery at blogs.ashmolean.org]

Shopping and advertising have a huge part to play in how we feel about the garments we wear.  Sometimes it’s really hard to put your finger on what it is exactly that makes you want/desire that pair of shoes or that hat or any other garment for that matter.  This is what I’m most interested in and somehow I want this to come across in this section of the exhibition.   I was speaking to a friend recently about his hat.  I asked him why he wore it and he couldn’t articulate the reason, it just made him feel better.   Better about himself?  Better than other people?  I didn’t push the questioning that far!  Although we can’t say this in words, we all know this feeling.  We all have some item of clothing that whenever we wear it we feel, well, just better.

Thame Museum – http://www.thamemuseum.org/index.html

Aimee and I spent the other day at the Museums Resource Centre looking at our shoe collection.  We discovered a massive hoard of parts of leather shoes found in a ditch at the Oxford Castle, a great project for an archaeological research group to explore at some point in the future.  Then we rediscovered this child’s shoe found in a Late Roman Well at Barton Court Farm, Abingdon.  Only 13.5cm long and 6cm wide it is the right shoe, with moccasin style vamp, a stitched on sole and stiched with thongs.  This lovely objects was conserved in 2000.  A historic treatment possibly with excessive amounts of neats foot oil had left the shoe as a sticky dark mass (see attached image).  This sticky treatment was painstakingly removed with Alcosol D70 (white spirit substitute) and then the shoe parts were reconstructed with dyed japanese tissue and silk crepline.

Roman shoe, shiney from historic conservation treatment and before removal of historic treatment and reconstruction

Romano-British child shoe found in a Late Roman well at Barton Court Farm, Abingdon