Redcoats & Rebels 2019

A few Warner's men from First Company waiting for morning formation.

I'm a bit behind on reporting events.  The first weekend of August was the annual Redcoats & Rebels event at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.  Gab and I, joined by her older sister, made the trip down from Vermont on Friday night.  Since we were only day tripping for Saturday, we opted to sleep in the back of our van.

Redcoats & Rebels is one of my favorite events.  OSV is a living history museum that portrays the 1830s of New England, but during this weekend every year, the entire place is taken over by folks from the 1770s.  The setting, with the exception of a couple of buildings, fits the time-period perfectly, and it's always fun to see several hundred people in period clothing bringing the site to life.

This year the turn-out of reenactors seemed smaller than previous years.  Both the American and British armies were camped on the village green, and there were very few outlying camps.  The turnout, however, did not diminish the event at all.

I didn't get any photos of my own this year, but there are tons online, as most of the AWI units in the New England area turn out for this event.  As usual, the battle in the afternoon was the highlight of the event for both participants and spectators.  The American army was severely outnumbered this year, but we put up a good fight.  Our unit, in particular, had a good time holding the flanks, trying to (unsuccessfully) build barricades to slow the British advance, and retreating through tall grass that was up over our waists.

The past few years, the Old Sturbridge Village Facebook page has featured a live overhead view of the battlefield, via drone footage.  As a participant, these are always interesting to view after the fact.  In the videos, it's possible to see various troop formations, tactics, and the overall flow of the battle.  OSV offered a few videos this year, and they are worth checking out on their page.

Though I had to leave Saturday night, from the photos and video that I saw online, Sunday went well.  Our unit, Warner's Regiment, is usually far from the cameras, but on Sunday the men appeared front and center in some of the video footage.  To close, here's a video that was found on YouTube, showing the Green Mountain Boys pushing the British back through the fields on the outskirts of the main village.

Book Safe

Shhh.... It's a secret.

The Challenge: July: Unexpected (Book with hidden compartment)
Material: Wood pulp paper, leather, thread, water paint
Pattern: None, traditional bookbinding methods
Year: 1750s to 1850s
Notions: None
How historically accurate is it? The construction methods are accurate. For the 18th century, linen paper would have been used.  The text is from 1775
Hours to complete: 5 to 6
First worn: August 9, 2019.
Total cost: About $5.

For the July Historical Sew Monthly challenge, I've likely stretched the guidelines a bit.  The challenge was to create a historical piece of clothing or accessory with a hidden or unexpected feature.  The first thing that popped to mind was a book to hide my phone in at events.  There *was* sewing involved, and if carried, I'm counting it as an accessory.

Doing a bit of Google research, it appears that "book safes" or hollowed-out books have been around just about as long as books have.  I tried to narrow it down specifically to 18th century books, and found a couple of images online of 18th century books that had been hollowed out in the 19th century (similar to someone now, hollowing out an old book they found at a tag sale).

18th Century Book Safe from Heritage Auctions.

I've dabbled with book binding before, so I decided to print out a text from my preferred time period, bind it, and use it for the challenge.  Since I was hiding a phone/camera, I chose "A Treatise of Optics" by Joseph Harris, originally printed in 1775.  I thought the optics/camera bit was a fun little inside joke.  I actually left the full text intact, then added misprints and blank pages for my hollowed section.  This way, I can actually read the book at events, but still have space to hide items.  This was my first successful attempt at a quarter-binding with leather, but it didn't turn out as I would have liked.  My experiments with marbled paper (more appropriate for my time period) were a complete failure, so I went with coloring the covers with water paint instead.

Process photos below:
 

Text downloaded from Google Books, Printed into signatures using Adobe Acrobat.

Signatures numbered, or "signed," to help keep them in order before sewing.

Signatures blocked up in a vise.
Shallow saw cuts allow for stitching to pass through the
signatures without the need to puncture each signature individually.

The last signature added to my cobbled together sewing frame.
The book is worked from back to front.

Each signature is sewn to bands along the back, using a kettle stitch to lock them in place.

The text block, sewn and removed from the frame.

Functionally, it's a book, but now it needs covers.

A linen "mull" is glued to the back. This helps bind the signatures and bands.

Pasteboard covers are added, and the mull glued down to them.

A leather spine is glued to the back, and pressed over the back
cords to create the distinctive look seen on 18th century books.

Paper is added to the covers, and the leather is glued down to create a quarter binding.
I forgot to capture photos of the process, but this should have been
marbled paper to be historically correct.

The "hidden" compartment was cut out with a sharp knife.
Some people glue the pages together, but I left them as is.

Hidden in plain site among my other books.
I don't have the tools to add gilding, but usually a
title and decorations would have been embossed on the spine.

A fun project, which may prove useful at events.  That, however, is still to be determined.