La Bricoleuse

Interview: Milliner Jan Wutkowski of aMuse Artisanal Finery

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:52:42 GMT

I'm so pleased to have a new installment of the Interviews series, this time with milliner Jan Wutkowski. Jan is not only a working milliner but also maintains a busy teaching schedule of millinery classes all over the country and internationally, and owns and operates her own boutique, aMuse: artisanal finery. Here's what she had to say about the art and the craft of millinery.

Q. How long have you been designing hats, and how did you get started?

I was very fortunate to live in Australia in 1995. For the first 6 months I lived in Brisbane, Queensland, and was actively looking for something to study and immerse myself in--some artistic skill to bring back to the US and try to make a living at. Living there seemed like such a fairy tale anyway, I mean, who gets to go live in Australia for a year and have nothing to do but have a great time and learn as much as you can? I looked into taking classes in the old craft of applying gold leaf to frames, statues, chairs, and other objets d'art, but it just didn't seem right for me.

I then moved to Melbourne, Victoria, for the remaining 6 months, and was lucky enough to live just a couple of blocks from an amazing working craft gallery. Lots of artists showing how they created their work--spinners, printmakers, blacksmiths, glass blowers, and milliners, all under one roof. Every week I'd go to the gallery and watch the milliners blocking straws and felts, covering buckram, and many other millinery skills. The next week I'd go back and see the finished product waiting for someone to purchase it. I was amazed! But I contacted the millinery school because I found out they could teach me to make handmade felt, not to learn to make hats. I'd never even heard of handmade felt until I moved Australia, but quickly fell in love with the whole process.

After I took the feltmaking class I enrolled in the millinery classes. I had been a collector of vintage hats for years and loved to wear them, but it had never occurred to me at all as to how they were made; I just knew I loved these little works of art, little sculptures you put on your head. I'm also one of those souls who have tried every art and craft around but I'd always lose interest after the first year or so. Millinery? It stuck and I've never looked back.

"Big Pink" by Jan Wutkowski

Q. You work in a range of methods--blocked felt and straw, sewn fabric soft structure, and buckram bases. Do you have a favorite?

That's a question I get asked about a lot and I have to say blocking felt is where I get the most pleasure. It is so sculptural, especially when free-form blocking. And it is very forgiving. If you block a hat and don't particularly love the style, you can always block it into something else. It is a medium that is perfect for beginners because of this property. But I must say that I also love working with fabric-covered buckram, again, because there are so many possibilities with it. Not only the shape of the buckram but how you drape your choice of fabric over that shape. Just so many options to get rich textures and loads of visual interest.

Q. Who are your influences in hat design?

Favorite vintage millinery designers are Schiaparelli, Bes-Ben, Lily Dache, but my favorite contemporary milliner is Eugenie van Oirschot, from The Netherlands. I've had the privilege of teaching with her twice at the International Millinery Forum in Australia. She is incredible. I love great lines and how they are juxtaposed; I like clean lines with little fuss to the overall look. So nature is a big influence as well as architecture. But my love of vintage jewelry from the art deco, art nouveau, and modernist schools is probably my biggest influence in design.

Shoe Hat by Elsa Schiaparelli

Q. You also travel the world teaching millinery classes on a wide range of topics. Tell us about your favorite class to teach!

I teach about 15 different skill sets that are either true millinery arts or are relative to hatmaking, such as French flowermaking. I love them all!

And my answer to your question doesn't really have much to do with WHAT I'm teaching as it does with WHO I'm teaching. I've been teaching millinery since around 1998 and now teach about 7-8 months of the year--about 10 classes a year, excluding the private classes I teach in my atelier. So I teach quite a few people a year! But I absolutely love the classes where the class dynamics are finely tuned. A class where everyone is receptive to a new skill, listens, experiments, works with the other class members, is giving and forgiving. Wow! Those classes have me buzzing!

I can never anticipate whether a class will develop this fine dynamic either, it just happens. And when it does it is magical for all of us. I will say this, however, that many of those classes have costumers in them. The costumers seem to help generate creativity in the room, and they have always been very open to giving their knowledge to the other class members; they seem to pull the others along and everybody does work to a higher standard. I'm assuming that comes from working in costuming shops with others, where there's a deadline and everyone has to pull together. Anyway, just an observation.

Q. You ALSO operate a boutique based in Wilmington, NC, aMuse. Do you stock only your own designs, or if not, which other milliners' work do you carry? Is your studio located in the same space as the shop? (Basically, tell us a bit about your shop!)

I opened my shop, aMuse: artisanal finery, 5 years ago. It was a total leap of faith. I had no idea whether a shop that sold mostly custom hats would be able to survive or not. Well, here I am 5 years later and it gets better every year. I can't imagine doing anything else with my life and wonder why I didn't do it earlier, my only regret. I describe the shop as an accessories shop--mostly hats and vintage costume jewelry, vintage gloves and bags, and about a year ago I started carrying a few dresses that I call 'occasion dress'--not too formal, but not too casual either, because many of my clients are having a hat or headpiece made for a special occasion.

For most of the year the hats and headpieces come straight out of my workroom, which is in the back of the shop and not accessible to the public. But during the busiest hat-wearing time of year in Wilmington (March--July) I bring in other milliners' work. Most of the work I do is custom-made throughout the year, and having other people's work in the shop creates a diversity of styles for those who are looking to purchase something right off the hat stand, who aren't looking at having something made for a specific dress or occasion. I have to say I'm very picky about whose hats I bring into the shop because I want it to represent the millinery trade in a positive way. No glue, no machine stitching, no shortcuts. These hats are all about true millinery arts.

Q. Do you design seasonal style collections, or strictly one-of-a-kind pieces? When it comes to designing, do you construct your hats based on concepts and drawings, or do you work sculpturally letting the media determine the form?

I certainly have seasonal pieces in the shop at any given time, but no, I don't create a seasonal line, as such. Many milliners do but I've found that since most of my work is custom-made it is more economical for me, time-and materials-wise, to have representative hats in the shop for people to try on and get ideas about shape, embellishment, color, style--to see what is becoming to their face shape, hair, body shape, etc. We then design a custom piece that fits their head properly and is styled to their requirements. I see no good reason to make up 50 hats to have in the shop knowing that most are not going to sell because they are not 'right' for the buyer, for many reasons.

When I'm making hats for shop stock I usually have some sort of idea about what the style will be. Sometimes I sketch it out and other times I have a brilliant idea and just jump right in and get started. However, since these hats are not for a client, they will evolve in many cases. I do believe in the spirit within the material, and sometimes these hats decide what THEY want to be as opposed to what I want them to be. Sometimes we fight! But the hat always wins.

Q. What advice would you give readers considering a career in contemporary millinery?

Don't give up the day job just yet! Take as many classes as you can from as many milliners as you can. We all do the same thing but we all do it a little differently. Practice your skills, make mistakes, take design chances, study old texts, take apart thrift store hats and see the construction, start collecting materials, blocks, supplies, keep learning! If you can apprentice with a master milliner do so. Don't think you will learn it all in a single class. I'm still learning some 15 years later and hope to continue to learn. Have fun with it! The millinery world is really rather small on a global scale, so jump in the mix and vow to keep the true millinery arts alive.

And, that's the interview. Thank you, Jan, for taking the time to share your thoughts on millinery with the La Bricoleuse readership!

You can follow Jan's millinery and teaching schedule online at the following links:

Blog: http://janshatshatshats.blogspot.com
Website: http://www.hatshatshats.com
Classes webpage: http://www.hatshatshats.com/classes.htm
Facebook personal: http://www.facebook.com/jan.wutkowski
Facebook business: http://www.facebook.com/amuse.artisanal.finery

Behind-the-Scenes of the Carolina Ballet's footwear

Sat, 12 May 2012 22:35:47 GMT

Now that the theatre season and the academic year have ended, i've picked up a couple weeks of overhire work at the Carolina Ballet on their last production of their season, a double bill of Beauty and the Beast and Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I hadn't worked on ballet costumes since my stint at the Boston Ballet back in 1998, and it's been interesting to get back into that whole mindset and realm of costume concerns.

One of the primary crafts needs of a ballet company is coloration of footwear. Shoes are a concern in all types of dance performance, but the aesthetic tradition of ballet has a very specific set of variables to deal with. All the shoes must exactly match the dancers' tights, to help maintain the seamless visual line of the leg/foot in performance. Each dancer has a specific preference in footwear--style, material, brand--which must be tracked and adhered to across the spectrum of costume needs. Standard ballet slippers may be leather or various weaves and fiber contents of cloth, and then there are pointe shoes to consider. For a large professional dance company, shoe stock and their tracking and coloring alone can be a staff position in and of itself.

The Carolina Ballet is a sizable professional company, but their budgets and programming are not such that they can employ a full-time shoe specialist--they typically handle shoe needs in-house except on large new-build works like this Beethoven piece. So this is where i come in as an overhire craftsperson and dyer!

There are a number of products you can use to color canvas ballet slippers.
The Carolina Ballet uses the Dye-Na-Flow range of water-based flowable textile colorants.

I like to use a wide flat brush like this to paint ballet slippers.
It helps me to get good coverage in the tucks of the toebox without affecting the leather footpads.

Shoes on the drying rack. This image shows the range of dancer preference,
not only style and material but also whether they prefer to break them in
before or after the coloration process.

This was a fun project! Slipper alteration for a character in
Beauty and the Beast called the Monkey. His toe curl is made of
headliner foam so as not to interfere with the dancer's movement.

Pointe shoe dye tests. Potential products to use include (from left):
Dylon satin dye, Evangeline slipper dyes, International shoe dyes.
All are solvent-based as water-based products destroy the pointe foundation structure.

Unrelated to shoes, here's the Monkey's mask and fez! Ballet headgear and masks
must allow the dancer to perform physically-demanding choreography.
This mask is flexible latex, close-fitting with large eye openings.
It is all mounted on a hood which attaches under the chin and around the neck
for maximum stability and support.

I don't have any photos of them, but there are also a range of leather ballet slippers i've been painting using the Angelus and EcoFlow lines of leather paints. Tarrago is another brand of paints formulated expressly for flexible leather footwear.

Hope you enjoyed this brief foray into ballet shoe craftwork! I sure have appreciated the opportunity to be involved in it myself.

Final armor projects!

Wed, 02 May 2012 10:43:37 GMT

Here are the rest of my Masks and Armor class final presentations. Some amazing stuff in here, such a great group.

Sea diver helmet made by first year grad Kelly Renko. The headlamp actually lights up!

Rear view. Kelly used primarily Wonderflex thermoplastic to create this piece.

Undergraduate Jess Adams, despite serious illness this past week, still pulled off this
Klingon judge's gavel from maché and a repurposed garden sphere.

Undergraduate Lydia Hanchette created this cuir bouille cincher,
pauldron, and vambrace entirely of hardened leather.

Body armor and pauldron/vambrace rig by second year Adrienne Corral

Adrienne used a combination of Wonderflex, vegetable and oil tanned leather,
and a reclaimed mink pelt.

The whole rig on a body ready to kick some butt.

It's bittersweet--i'm glad it's summer (since i have a lot of cool stuff lined up for summer!) but i'm sad that this class is over. I'm going to miss seeing these students and the great projects they came up with!

Thesis projects: Creative Draping

Tue, 01 May 2012 14:55:21 GMT

In the third year, the students in our program produce a collection of projects which constitute the equivalent of a thesis. The creative draping project is one of these, in which students choose a design with some type of structural support inside it, typically something elaborate and bizarre. This year, our two graduates chose projects by contemporary couture designers Roberto Capucci and Alexander McQueen.

Roberto Capucci's 1992 "Sculpture Dress," the inspiration image for Claire Fleming's project.

Claire models her final project. Claire's gown is built on a strapless foundation,
using silk dupioni and an embossed taffeta, with an understructure incorporating
steel hoops, industrial felt, horsehair canvas, and nylon boning.

Alexander McQueen design from his Spring 2005 collection, the inspiration image for
Kaitlin Fara's project

Kaitlin Fara models her final project. Kaitlin's gown is built on a
strapless foundation using brocade, embroidered taffeta, cotton, and custom-dyed powernet,
with a steel hoop understructure and "tattooing" applique.

Rear view

Closeup of shoulder area

Bow detail

Congratulations, ladies! Beautiful work!

Complex armor, round one!

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:29:13 GMT

My students present their final armor projects tomorrow, but two of them were floating around the shop today, ready to go, so i photographed them early. There will be more coming tomorrow, but for now, check these out:

Rubber armor from woven bicycle inner tubes by second year Candy McClernan

Front view--this is all mounted on a hardened felt base support

Rear view--the shoulder and arm pieces are built on a wonderflex base

First year Leah Pelz models her samurai helmet and throat guard

Back view--the helmet is hardened leather, the face mask is wonderflex

Classes: Let the finals begin!

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:24:18 GMT

We're heading into finals in the academic end of things, and i have a couple of teaser photos to share before things really get cranking.

Judy Adamson's beginning draping class has a couple of super sweet half drapes out in the hallway that i just had to take a photo of. And, my masks and armor folks have had their final presentations pushed back to May 1st, but one student is completely done and her work is SO FAB (hi samurai helmet) that i can't keep it under wraps.

Left: beginning draping project by first year Leah Pelz
Right: beginning draping project by first year Kelly Renko

Samurai helmet and face guard/yodare kake by first year Leah Pelz.
Leah used a combination of cuir bouille (hardened leather) and Wonderflex to create these pieces.

Noises Off staircase-fall padding

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:31:20 GMT

For our recent production of Noises Off!, we had the unusual project of creating a set of protective padding for an actor who had to take a pratfall down a flight of stairs!

Katie Paxton as Brooke and Matt Schneck as Garry

See this staircase on the set? Matt Schneck, the actor in the foreground, had to "fall" down the first set of stairs to the landing, appear to smash his crotch on the newel post, then bump down the second set of stairs on his behind, ultimately winding up lying flat on the stage at the bottom of the stairs. Obviously, this action required physical skill and movement coaching, but in the interest of safety and realism, we were asked to troubleshoot how to pad the actor's entire lower body to protect him from accidental injury. These pads needed to be as invisible as possible under his butter-yellow suit, as well!

We started with a football girdle, designed to protect the hips and tailbone from impact, like this one. We knew we'd need to pad more areas than that so two were purchased. Through fittings with the performer, we learned exactly where he would need the padding beyond that already provided by the single girdle. Then my assistant Kelly Renko and i cut up the second girdle's pads and attached them to the first, covered in a matching white spandex, thus:

Padding on hanging-man dress form.
What are you looking at?

Red pads were integral to original garment.
Black pads for buttocks and small of back and rear thigh were added.

So, that's an interesting project that no audience member ever even saw or knew about, but which was super-important for the success of a physical comedy moment and the safety of the actor! Cool!

Class: A few armor projects...

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:57:14 GMT

My Masks and Armor class presented simple armor projects today, and i have a few images to share.

Undergraduate Jess Adams created this helmet from Wonderflex thermoplastic, inspired by the Witch King helmet in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Undergraduate Lydia Hanchett created this cuir bouille hardened leather waist cincher.

First year graduate Kelly Renko created this pair of cuir bouille hardened leather bracers.

Second year graduate Candy McClernan created these gauntlets using Wonderflex thermoplastic

Candy's pattern for her gauntlets.

Coming next week: complex armor! That's going to be incredible, trust me! :D

Class: Complex masks!

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:07:28 GMT

My students presented their complex mask projects today, and i just LOVE them all! Check these out!

First-year grad Leah Pelz made this fun walkaround hippopotamus head!
The wearer looks out his happy open mouth.

Quarter-scale and half-scale versions which helped Leah figure out her final pattern.
(My fingers are there for scale.)

Second-year grad Adrienne Corral made the Lisa Frank unicorn!
The wearer looks out the eyedomes and the nostrils.

Side view of mask with Jumbo-Braid rainbow mane.

Quarter-scale and half-scale versions which helped Adrienne figure out her final pattern.
(My fingers are there for scale.)

First-year grad Kelly Renko made this old-man mask based on a Julie Taymor design!
The wearer looks out his creepy black eyes, which are the lenses of sunglasses. And speaking of creepy...

...his jaw rips off to spew ribbon blood! Ew!

Undergraduate Lydia Hanchett made this Skeksis mask from Varaform and buckram
on a carved blue foam matrix. The wearer has full vision through all layers!

Undergraduate Jess Adams made this traditional molded leather Pantalone mask.
He's my favorite Commedia guy! (Jess's matrix is at left.)

Second-year grad student Candy McClernan made this traditional molded leather skull mask, with the goal of modifying an existing mask matrix to withstand leather molding. At left you can see a customized "eye-tolliker" she made to create the depressions of the eyes as deeply as she wanted them. At center, the horn hammer used to make these traditional masks.

Millinery Competition for Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 15:42:02 GMT

First up, congratulations to puppetmaker40, the winner of my first-ever book giveaway contest for a copy of Margaret Peot's Successful Artist's Career Guide. And, I hope a few of the rest of you check the book out as well. I'm very excited to incorporate it into my classes in the fall.

Next, a signal-booting announcement. Remember back when Talenthouse hosted the Stephen Jones millinery contest? They've partnered with another famous milliner, Dillon Wallwork, and UK's excellent HATalk E-Magazine [1] to host another millinery contest in honor of Queen Elizabeth II's upcoming Diamond Jubilee! Very excited to see the visibility of millinery and hat-wearing on the rise.

You can enter the contest here through May 3rd, with voting set to run from the 4th through the 11th. First prize winner receives free enrollment at one of Mr. Wallwork's famous millinery courses at Chateau Dumas. Swoon. Really looking forward to this contest, as i'm hoping it will be a similar sort of fantastic cross-section of milliners around the world!

[1] I suppose in the interest of full disclosure, i was a featured Milliner of the Month some years back in HATalk, but i am otherwise unaffiliated with them or anyone else hosting these contests. Just a chapeauphile and interested milliner is all.

Margaret Peot book review and a contest!

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:56:08 GMT

Recall that we hosted a series of master classes last week by Broadway fabric painter and author Margaret Peot, in tandem with the release of her newest book, The Successful Artist's Career Guide: Finding Your Way in the Business of Art. I've recently finished reading it--this post is not only to share my review but also to give away a signed copy!

I'm going to follow in the footsteps of the esteemed author and blogger Joshilyn Jackson, who is a dab hand at these book giveaway deals, and basically rip off how she does hers. Leave a comment on this entry, one comment per reader, between now and Friday March 9th at noon EST, at which time I'll use a random number generator to pick a winner who will receive a copy of the book! I'll notify the winner that afternoon and contact you for your mailing address to ship you the book.

But first, my review!

Understand that i am coming to this book as a reader from the perspective of someone who decided twenty years ago to pursue a career as an artist, so I recognize that the first two chapters are not aimed at me. Rather, they are aimed at the woman i was at 18 or 20, wondering whether I really wanted to major in theatre instead of something like advertising or accounting or electrical engineering. I think, had I access to a book like this at the time, I would have felt more confident about my choices, less terrified that i'd end up a starving junkie or something, and it would have taken me a lot less time to get where I got. The first two chapters are devoted to a sort of pep talk, confidence-building inspiration, anecdotal advice, things to help assuage the fears of one's family and friends who might be less than thrilled about the prospect of one's artistic career.

For me, the place where this book really takes off and becomes universally important and useful to even mid-career artists like myself is the third chapter, in which the author breaks down exactly how to put a price on your artwork and bid on various kinds of contract jobs--what sorts of variables to consider, how to weigh different contingency factors, and explains contractual terms like a kill fee (what you get paid if they decide they no longer want the piece but you've already begun making it). I'm actually planning to use it as a textbook in one of my graduate classes for a project we do on developing bids, that is how thrilled i was to see this information collected and presented.

Subsequent chapters deal with other practical matters--doing your taxes, securing health insurance, setting up retirement plans, promotion of your work, time management, even how to decide what sort of studio space you might need or want. I wish i could go back in time and hand this book to my 20-year-old self, because I guess i might still have made some of the same mistakes and underbid myself or gone years without insurance, but i wouldn't have had ignorance to blame.

Peppered throughout the book are interviews with working artists in all kinds of disciplines--graphic art, printmaking, decorative ironwork, art therapy, illustration, etc. These are nice little interludes and a fascinating glimpse into the lives of various successful-but-unfamous artists that serve to underscore how one does not need to be the next Pablo Picasso or Prince or Meryl Streep or William Styron in order to make a successful, fulfilling artistic life for oneself. These interviews are--like the first two chapters--perhaps more eye-opening and useful to the early-career artist (particularly a young student who needs to convince her/his parents that majoring in lithography is not an expensive ticket to the garret and starvation), but are nonetheless an interesting read no matter where you are in your own career.

Lest you think my review is nothing more than a cheerleading shill for the book, I do have one primary criticism: I think the publisher did the book a disservice in overdesigning its interior, and in choosing the size of the book. At first glance, i was really drawn to the unique size (8" square), the full-color interior, and the quality of the paper and cover. The more i read through the book though, the more some of the graphic design choices jarred me: images and text randomly oriented at skewed angles, or printed on faux-finish "textured" backgrounds which occasionally obfuscate a word here and there.

The most frustrating element of this is the way in which the numerous worksheets and exercises are treated graphically, printed at odd angles on what is meant to look like a torn-off sheet of spiral-bound paper superimposed on a background. Given that i can honestly imagine this book serving as an invaluable text in art classes, schools, and universities, this layout for the worksheets and the choice to make the book a size difficult to nicely photocopy for educational use shows poor forethought on behalf of the publisher. In places it's as if the book design was meant for a new-age self-help text, not the book which Peot wrote.

Luckily, this criticism in no way diminishes the value of the book itself for the sheer usefulness of information contained within. Graphical grousing aside, i still plan to recommend it to all my colleagues, and starting in the fall use it as a textbook in my series of four graduate courses. Perhaps the book will be so wildly successful that there will eventually be a second edition in which the worksheets are presented more functionally and less flakily. Take my advice, buy this book!

Don't forget to drop a comment on this entry for a chance at my giveaway of a signed copy! You can also Like the book on Facebook to learn about other giveaways and workshops attached to it, and if you do the Goodreads thing you can add it to a shelf over there.

Vacuforming at TechShop RDU!

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:24:09 GMT

I may have said it before: the vacuform is one of the main reasons i became a member at TechShop RDU.

This is what a vacuformer looks like. Some are larger than this,
but this one will do about a 24" x 30" surface at up to a 5" height.

You clamp a sheet of styrene into the vacuum area,
slide your heat element into place, then lift the clamped sheet
up with a pair of levers at the machine's front.

Front view of the machine with items for vacuforming arrayed on vacuum surface grid.
The plastic sheet is suspended above this photo, getting rubbery from heat.

When the plastic is sagging in the middle, you flip the vacuum on and trip the levers to drop the clamped sheet. Immediately, the plastic is sucked down around the items on the grid, which in this case are pens, a mouse, and some alphabet magnets.

Here i've vacuformed a wig head and a WWI doughboy helmet.
This shows a phenomenon called webbing, those ridges which result if your mold matrix is too deep or your pieces are placed too close together on the table.

Top left: Candy McClernan's skull mask matrix; Top right: life cast
Foreground: some fedora tip presses and a couple "eyeball" domes for mascot heads

And, just this week I was offered the opportunity to become a plastics lab trainer for them, teaching Safety and Basic Use (SBU) of the strip bender, heat press, and vacuform! I'm super-excited about this for a couple of reasons.

First off, I appreciate the opportunity to train others on a machine that i really love. There's nothing like a vacuform for what it does, which is quickly skin a mold without undercuts. Sure, there are things that aren't great (vacuformed styrene is easily torn, for example, so in my field we always reinforce a vacuformed mask or piece of armor with something--papier mache layers, moldable thermoplastic like Wonderflex, etc.), but man, is it fast for multiples. You need a dozen pairs of greves for a battle scene? Sculpt one and then bang them out on a vacuform. By lending a hand with training through the SBU, i get to show other makers and artists and artisans in the area how these cool machines work, and see what unimaginable but surely awesome things they will make with them!

Second, this makes it super easy for us over at work to utilize the resource of TechShop's plastics lab. Not only can i teach my own masks and armor students the vacuform and get them certified to use it, but i could even teach other colleagues--props artisans or the folks in scenic, who knows? In theatre, you never know why you need something til you need it like, RIGHT THEN, and this way, if (when) the situation arises where, say, our propmaster realizes she can make these thirty identical things due next week if only she had a vacuform, we can book an SBU for her and her staff and then they can all be able to use that vacuform! Who knows, it's a resource maybe that only i and my students will use, but at the same time, theatre is about collaboration and preparation, and i believe you can never be too prepared.

I'm conducting my first plastics lab SBU next week during Spring Break, at 2pm on March 8th. The training lasts and hour and once you've done it, you're able to sign up to use any of the plastics lab equipment without supervision. Tuition is $35 which includes a sample vacuformed item to take home, and you pay for the class online via TechShop's website, here: http://techshoprdu.com/classes#Plastics

(Obviously if that date isn't good for you, there are other opportunities to do the training with one of the other teachers, Ruthan. She's the one who taught my SBU when i took it, and I totally recommend her training ability.)

Spray technique workshop with Margaret Peot!

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 14:37:49 GMT

We are currently hosting a short residency with renowned Broadway costume painter Margaret Peot in tandem with the release of her new book, The Successful Artist's Career Guide: Finding your Way in the Business of Art. In addition to the freelancer's workshop I announced in a prior post, she is also conducting workshops and classes with our graduate and undergraduate students yesterday and today here on campus.

Yesterday morning, she led our costume production MFA candidates in a specialized advanced workshop exploring aerosol and airbrush techniques using acid dyes on nylon spandex and silk fabrics. This is not a workshop she can do most places, because it requires students who are respirator-fit-tested due to the type of airborne dyestuff the techniques create, but because we have a respirator program in place here, we could host it! Exciting!

3rd year grads Claire Fleming (left) and Kaitlin Fara (center) listen to Margaret (right) discuss paint samples from her career at Parsons-Meares.

Airbrush, acid dyes mixed into a 50/50 vinegar/water solution,
Preval sprayers, and pitchers of gum thickener for creating paints.
We purchased these supplies from Aljo Dyes.

Margaret demonstrates several masking techniques with an airbrush on spandex.

Grad students experimenting with airbrush and Preval sprayer techniques.
Left: Candy McClernan (2nd year), Leah Pelz (1st year), Claire Fleming (3rd year)

Two types of mesh fabric through which we sprayed to create layers and depth of color.
We also used lace, hand-cut acetate stencils, and even a couple of ostrich plumes to spray through!

Margaret discussed ripping holes in a very regular netting
to break up the uniformity of its spray pattern for more organic looks.

After the paint session, Adrienne Corral and i wrapped the silk sample pieces in newsprint for steam setting.

Then we turned my 60-gal dye vat into a steam chamber and steamed them for 90 minutes.

This section of Claire Fleming's sample shows the effects created spraying through different mesh patterns.

Kaitlin Fara sprayed over an acetate gear-shaped mask, then used a paintbrush to brush the excess from the surface of the stencil to make the second effect you see at right.

This section of Adrienne Corral's samples illustrates the technique of frottage with an ostrich plume. First she sprayed the plume with green for a masked effect (at left), then flipped the plume to "stamp" some of the green at the same time that she oversprayed with the blue (at right).

Today we're about to have a workshop in which Margaret illustrates non-aerosol paint applications on a range of fabrics, for not only our grad students but also several undergraduates and those on staff with PlayMakers in our and other departments (props, our scenic painter, etc).

More pics and info on Margaret's classes, and even my very first-ever autographed book giveaway coming soon! And, if you are interested in having Margaret come do a session at your school, organization, or theatre, you can contact her via her website.

Update on Peot Workshop 2/27/12

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:41:51 GMT

A quick update on the Margaret Peot freelancing-artist workshop we're hosting on Monday night:

The event will happen in the Center for Dramatic Art, and was previously cited as being in room #250. We're looking at possibly moving to a larger room due to the volume of interest in this event, so the room location is switching to TBA and we'll post it prominently in the CDA lobby the day of the event.

Also, it was brought to my attention that my previous post on the event had the date stated in two places, one with the correct date of 2/27/12 (Monday) and the other with an incorrect date. I have amended that prior post to reflect the correct date.

Add this to your events on Facebook, or send an invite to a friend!

And! To recap:

Margaret Peot is the author of three books, including the forthcoming The Successful Artist’s Career Guide: Finding Your Way in the Business of Art. Her work is currently on exhibit at FIT, "On Stages in Stages: Painting for the Theatre from Parsons Meares Ltd." She will lead participants in a variety of learning exercises on topics such as copyright, portfolios, taxes, business plans, marketing of art, and more.

This event will be held on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the following date, location, and time:

February 27, 2012
Center for Dramatic Art, Room TBA
6:00pm

The CDA is located at the corner of Country Club Road and Paul Green Drive, between Cobb Hall and the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. There is parking available in the Cobb Deck behind the CDA and a visitor's lot a short walk away at the corner of Country Club and NC-54/South Rd.

All are welcome. For more information and to RSVP contact Adam M. Dill at 919-962-1141.

Ask LaBricoleuse: Rehearsal garments

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:09:36 GMT

Haven't had a post of this sort in a while, but the question came up on the USITT costumer's email list about rehearsal garments. In the interest of formulating a policy guideline for her own employer, the querant wondered, what were the policies for providing rehearsal garments at various theatres and academic departments?

The chain of responses has yielded an interesting overview of different kinds of policies at different levels of theatre, so i thought i'd post my response here, as well as some further musings on the topic. I replied:

Here is a general overview of what we provide at PlayMakers Repertory, which is a LORT-D theatre in residence on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, operating with a 6-show mainstage season and a 3-show second-stage track running concurrently.

I am speaking here only as the staff craftsperson, not as the shop manager, so my list is not official and may not be complete. I do wind up dealing with many of the rehearsal items as part of my job responsibility, like rubberizing shoes ASAP so they can go in when asked for, so that's where i'm coming from in answering this query. We typically send in a combination of rehearsal pieces and the actual pieces, but when the actual pieces are desired we often build that into our calendar in the shop in terms of what gets made when. (More on that after my list.)

Rehearsal items--stand-ins for action development only, not the real things since we are often making them:

--Ladies petticoats or rehearsal skirts for period shows where the women need to get used to negotiating more volume and length than a modern skirt.
--Hats which need to be donned/doffed onstage.
--Accessories if they ask for them like gloves/scarves.
--Occasionally we will send in the muslin of a made-to-order costume if it is a special case show (such as when we recently did In the Next Room and sent in the muslins of bustled-up overskirts, as the women must learn to disrobe completely onstage and pace the dialogue with the actions).
--And, men's coats/jackets occasionally, especially full-skirted frock coats or tailcoats, since like rehearsal skirts the actors sometimes want to get used to negotiating those unfamiliar garment shapes/volumes.

Actual items--the costumes they will use in the run of the show:

--Shoes if they ask for them, though only after the soles have been rubberized if they need it.
--"Propstumes" which might involve action/business like a handbag, parasol, or fan. I am usually the one making these if they are made, and i try to get the real deal to them if possible since small hand props usually need to fit into handbags, parasols' handle shapes and dimensions affect blocking and action, and folding fans have their own quirks of opening and closing which the actress needs to feel comfortable with.

And, we will send in items requested for safe movement/choreography purposes, such as knee pads, fighting gauntlets, baldrics/swordbelts, joint braces, and restrictive undergarments like corsetry.

I can think of a couple occasions on which I had to schedule my production calendar in advance to accommodate the use of specific real costume pieces from the first day of rehearsal. We have done a couple shows involving many masked characters, in which the designers/directors settled on the mask designs far enough in advance for my team to make them and have them available from the beginning of rehearsal. And, once we had to make a body-puppet, for which we sent in a simplified rehearsal version (think cardboard and tape and wire) until the real one was ready.

For the drama department's student shows, i honestly have no idea what the policy is on rehearsal garments. Each year there are both "official"/departmentally-sponsored student shows and several student troupes producing their own work in our spaces, and i have the impression that for many of them, they don't work with rehearsal items given the quick turnaround between their costume pulls and their shows opening. Only in very rare cases, such as a recent masked show where the director pulled her complement of masks for the performers at the start of their rehearsal process, do they work with clothes.

I'm glad you asked this question, i am very interested to hear what others' policies are and what people provide as a matter of course at different theatres and institutions!

I should add that I'm working at a theatre which operates under an Equity contract, and union rules stipulate specific requirements of rehearsal items, which a theatre may choose to exceed (meaning, offer more than the minimum required by the contract) but may not choose to disregard.

The most salient of these requirements for crafts artisans is the provision of footwear. AEA's official agreement with resident theatres stipulates that costumes provide "professional dance shoes at least one week prior to rehearsal" [1]. This is topical to crafts artisans since shoe repair and alterations are crafts responsibilities.

If you are working for a production/company which involves dancers en pointe, AEA's agreement is much more broad in its stipulation: "The Theatre shall furnish pointe shoes with ribbons for all rehearsals and performances requiring pointe shoes. The Theatre shall furnish at least one pair of pointe shoes for each member of the cast called upon to dance in pointe shoes. New pointe shoes shall be provided sufficiently in advance of their use to allow the Actor adequate time to break in the shoes." [Ibid.] From a crafts perspective, you need to really be on top of this stipulation since, should the shoes need to be dyed, that can affect the fit and feel of the shoe so ideally you can troubleshoot this from the beginning with the input of the designer and the dancer both.

When shoes go into rehearsal early, they are often worn out before the show closes, and a good designer will know this stipulation and build it into her/his purchasing calendar and production budget disbursement for a certain number of shoe replacement pairs. Designers who aren't as experienced at the Equity level may not know this and a good shop manager or crafts artisan can save the shop and the show a world of hurt by knowing rules like this and bringing them up early in the process.

Another element which an Equity house is required to provide in rehearsal from the beginning is knee pads, elbow pads, and other protective clothing [Ibid, p. 14].

One area where our on-list discussion highlighted a difference between academic/non-Equity performance and Equity houses is in the use of performer's own clothes--character shoes, for example. Academic and non-Equity costumers have been chiming in about stressing to their actors the importance of owning a "kit" of basic costume items--character shoes and rehearsal skirts for women, dress shoes and rehearsal jackets for men, and so forth. And, it is true that an actor who can provide these items for him/herself in non-Equity and academic shows will cultivate a sense of professionalism and goodwill from the costumers with whom s/he works, but there's a longterm sense to it as well.

Equity contracts require the costume team to pay a rental fee to the actor for use of her/his personal property in a production. The fee is paid weekly over and above the Equity actor's contractual pay and varies based on the garment ($8/week for character shoes, $20/week for a 2- or 3-piece suit). These fees are paid at full price for the first two weeks of use, then at half-price for each subsequent week. {Ibid, p. 115]

I think it's great for academic programs to establish the habit with their acting students of owning a "kit" of standard rental items, especially for performers with specialized needs such as very wide feet. I have worked with several Equity actors with EEE feet who had several "standard" pairs of shoes/boots on which they would earn rental fees, and designers often loved having the option to just rent a pair from a performer which they knew would fit. The actors appreciated receiving the rental fees, as they could reinvest them into preferred well-fitting footwear as their shoes wore out.

For schools training actors whom they hope will succeed and become working union members at the Equity houses, a kit can be a wise initial investment which will later shift to a useful professional resource which pays for itself or even makes a bit of extra money for the actor.

What are your theatre's policies on rehearsal garments? How do you feel about actor-provided rehearsal or actual costumes?

Freelancing Workshop with Broadway Fabric Painter Margaret Peot - 2/27/12

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:29:37 GMT

Consider this an open invitation: the Costume Production MFA program at UNC-Chapel Hill is hosting an interactive workshop on being a freelance artist, led by renowned Broadway fabric painter Margaret Peot.

Peot is the author of three books, including the forthcoming The Successful Artist’s Career Guide: Finding Your Way in the Business of Art. Her work is currently on exhibit at FIT, "On Stages in Stages: Painting for the Theatre from Parsons Meares Ltd." She will lead participants in a variety of learning exercises on topics such as copyright, portfolios, taxes, business plans, marketing of art, and more.

This event will be held on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the following date, location, and time:

February 27, 2012
Center for Dramatic Art, Room TBA
6:00pm

The CDA is located at the corner of Country Club Road and Paul Green Drive, between Cobb Hall and the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. There is parking available in the Cobb Deck behind the CDA and a visitor's lot a short walk away at the corner of Country Club and NC-54/South Rd.

All are welcome. For more information and to RSVP contact Adam M. Dill at 919-962-1141

Paint sample by Parsons Meares Ltd for the Mulan parade at Disneyland

ETA: It was brought to my attention that this post had a date discrepancy, citing the event as happening on 2/27 in one place and on the 26th in another. It will be on Monday the 27th.

signal boosting of an upcoming costume sale

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:59:41 GMT

I'm on some weird costume-industry-related mailing lists and notification services, and because i've worked in sourcing and designing/assisting sometimes those are topical sale notices, either shops selling off old stock or defunct rental houses liquidating and looking for buyers of lots. I received one today that sounds as if the scale of the liquidation is substantial, and also as if they are splitting the stock into lots and individual pieces, so i'm posting it to boost the signal for those interested in expanding a costume inventory, or seeking specific kinds of character pieces.

By a stroke of fun coincidence (and by way of illustration that the costume industry is quite interconnected), one of their big-ticket draws in this auction is a crop of costumes from the film Mirror Mirror, which several of our recent program graduates worked on at NYC production houses such as Carelli's and Eric Winterling's.

I'll warn you that the Premiere Props website is so ad-heavy and poorly laid-out, it's a bit like hiking through waist-high Jello to find useful info on this. The Hollywood Live Auctions site is easier to look at, but basically contains the same info as this notice i'm quoting below.

After 48 years in business, the Costume Bazaar of Milford, CT, has decided to join forces with Premiere Props and Hollywood Live Auctions of Los Angeles, CA, and close its brick and mortar location.

Premiere Props, the world's largest entertainment memorabilia store and auction house is combining its own costumes and resources with us and another huge costume shop in the Boston area and will auction off over 85,000 rental costumes....thousands of hand-made costumes used for hundreds of shows, including but not limited to: The Music Man, My Fair Lady, Into the Woods, Beauty and the Beast, Gone With the Wind, Brigadoon, Camelot, Bye Bye Birdie, Once Upon A Mattress, The King and I, Oliver, Fiddler on the Roof, South Pacific, Gypsy, Hello Dollly, Romeo and Juliet, The Crucible, Mame, The Wizard of Oz, Man of La Mancha, Cabaret, Chicago, Evita, 1776, Anything Goes and many, many more.

This is an opportunity of a lifetime to enlarge and enhance your current rental stock with high quality theatrical costumes....also available will be over 300 mascots, thousands of period costumes, Mardi Gras costumes, holiday costumes, weapons, props, hats and accessories.

As an additional bonus, also being auctioned off are some great star-studded memorabilia directly from Hollywood – including Mirror Mirror costumes and props starring Julia Roberts, screenworn armor from Immortals, Michael Jackson’s HIStory Tour-era white fedora, Michael Jackson’s worn & signed custom military jacket, and original hand-painted Michael Jackson costume sketch, Jack Nicholson’s screenworn jacket and vest from Ironweed and much more!

Save the dates:
March 9th -- Live Preview Party at the Costume Bazaar, 1565 Boston Post Road, Milford, CT, 06460 from 5 to 8 pm.
March 10 & 11: LIVE AUCTION -- ONLINE @ http://www.HollywoodLiveAuctions.com/ or LIVE at the Costume Bazaar.

You can come in person to the Costume Bazaar at 1565 Boston Post Road in Milford CT or WATCH & BID LIVE ONLINE at http://www.HollywoodLiveAuctions.com/

There will be a Hollywood Preview Party at the Costume Bazaar Friday, March 9th from 5pm-8pm...all are welcome! Then the live auction will be held Saturday and Sunday, March 10 & 11, commencing at 10am til the bidding stops!!

For more info or to pre-register, you can call 1-888-761-PROP(7767) or go to http://www.premiereprops.com/ or write us at .

THERE ARE ALREADY THOUSANDS OF COSTUMES CATALOGUED IN "LOTS" FOR YOUR VIEWING ON THE WEBSITE!

Hope to see you there!

If you bid, good luck, and if you win, drop a comment and share what you scored!

1844 meets 2012: Conformateur repair with a 3D printer

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:07:25 GMT

Some time ago, i had the incredible good fortune to obtain that most coveted of custom hatter's tools, a conformateur. Mine is handmade of ebony and brass with mother-of-pearl carved fittings; it's a very early model, the Allie Aine invented in France in 1844 (mine has a date stamp of 1846). This conformateur is in amazing condition, with only minimal repairs required.

If you are unfamiliar with exactly what a conformateur is, does, and looks like, check out this great post by Tricia Roush of House of Nines Design about her recent conformateur acquisition, an Argentinian model by a maker named Vega.

But this post is not about the conformateur itself, rather it's about a recent minor repair which definitely makes me feel like i'm living in the future.

Conformateur with tip press ("lid") closed.
(Why did i display it on this hideous towel?)

Conformateur with tip press open.

Detail view of the pins beneath the tip press.

As i said, it's in great condition, but one small thing wrong with mine pertained to its feet. My conformateur is designed such that it stands on four small wooden feet, but one was missing and another one had been lost and replaced with a poorly-whittled stub of wood stuck in place with what looked like spit and goat hair. (No really.)

I could have replaced the feet with new wooden ones, and i did consider that possibility, but then i had the mad idea to try drafting feet in 3D CAD and having them made on a rapid prototyper, otherwise known as a 3D printer. I became really taken with the idea of using utterly modern 21st century engineering to repair this incredible example of 19th century technology.

As a member of TechShop RDU, i had originally planned to draft the part there using Autodesk Inventor, then use their Dimension rapid prototyper to print the feet. Unfortunately, the machine was damaged and down for the count until it could be repaired. I had my draft but no way to print it.

Enter Dara McGinn of Li Sashay, and RepRap, an open-source 3D printer concept which you can basically make yourself. Dara hosts a weekly Etsy meetup, and it was just my luck that last week she invited engineer and maker Luis Freeman to bring his RepRaps and demonstrate them for attendees. Exciting!

Luis was able to take my foot design and help me convert it to a format the RepRap could process and produce. We used a plastic called PLA (polylactic acid) to print our 3D shapes.

The printing of the foot involved a learning curve. The shape of the first attempt involved some instability in the design and resulted in a weird "poop" of plastic at the top peg. The second attempt, we misjudged the correct height of the foot and it was too tall. It also developed stability problems in the peg, because the small surface area did not provide enough time between levels of printing for the PLA material to solidify. The peg looked like a Slinky when you stand it on end but then poke the side with a finger, so it's askew. On the third try, Luis realized that if we were to print two simultaneously, the issue with the peg stability would be resolved in the time it took to shift position from one peg to another.

Detail of original foot and missing foot.
(I should have put it on something besides a hotrod-flame blanket, eh?
I am failing at backdrops easy on the eyes in this post.)

I am only partly kidding about the goat hair. That is FUZZY. Eww.

Luis' machine which printed my feet!

Another of Luis' machines with a laser-cut CAD drafted wood housing.

Printing area of the second machine pictured previously.

Video of my two conformateur feet being printed!

1. Original conformateur wood foot.
2. First prototype with poopy peg failure.
3. Second prototype with height error and crooked peg.
4. and 5. Successfully formed feet!

Four legs good! Stability has been restored!

In my studio, i conducted some further experiments on my reject feet.

First, I hit the askew peg of the too-tall foot with a hair dryer on a high setting and the PLA softened enough for me to straighten and smooth the peg into its desired shape with a pair of needle-nose pliers. So, minor adjustments of these 3D printed parts are possible, in ways familiar to artisans who frequently work with other thermoplastic media like Varaform and Wonderflex and Fosshape.

I also did a couple preliminary paint tests on the rejects, just to see what kind of media adheres to the print material. I discovered that acrylic doesn't form a good bond with the PLA and scraped off easily. Spray paint adhered to it great and had good coverage after just one coat. I was able to use Sculpt-or-Coat as a kind of spackle to smooth the ridges of the surface created by the toolpaths of the RepRap as it produces a prototype, so if you were to 3D print something and it needed to be smooth, you could probably smooth it that way.

All in all, this was such an exciting experience, for something so elementary as replacing two tiny pegs on the bottom of an old hatter's tool. If you're local to the area and want to learn more about the RepRap, Dara and Luis are hosting a "Build your own 3D Printer" class in March! Read more about it on Dara's company blog.

Painting an unusual canvas: Falstaff's coat

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 20:42:36 GMT

My favorite project on Henry IV is far and away the aging process for Falstaff's fiddleback leather coat, which was custom made for actor Michael Winters in the role.

We brought on board tailor Kara Monroe (also a UNC alum from our costume production MFA program) to pattern and construct the coat from three hides of lovely buttery leather. (It had to be big to go over Mr. Winters' prodigious fat padding suit!) Kara made a beautiful garment, but a just-made coat looks like exactly that: a new piece of clothes! Falstaff is not the sort of man who has a brand new anything in this play, unless it's maybe a brand new bottle of booze.

Costume Designer Jennifer Caprio had very clear ideas about the nature of the coat--my notes from our discussion about the aging say:

his favorite coat
worn it for 30 years in battle/war/bar brawls
lays around brothels in it
drinks all night in it, passes out in it

Costume design rendering by Jennifer Caprio

Michael Winters as Falstaff in a fitting for the coat.
I tell my students that the nature of the aging process is twofold. There's breakdown, which might be as simple as laundering a new shirt with washing soda or might be as extensive as ripping a ragged hem or tearing holes in knees/elbows. And, there's pigment age, which might be dipping white shirt in a pot of tea or might be splattering it with paint or ink or dye.

For the Falstaff coat, i did very little breakdown, only using a fine grit sandpaper on some of the flat-fell seams and across the tops of the shoulders, just to soften the leather and rough up the surface a tad. The majority of work involved pigment aging--in this case, application of leather dyes and French Enamel Varnish.

French Enamel Varnish, more commonly called FEV in our industry, is a medium that you mix yourself according to your needs. Its components are leather dye, denatured alcohol, and shellac, and your project determines the ratio. If you need something runny, use a minimal amount of shellac; if you need something thick, use a lot of shellac and not much alcohol. Use more dye for more pigmentation, less for lighter hues. Use gloves when you work with it and only apply it in a well-ventilated area. I cut on the big wall vents in my dye shop and, thanks to the mild winter, even opened the windows.

Application of FEV on interior of Falstaff coat.

I applied this treatment in four layers, and unfortunately it went fast enough and i was busy enough i only have the one process shot laying on the table. But i can tell you about it!

First, i used a dauber to apply tan leather dye to all the seams on the coat. Kara and Jen had put a lot of thought into the construction of this coat and i wanted to highlight that fiddleback seam placement, and the number of gores in the frock. The tan leather dye served to pump up the eye's perception of those seams onstage.

Next, i used a toothbrush to flick the tan dye and some medium brown leather dye up from the hem like residual stains from ancient mud splatters, and also to drip it down from above (like drunk-guy spillage and rain-stain from some bad weather on an age-old battlefield) onto the lapels and chest.

I also used a chip brush with the two kinds of leather dye and two related colors of FEV to paint a sort of ombre effect from the hem up, to create some sweat stains in the armpits and around the collar, and to do some allover dry-brush toning.

Front view on form.

Rear view on form.

Stage shot of ensemble by Jon Gardiner with
Michael Winters as Falstaff in foreground.

Hope you enjoyed seeing "behind the grime," and if you are in the Triangle area, definitely check out these two plays. They are, quite literally, epic.

Class: "Simple" masks

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:36:52 GMT

My Masks & Armor students are really knocking it out of the park, in their first fullsized mask projects! They presented yesterday so i've got some photos to share and i'm super excited.

In the background is a mermaid mask 2nd-year Adrienne Corral made in her undergraduate program using Wonderflex. Adrienne wanted to do a companion mask based on the same idea, but with a more armored-merman look and bit more sophisticated finishing now that she's in grad school. In the foreground are her mask matrix sculpted from DAS air-dry clay and the new mask itself.

First-year grad Kelly Renko wanted to try scaling up from her seahorse maquette to a full-size mask made from Wonderflex. Pictured are both her mask and the polymer clay maquette. Cute!

First-year grad Leah Pelz was inspired by a series of carved wooden animal masks, and created this zebra mask from Fosshape. Her matrix sculpted from DAS air-dry clay is at right, still covered in foil from the Fosshape forming process. Note how she created separate matrices for the ears and mane bristles and bricolaged a matrix support for the snout from that plastic cup in order to conserve clay. The main body of the mask is Fosshape 600, while the ears are Fosshape 300, which gives them a fun fluttery movement when worn in performance.

Undergraduate Jess Adams made this mask for the upcoming performance of The Milford Project. In the context of the play, the mask is supposed to be a sparkly unicorn mask made by a 13-year-old girl, but needs to be sturdy enough to withstand being worn for a dance number throughout the run of the show. Jess used urethane foam structure techniques to create this hilarious mask.

Undergraduate Lydia Hanchette created this awesome ominous raven using Wonderflex and buckram-screened eyes.

Great job, guys! These were a joy to behold in the making!

Class: Maquettes plus bonus tutu

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:38:16 GMT

My class this semester is Masks and Armor, and i've been so busy with the shows in process at work that i have neglected to share some photos of their first project, maquettes, which they completed a couple weeks ago.

Maquettes are small 3D "sketches" of a mask. Often when a crafts artisan is working with a costume designer or other artist to create a mask, 2D renderings and research images are only so helpful. It can be a great aid in the process to do a maquette, usually in 1/4 or 1/3 or 1/2 scale, to clarify elements of the mask design before taking on a 3D sculpture at full scale.

My students--though they are typically all graduate students in costume production or very advanced undergraduates--often have a wide range of experience, from those who have made several masks to those who have never made one, from those who are confident sculptors to those who have never sculpted.

So, hence this first project. It allows them to get into a sculpting headspace and mess around with 3D production without too much investment or fear of the medium or the product. After all, sometimes I'll make 3-4 maquettes and throw them all away in the making of masks for the stage.

Clockwise from top left, all in polymer clay:
Seahorse maquette by 1st year grad Kelly Renko.
Demon maquette by 2nd year grad Adrienne Corral.
Plague Doctor maquette (with eyes of red lighting gels!) by undergraduate Lydia Hanchette.

"Crazy unicorn" in flat-patterned foam by undergraduate Jess Adams.
Jess will be making this mask full size for the upcoming production of The Milford Project and used the maquette in conversation with the director and designer.

Left: grasshopper maquette by 2nd year grad Candy McClernan.
Right: old man maquette by 1st year grad Leah Pelz.

And, one last image of a third-year thesis project. I've mentioned in past posts about how in the third year of this program, our grads produce a collection of particular projects all of which combine to constitute their graduate thesis, essentially. One of those projects is a classical tutu and ballet bodice. The head of our program, Judy Adamson, worked as a draper and personal assistant to the famous Broadway costumiere, Barbara Matera. Matera's was known for, among many other things, their methods of classical tutu production, which is part of what our students learn in the pursuit of their degree.

Some of our students elect to make a tutu of their own researched design, but some choose to make the tutu for a professional ballet company as part of their stock. Our two third-year graduates, Kaitlin Fara and Claire Fleming, have had the opportunity to make their tutus for the Carolina Ballet's upcoming production of Balanchine Rarities.

Tutu and red velvet ballet bodice by Kaitlin Fara.
(Claire's looks just like this one, hence only the one photo.)

Copyright for Costumers

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:54:44 GMT

I'm knee deep in tech rehearsals on the two Shakespeare repertory shows right now, so today i've got a fortuitous guest post by my friend Trystan, who works as a writer/editor at Yahoo! by day and a historical costumer by nights-and-weekends. She originally wrote this piece aimed at an audience of reenactment costumers and bloggers who write about costume in general (from historical to modern cinema costume analysis). I knew when i read it that it'd be a great post for La Bricoleuse as well, since much of Trystan's information is also applicable to those working in costume production for theatre and film as well, particularly in terms of developing a digital portfolio or publishing about one's processes.

An Introduction to Copyright for Bloggers, Especially Costume Bloggers

By Trystan L. Bass

Notes and Caveats: This is written based on my nearly 20 years of professional experience writing and editing on the Web. For the last decade, I've been an editor in the central editorial department of Yahoo!, and before that, I worked in similar capacities at a digital music startup and an alternative newspaper. Dealing with copyright issues has been an important part of my career. However, I am not a lawyer, and nothing I say here should be construed as legal advice. Nor does this article necessarily reflect the views of my employer, past or present. But I will try to cite my sources while providing an overview of the most important information bloggers need to know about copyright. Note also that I'll be addressing issues of United States copyright law, because international regulations are outside my experience.

Here are the three most common myths about copyright, as noted in the Yahoo! Styleguide and seen all over the Internet:

The work is online, it's public, so I can copy it and use it however I like.

I can make a copy of any work I want to, as long as I provide credit to the work's creator.

If I don't see a copyright notice or © symbol, the work is in the public domain.

None of these are true! Read more to get the facts about copyright.

1. What is copyright?

Dictionary definition: "The legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work."

Legal definition from the U.S. Copyright Office (PDF): "A form of protection provided by the laws of the United States to the authors of "original works of authorship," including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works."

Trystan's definition: "I created it, so I own it, and you can't copy it without asking me for permission first."

Copyright serves to protect creators from having their stuff copied without permission. Who is a creator? Anyone can be. If you write, photograph, draw, paint, sing, design, sketch, sculpt, or otherwise make an original item, you may well be a creator covered by copyright. If you made it yourself, you are the copyright owner.

It can get tricky if the copyright owner is long dead. Who owns that copyright? It could be the creator's descendants, it could be a museum or library that owns the creator's items, it could be another creator who photographed or recorded the original work. It could be someone else entirely. You may have to ask to find out. Sometimes the item is so old that it's in the public domain, and then anyone can use that work without permission. But fewer things are in public domain than you think.

2. Why does copyright matter?

Because nobody enjoys getting ripped off! You wouldn't like it if some bitch used a photo of you in your amazing, perfect, gorgeous costume and said that was her and she made the whole thing, in 6 days and for $6 dollars, would you? No. Well, you'd be the bitch if others found out you used their images without permission.

No, it doesn't matter if "someone else" is a big, faceless museum or university or business. We like museums and universities and even businesses! They work hard to assemble fantastic online resources for us. They're doing a decent job, and that's worth a little respect.

3. What kind of stuff is covered by copyright?

Tons. In the U.S., copyright law protects "original works of authorship" and lists these broad categories of works as copyrightable:

Literary works (meaning most anything written)

Musical works and lyrics

Dramatic works, including music

Pantomimes and choreographic works

Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works (includes most any photos or drawings)

Motion pictures and other audiovisual works

Sound recordings

Architectural works and plans

Also, these works must be "fixed in a tangible form of expression." Meaning, there must be some written or recorded version of it. Pix or it didn't happen, as they say.

4. What isn't copyright-able?

You can't copyright vague stuff like ideas and concepts. You can't copyright basic things like procedures, processes, or instructions. So you couldn't copyright a sewing technique, but you could copyright a video you made of a sewing technique. Of course, if people watch that video and use the sewing technique, their use of the technique you demonstrated is not a copyright violation (but really people, give props to others for teaching you how to do something -- that's good manners!).

Utilitarian items can't be copyrighted. This includes stuff like as furniture, cars, household appliances, dinnerware, lamps, and clothing. Designs printed on these things or special features about these items might be copyrightable, if they can exist separately from the original item. You could copyright a fabric pattern, but not a dress. You could even copyright a photo of a dress, but not that dress. See #11 for more.

Also, names (whether band names or domain names), titles (including titles of books or movies), slogans (a la "Just do it"), and logos can't be copyrighted -- they can be trademarked, however, and that's a whole different kettle of fish.

Interestingly, typeface designs can't be copyrighted. Which is probably why we see so many wanna-be versions of popular movie, cartoon, and even branded fonts free for download.

5. Can I copyright my own stuff?

Yes, and if you've written a blog post, taken a photo of your costume, sketched a drawing of a gown in a museum, then *ta-da* you may have created a copyrighted item. Go you!

You don't have to register your work with the U.S. Copyright Office to "earn" a copyright. Anything you create is copyrighted to you immediately upon creation. Only if you think you'll need to defend your copyright in court (and want to earn damages from violators) would you need to register your copyrighted works first.

There is no requirement that you put a copyright notice on your copyrighted works. As I said, you automatically have a copyright. You don't have to put "copyright Trystan L. Bass 1999-2051 ©" or anything else on your blog or next to your all your photos.

However, adding copyright info is a nice little reminder to the thieves in the world that, yo, this is my stuff. Don't copy it, jerkface. The simplest form, which is recommended by the U.S. Copyright Office, is "© 2012 Trystan L. Bass."

Of course, you will find that many works out there are not registered and carry no copyright notice, but they are absolutely copyrighted. Just because a person can't sue you doesn't mean you're not a rotten person earning horrible karma if you steal their unregistered copyrighted works (generic "you," of course :-).

6. What is "public domain"?

A work that goes out of copyright goes into the "public domain." This typically happens at some point soon after the work's creator has died (the specific length of time varies depending on when and where the work was created, thanks to variations in copyright law), but sometimes a creator's estate or publisher could hold the copyright for longer (for example, the song "Happy Birthday to You"). Also, institutions might hold copyright to specific copies of works or the publication of those works. So it can be difficult to know what is truly in the public domain.

Generally, if the work was published in the U.S. before 1923 or published outside the U.S. before 1909, it's in the public domain. There are a few exceptions, but most works that are over 120 years old may be public domain For example, the works of William Shakespeare or Mozart and most pre-20th-century art are all public domain.

Derivative works of public domain works may be copyright, however. So movies such as "Shakespeare in Love" and "Amadeus" or art like Andy Warhol's version of the Mona Lisa can be copyrighted. Also, modern translations or new publications of ancient works may be copyrighted, even if the original item has long been in the public domain.

Sometimes access to public domain works is restricted -- Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel frescos are in the public domain, but the building is private property and the Vatican controls access. Photography is forbidden inside, so high-quality images have to be purchased from Vatican-approved publishers. Many museums operate this way to protect their investment in the artworks (see #9). This may seem sucky, but it's legal.

7. Isn't stuff online free to copy?

No, absolutely not! People might as well steal books from a public library. Someone had to pay for every single webpage you see on the Internet, and someone created every piece of text and every image you see online. Whether it's a costume photo on Facebook or a fashion plate on a museum website, all of them may well be copyrighted by somebody. So find out who owns it, and ask permission. Don't assume -- it makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me" (get it?).

8. Isn't it "fair use" to copy stuff, especially if I'm doing it for educational purposes?

The legal concept of "fair use" is both stricter and yet grayer than people realize. It's very easy to get in trouble copying for fair use, so don't let that become an excuse for using without permission.

The Copyright Act of 1976 has detailed criteria for determining fair use, which can frankly be contradictory, and cases have been decided in seemingly opposing ways. But it's important to remember that there is no specific amount of a work (no letter count or time limit or amount that has to be changed) that can be used without permission. And crediting the source is no legal substitute for getting permission either.

9. What about stuff in museums and on museum websites -- what's copyrighted?

Museums might not own the copyright to their holdings; it depends on the specific item and the museum. Modern artwork may still be under copyright of the original artist, for example. But earlier artwork may be in the public domain (see #6).

Of course, museums do hold the copyright on their own websites -- after all, they are the ones creating and maintaining them. So you don't want to go crazy copying from their sites, and you definitely want to give credit when you use a museum for your research.

But can you use images from a museum's website? Well … the Wikimedia Foundation cites the 1999 case of Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. as the basis for its usage of photos of public domain art throughout the wiki. This case ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain art couldn't be copyrighted in and of themselves because they lack originality. Copyrighted material must be original, and an exact photo isn't. So, since exact photos of public domain art aren't copyrightable, these types of photos on a museum's website are not copyrighted. If the museum hasn't added text or otherwise altered the image, you're probably safe copying and reposting it.

Note that this would only apply to artwork, not displays such as clothing on a mannequin. The later is not an exact copy of public domain art. An item in a display case was carefully arranged and designed by the museum -- it's essentially an original piece of art. And a photo of a dress is an original artwork in and of itself (see #3). So the museum owns the copyright to that photo, and unless you have permission, you can't reproduce it.

As for taking photographs inside the museum, policies vary wildly from museum to museum. The blog Musematic has an insightful discussion about the topic from an insider's perspective. While paintings from, say, the 17th century may be in the public domain, museums believe they have the right to protect these images and even profit from them. At the very least, museums will require you to turn off the flash on your camera because this can damage items. If you are allowed to take photos, then you own the copyright to those images.

10. Can I scan pictures in books and put them online?

Scanning an artist's original artwork and putting that online would be the equivalent of ripping a musician's CD and uploading it to a peer-to-peer network so the world could download it (anyone remember the original Napster?). Don't go there. You would be illegally distributing someone else's copyrighted work.

However, scanning artwork that is clearly in the public domain is less problematic. If you are absolutely sure the art is in the public domain and the book's version of the artwork does not deviate from the original (for example, the author has not added an arrow pointing to a costume detail), then you're probably within rights to copy it and republish. See #9 for the Bridgeman Art Library v. Corell Corp. case about photos of public domain art.

If you have a book with an exact, unaltered photo of public domain art, scanning that and reproducing it is conceivably yet another exact copy, and thus not a copyright violation. Yay, something you can do!

11. Can I copyright my costumes?

Sorry, but costumes (and in fact, all clothing) are not subject to copyright. Remember how "utilitarian items" are not copyrightable in #4? Well, that's how the fashion industry survives with countless cheap, legal knock-offs of expensive brands at stores like Forever 21 and H&M. Designers can't copyright their clothing. No matter how ridiculous it looks, all clothing is considered utilitarian under the law. Same goes for costumes.

According to the U.S. Copyright Office Policy Decision, filed November 4, 1991, in the Federal Register (PDF): "Costumes will be treated as useful articles and will be registerable only upon a finding of separable artistic authorship." Furthermore: "The Copyright Office has generally refused to register claims to copyright the three-dimensional aspect of clothing or costume design on the ground that articles of clothing and costume are useful articles that ordinarily contain no artistic authorship separable from their overall utilitarian shape." Basically, if it still looks like a piece of clothing, it's not a separate piece of unique art that can be copyrighted. Whatevs.

And: "Garment designs (excluding separately identifiable pictorial representations of designs imposed upon the garment) will not be registered even if they contain ornamental features or are intended to be used as historical or period dress. Fanciful costumes will be treated as useful articles and will be registered only upon a finding of separately identifiable pictorial and/or sculptural authorship."

This reiterates previous statements that you can copyright a print or pattern (the "separately identifiable pictorial representations of designs imposed upon the garment") such as a fabric design, but not the garment itself.

The Copyright Office reiterates in this decision: "For purposes of copyright registration, fanciful costumes will be treated as useful articles. Costumes serve a dual purpose of clothing the body and portraying their appearance. Since clothing the body serves as a useful function, costumes fall within the literal definition of useful article."

Multiple court cases involving creators of Halloween costumes have denied the availability of copyright protection to costumes, for example, Whimsicality, Inc., v. Rubie's Costume Co. Inc., 1989, and Chosun Intl., Inc. v. Chrisha Creations, 2005. If mascot-style animal costumes like those described in these cases can't be copyrighted, your recreation of a 1776 French polonaise won't be either.

That said, don't be a copy-cat and make the same outfits as other costumers. It's not illegal, but it's pretty lame. Do you really want to be the Forever 21 of costumers? Nah, didn't think so.

12. What about posting movie screencaps and fandom type stuff?

A movie (or TV show) is copyrighted by the studio that produced it. Sorry, but you really shouldn't copy their work, even if in still image form. If you're writing a movie review, a small screencap is usually permissible under fair use (yes, that's an acceptable case, see #8), especially if it's from the film's preview. But loading tons of screencaps on your website isn't a great idea. Yeah, it's really handy to research a costume, but keep the pix on your hard drive for personal use.

Creating derivative items based on copyrighted media is a huge grey area that gets some fans in trouble. While it's not the most legal thing to do, some copyright holders are fussier about than others. For example, these fans were giving away Doctor Who-themed knitting patterns and got in trouble with the BBC. After drawing negative attention to the Beeb in the press, the fans won a reprieve. It all depends on what you're doing, if you're selling it or giving it away, how high profile you are, and what specific fandom you're involved in. Be careful out there!

14. What about Creative Commons?

This is a newer form of licensing, based on copyright, and intended mostly for online works. Anything that can be copyrighted (see #3) can be licensed under Creative Commons (CC). The main goal of CC licenses is to allow creators to maintain their copyright while also giving others access to certain uses of their works.

So if you see something with a CC license on it, read the details (because each flavor of CC license has different restrictions), and find out how you can use that work. You may be able to copy it for personal use or you may be able to republish it or you may be able to edit/remix it into a new work. The CC license gives you permission to do this stuff in advance. You don't have to ask. Just read the fine print. Kinda cool.

The main places you'll find CC work right now is Flickr and Wikimedia, but some bloggers are starting to use CC for their own works.

Note: This article is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, meaning you are free to repost the entire contents if you credit me and you don't make any changes to the article.

15. How should I give credit to a copyright holder?

Once you have permission (preferably in writing; email is fine), you should always provide credit for anything you use. While it's up to you to decide on a specific format, in general, you should identify the work as closely as possible to where you display it. For example, a photo should have a caption directly below it that indicates where it came from. Text you've copied should be credited either within the body of the larger material or with footnotes (although footnotes are not preferred on the web -- they're both hard to read and hard to find, according to usability studies).

Make sure to include the name of the copyright holder and a link back to the copyright holder's source, either their main website or the specific page where the work was found. Check out this an example:

Did you know ironing is period? Colonial Williamsburg has proof from the 18th century.

Photo: Trystan L. Bass / Flickr

Note that Creative Commons licenses require specific attribution -- this is spelled out in each type of license, so just follow that wording. But do keep it right next to the work.

16. But hey, you've copied stuff on your website, why are you saying I shouldn't?

Fact is, nobody is perfect. We are all learning and hopefully trying to do better. Just because I work on this stuff for a living doesn't mean I always do it right on my personal websites. Not every big-name costume blogger is perfect either.

Also, you may not know how someone actually got the images they've posted. Maybe she scanned them from her vast collection of books that feature many public-domain images (see #10). Or maybe she visited the original museum, which actually allows photos (see #9). Or the work could be under a Creative Commons license (see #14). Don't get too judgmental unless it's your work that's being ripped off. In which case, have at 'em!

To sum up:

Most stuff is copyrighted, even your own (except costumes, sadly).

Find out who owns things and ask permission before you copy it and post it online.

Respect other people's work, and they're more likely to respect yours.

Copyright Cheat Sheet for Costume Bloggers
You CAN post on your website	You CAN'T post on your website, unless you have written permission
Photos you took	Photos from other people
Drawings & art you made	Drawings & art other people made
Anything you wrote	Other people's writing, except small quotes, carefully credited
Photos & scans that are exact copies of public domain art	Photos & scans of copyrighted art
Photos you took of a costume display at a museum	Photos from a museum website of its costume display
A couple small movie/TV screencaps in a movie/TV review article	Tons of movie/TV screencaps for reference or for people to download
Creative Commons licensed work with appropriate credit

For Reference:

United States Copyright Office -- More than everything you ever wanted to know about the law.

Creative Commons -- Main website and wiki for the licenses.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
You are welcome to repost this complete article with attribution, but do not alter or edit the contents.

Yet more armor! An annotated photoessay

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:29:17 GMT

I've been photographing elements of the armor we've got in the building right now, to discuss the pros and cons of various construction choices made. As i said yesterday, sometimes it's great to see how other artisans have made things, to see how they've already stood up to theatrical performance, and to think about what works when and why.

So, today's post is a collection of those photos with some thoughts on each.

"Hammered brass" gorget from Oregon Shakespeare Festival

I love this surface treatment! This gorget is actually largely made from vegetable-tanned leather, which I'm guessing they saturated with some warm water, shaped it over the shoulders of a form, and then embossed those divots into it to create this great surface texture. Or, maybe they did it in the opposite order, embossing the divots and then shaping the shoulder curves. Then the edges have been bound with a chrome-tanned leather, much in the same way i demonstrated in my bracer-making post, except secured with glue instead of stitching. Then, the paint treatment went on. It looks great!

I'm not in love with the hinge closures at the shoulders--it makes the gorget unadjustable to accommodate different sized necks, and these are cabinetry hinges, which aren't designed to really withstand the kind of torquing that inevitably happens in dressing in armor. These are intact, but i've seen hinged armor that failed at the hinge for this reason, so unless a design specified hinges for aesthetics (which i'm guessing is the case with this piece, since the hinges are hammered as well), i wouldn't choose them as a connector. If you look at this with a wardrobe perspective and are wondering, how the heck does an actor get into this thing? The hinge pin comes out on one side and the hinge barrels separate.

Purchased gorget from Medieval Collectibles.

This is a gorget we bought new from a company that retails armor to reenactors and roleplayers and the like. It's made of a sturdy vegetable-tanned leather, and closes over each shoulder with a buckle and strap. It originally had two D-rings on the shoulders for attaching pauldrons (shoulder guards) but our performer won't be wearing those, so I removed them. The rivet holes are still there though in case in future we ever want to reinstall a pauldron attachment point.

What's going on in the picture though, is the shaping of the back portion of the gorget to fit a shoulder curve. When it arrived from the manufacturer, the two pieces were flat crescents of leather, and the back plate stood out from the body about 3" when buckled into place. I soaked it in water and used muslin strips to bind it to this form, then it was left to dry overnight. In the morning when i de-mummified it, the pieces were shaped into actual shoulder-curve shapes, much better fitting on our actor.

Is it cost-effective to buy a $60 gorget pre-made, that i then must modify? In this case, probably so. A bend of vegetable tanned leather in the weight used for this gorget is around $120-$150 from the local Tandy Leather Factory (a bend being a portion of a hide sold as a single piece). You can't buy part of a bend, so if all i were making were one gorget, we'd still have to buy the whole bend, which the excess would go into stock, but the cost would go fully into this budget. And, adding onto that the cost of the particular studs and hardware desired, the time it would take me to cut/assemble/dye/install all of it, this is a case where buying this item made good sense. All i had to do to it was shape it, pop off the pauldron straps, and label it with the actor's name.

Then again, if we wanted six of these, it might be worth evaluating what it would take to make them. It's almost just as easy to make six of something as it is to make one of something, since you can assembly-line them and chunk them out faster than doing one at a time start-to-finish. If all six could tessellate to come out of one large bend of armor-weight leather, $150 plus the cost of a bag of studs and a dozen buckles is cheaper than $360 for the retail items. Of course, i'm not counting the labor in the cost, since i'm salaried and whether i'm making a half-dozen gorgets or dyeing the arras, it's all the same to me. This would be a case where the management would consult with me about whether it looked like i could add six gorgets to my made-to-order list, and we'd weigh that against the cost of purchase.

Vacuformed breastplate from our own stock.

Breastplate of molded leather and stiffened felt from Utah Shakespeare Festival.

These two images illustrate clearly how a crafts artisan's choice of media makes a difference in the look of a piece. Both of these breastplates have very similar style lines--the pointed center front edge, the peaked ridge down the center, the silver tone to the finish. One could imagine the same costume rendering resulting in either of these. But, the first one, our vacuformed piece, has such a smooth, clean surface texture and an almost feminine shape, whereas the second one has such a different crudely textural look to it. I could imagine a designer having strong feelings about one vs the other--the man who'd wear the first one is a very different soldier than the man who'd wear the second, you know?

If you bought the first one and then looked at it in a fitting and the designer communicated that s/he wanted it to look like the second, you could cut down the hipspring and layer stiffened felt over the vacuform base, and get it to look more like the second fairly easily. It's much harder to go the opposite direction! (It involves a lot of vinyl spackle and elbow grease, as evidenced by this helmet made by second year graduate student Candy McClernan.)

Molded leather pauldrons and breastplate from Oregon Shakespeare Festival

These are a set i've been working on. The breastplate was made for a portly figure and had no matching backplate--it arrived with a belt laced onto it with a quick-release buckle in the back. Our designer wanted to make it work for our fight captain, an actor with a much more athletic figure than the piece was originally intended to accommodate. Luckily, the molded leather it's made from still retains quite a bit of flexibility, so all we needed to do was replace the belt it came with, with something more shapely and constricting. Essentially, turn the back of it into a leather man-corset, if you will. I took a bunch of measurements on the actor in the fitting and then my assistant Whitney and I made this:

Back view of previous armor with corset back.

Side view of same.

Right now we've got leather lacing at center back, with elastic lacing down both sides. This allows for control of the distance between the panels at center back, and for some "give" down both sides for athletic requirements. Our theatre's stage is a very deep thrust, so it's a given that the audience will see the back of this armor during fights and we want it to look good. And, there's one other thing worth mentioning about this armor, with respect to the pauldrons.

Interior view of pauldron bands.

I really appreciate how the original armorer chose to attach the bands of the pauldron at the outer hinge points using Chicago screws. This way, if something happens inside that needs repair--one of the support straps tears out or pops a rivet, or the connector clips need to be replaced or adjusted, etc.--all you have to do to access it fully is to remove a Chicago screw, instead of drilling out a rivet. Really smart move on the original maker's behalf, with great forethought as to how the piece will need to be worked on over its life as a costume in many shows.

That concludes my armor survey, and might conclude my posting for a while. We're about to start teching these shows next weekend, and the techs run for a couple of weeks--so, my January blogging might be down for the count. I guess if that's the case, at least i'm leaving you with an armored man-corset as my farewell-til-February, and what's not to love about that?

Armor: Bracers for Nym

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:31:14 GMT

I've mentioned the HUGE number of armor pieces we've rented for our repertory shows, Henry IV and V by Shakespeare. They're plays about war, and armor abounds--much of my job has been fitting and repair, and reversible alterations like the one i described in an earlier post.

Today's post though is about a case where it was actually quicker and easier for me to just make a new item than to try to make a rented one work: in this case, a pair of bracers (forearm guards) for the character of Nym. We had rented a huge lot of bracers, something like 17 pairs, sight unseen, and most of them were in fine condition to use. However, one pair was in, well, a truly sorry state.

How do i not love thee? Let me count the ways.

I can only assume that these bracers were the result of some panicked last-minute addition where the crafters were short on time and skilled labor, and that an intern chunked these out with no guidance. It happens, sometimes even at the big renowned Shakespeare companies. And, sometimes someone fulfills a rental request by just dumping the bracers stock whole-hog into a box and mailing it off perhaps.

To enumerate the structural problems with these bracers, here's a list:

The functional lacing holes (barely visible at the top, laced with black elastic) do not go all the way to the top and bottom. This will mean the bracer will flare open at the ends, which can be problematic in fight choreography.
The functional lacing holes are punched through a single layer of leather and not reinforced with grommets. This means that--especially for a run like ours which lasts a month and a half--there's a possibility the lacing would deform or tear through. Since these are rented, i'd have to make a replacement pair or we'd have to pay for them if we damaged this pair like that by using them.
The entire thing is put together with hot glue. Hot glue does not form a good bond with leather at all. This is why the ornamental leather lacing is popping up like in the above photo, and why the strips at top/center/bottom are coming away from the base. How this made it through a single run at any of the Shakespeare companies from which we rented, i don't know.

However, damaged and badly-made as they are, our designer really liked the concept of them aesthetically, and they fit well on the actor. Could I repair them to make them usable?

Well, i could, yes. I'd be expending my labor to repair the rental property of another company (property that is of dubious value, given the construction flaws), and sending them back some bracers that were in a far better condition than we received them, thus improving their stock. Often, i take pride in doing that--i believe it is one of the responsibilities of professional production artists, in fact.

It's a "pay it forward" kind of deal, and I don't resent that use of my labor at all. You are contractually obligated to return things in at least the same condition in which you received them, but i try to teach my students that if you can, send back something better than you got. Your company will benefit from the positive reputation it cultivates among the rental houses, "We love to rent to PlayMakers because they treat our stuff so well," you know? Plus, I often learn a lot by seeing how something else was originally made, the ways in which it succeeded or failed, and how i might improve it. So, i did not just throw away the idea of repairing these from the get-go.

In this case though, when i made a mental survey of what i'd have to do to repair these in such a way that they would stand up to our run, i realized that it would actually save me time if i just made a completely new pair using the original rented pair as an aesthetic guide. Paying it forward is a great guideline, but what i don't have much of on this show is time, so if it saves me time to make something new rather than repair something, i'm making new. We like the lacing ornamentation and basic aesthetic concept, we like the fit of the original, and our designer picked out leather from some hides i had in stock. So, all things considered, i decided to go the make-new route; the pair pictured above will be returned in the exact condition in which it was received, unused, and we'll have a new pair based on the idea of them that will go into our own stock.

The first thing i did was to make a pattern for the base structure from the measurements of the original and cut it out in the desired leather, adding 1" on each end. The extra 1" is to fold over for grommet/lacing reinforcement. I applied rubber cement to the back side, fold it over, press the fold sharp using a brayer (a rubber roller also used in printmaking) or rolling pin, then reinforce the fold with stitching. I have an excellent Consew industrial walking foot machine in my shop that sews leather like a dream. Then my assistant Whitney grommeted them up. (Incidentally, about a week ago, Whitney aged several dozen grommets with black and brown French Enamel Varnish (FEV), in preparation for repairing a lot of this rental armor and for making these. So glad she did, because we've almost used them all!)

Base bracer, grommeted, with lacing ornamentation getting clipped into position.

One thing that bothered me about the construction of the original was the use of many tiny pieces of leather lacing for the ornamentation. I have no idea what informed that choice--maybe all they had on-hand was tiny scraps and necessity demanded it. However, by using a continuous piece, you minimize the likelihood that it will pull out and become some dangly aesthetic liability.

In the image above, i'm laying out the ornamental lacing pattern using one single long length of leather lace, and clipping it into place with alligator clips. If i cared about scarring this piece, i'd consider a different clamp, but these are supposed to wind up battle-scarred anyway so the toothy alligator clips aren't a problem. Once i finished laying it into place, i used the walking foot to stitch the lacing to the base piece down the top, bottom, and center of each bracer. This gives it one point of anchor. But, noting how the original bracers really failed structurally, perhaps as a result of that lacing ornamentation, i wanted to provide more sturdy anchorage for mine than just a single stitching line. Besides, there are bands of leather on the original that cover the ends and centerline.

"Are you using leather as bias tape?"

That caption is a direct quote from my assistant, who walked into the room at this point in the process, and yes, that is exactly what i am doing! Chrome-tanned and brain-tanned leather have excellent stretch--not like, say, rubber or something, but you can totally get it to take curves. Practice and experimentation will give you a better idea of exactly what you can ask it to do, but point being, i knew i could bind my edges with the thin leather you see in the image, to create that banded look and also to smooth the rougher edges at top and bottom where the bracer might rub against the performer's skin or costume.

The finished bracer, a La Bricoleuse!

I did run out of the leather i was using to bind the ends, hence the contrast "reptile" band down the center of these. These were a fun problem to think about and troubleshoot, and on an enormous pair of repertory shows in which i expected i'd make literally nothing from scratch, a cool little project for an afternoon.

Digital fabric design: where do i begin?

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:50:00 GMT

If you follow what's going on in the technical theatre industry at conferences such as USITT, and via blogs like this one and other media, you've seen a growing number of examples of the use of digital fabric printing. From Disney's sublimation printing department, to fabric yardage pre-printed with age for regional theatre, to reproducing historical folding fans by digitally printing the designs onto silk, i've covered ever more of this type of work of late.

It's clear that theatrical costume designers and crafts artisans need to develop a familiarity with the processes of digital textile design and printing [1]. I've begun to encourage my students to take on projects that involve elements of digital textile print design, like this fan leaf design by first year grad student Leah Pelz

But it does beg the question: how does one learn how to go about such things? Obviously digital fabric design classes are out there, offered through a college of textiles, but that's not an option for most of us working in the field.

I received two books for Christmas which might be of help, if you're hoping to get some grounding in textile design to actualize the kinds of projects that present themselves in the course of costume production. Neither are ideal for theatre artists, but then again, we're not exactly a huge demographic. Both are useful in different ways, and laid out in such a way that you can pick and choose what you need from them to get done what you need doing.

The first is A Field Guide to Fabric Design by Kimberly Kight. Kim is the author of the blog TrueUp, which also hosts a fabric design forum for discussion of relevant topics. The book purports to deal with designing fabric "for quilting, home dec, & apparel," and it's a pretty succinct overview.

I will admit an aesthetic bias, before i even get to the content: I love the way this book is laid out, organized, and graphically designed. The images are great, the paper quality is nice, the font families are easy to read, and it's full of all kinds of useful info for the novice who wants to learn all about textile print design, from basic nomenclature to various method tutorials (both digital and analog). She also addresses things like copyright and licensing issues, which are of more pressing relevance to those designing fabrics for sale, but are useful to know from a costume design perspective as well.

In terms of digital design, Kight's book has a few tutorials on working with both Photoshop and Illustrator (versions CS3 or later), and she has some excellent insights into how to create stuff like a cohesive color palette for a design, or making a decent-looking scatter-print using spot-repeat grids.

The other book is Digital Textile Design, by Melanie Bowles and Ceri Isaac. Let me start by saying, if i had an aesthetic bias in favor of Kight's, i've the opposite with this text. Plainly put, i found this book hard to look at. From the font choices to the non-intuitive layout, to the (IMO) hideous and already-dated-looking images/designs, it was not easy on the eyes for me. Even the size and paper used kind of turned me off, because it felt like a low-rent workbook. Then again, it does seem to be aimed at a fashion-school textbook-buyer's market in some ways, so maybe that's to be expected. It's got some of the same basic information to be found in Kight's book, but is less comprehensive in terms of related chapters on things like color theory and fabric types and even some of the terminology.

The good thing about the book is that it's got a ton of actual step-by-step digital fabric design tutorials. Mind you, they aren't very clearly written, and i wound up using them more as vague signposts on a road of progress--a couple of them resulted in some cool exercises that helped me understand new ways of working with images and design programs, and some of them were essentially useless without liberal use of the Adobe Help site. Again, if the text is taken as a workbook meant to be used in tandem with an in-class instructor, maybe its vagueness in places is not a problem in that context? I'd think you'd want it as "idiot-proof" as possible, myself. Figuring it out on your own, it's hit or miss.

I think though, after reading both of them and working through their respective tutorials and guidelines, if i had to recommend a course of action for the average theatre craftsperson or costume designer who wanted to begin working with digital textile designs, i'd recommend buying the Kight text. If you suck at Photoshop and Illustrator, her book will get you going conceptually, and Adobe's support pages have so many really good instructional videos that you can hunt through them for the specifics on how to do something like "select just this part of the image" or "paste this but mirrored" or whatever.

After reading both these books and doing some tutorials, i put my learning to the test, and spent a day off futzing around with Photoshop and Illustrator to see what i could come up with in the realm of random textile design (meaning, not with some specific stage need like the Parchman Hour prison stripes.

A while back I had scanned all these funny old 19th century ads and cartoons that have to do with historical millinery/hatmaking, and decided to see what sorts of fabric prints i could make with them as jumping-off points. I've begun grouping them on Spoonflower in a collection called Vive les Chapeaux!. So far i've got two hatters' ad prints for making hat linings and such, and a hilarious border print that i'm thinking about using for cafe curtains in my millinery studio. Fun!

[1] No, i don't believe that digital printing and design will ever entirely supplant the artistry of surface design techniques, from batik to screenprinting. This post is not about that debate. This post is about the rise of digital design and printing as one more tool in the toolbox, as it were.