In putting together last November’s exhibit Northampton Unbuttoned: Dedicated to the Girls of the Mill River Button Company, ca. 1874, I was inspired by Historic Northampton’s rich and varied collections as evidence of working women’s lives in the second half of the 19th century. I studied the “plaid-clad” girls in daguerreotypes; examined articles of clothing first hand, noting how the buttons were integral to everything from dresses to shoes to corsets. And finally, a collection of loose buttons led me and my exhibit partner, Nancy Meagher, to the Mill River Button Company.
I became fascinated by the silhouettes and clothing forms juxtaposed with the colorful printed patterns made possible by the new aniline dyes of the time. The bodice, its shape informed by the corset, provided a framework for my new prints. Letting those elements and all of the buttons and hooks that fastened them speak, my Victorine monoprint collage series is a contemporary take on the colorful plaid textiles and bodice patterns that were popular in the later part of the century.
My assemblage, Carder, Sorter, Looker-Over incorporates handmade paper and buttons to memorialize the girls and the work that they did at the Mill River Button Company.
Even working girls might have a single silk dress for a special occasion as silk was becoming more accessible to women beyond the upper classes. In my series, “One Silk Dress” I wondered if the drowning “plaid-clad” Mill girls had such a dress, or did they just dream about it?
[Photo shows exhibit view with three handmade paper plaids and Flood Plain paper work.]