The History Of The ClothesPeg: Ali Bacon tackles the demands of authenticity in fiction and in film.
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| A calotype in the making* |
Filming a trailer for my latest book with Gavin Allen Productions (see last month's post) is still a few weeks away, but a location recce has thrown up some
matters of urgency.
As you will probably know by now, the book features encounters with early photography and while we’re not, I’m glad to say, planning to replicate the entire calotype process of 1843, even to give a
flavour of what it was like demands a degree of historical accuracy.
Luckily we had an expert on hand who agreed with our idea that negatives were very
often hung up to dry on a makeshift clothesline. Just one thing had as all
stumped – what kind of pegs would be used to attach them? Surely the handy wooden spring clip (I even have some now mixed in with the flashy plastic variety) weren't in use back then?
Just in
time my calotypist friend emails me with a gratifying quote from 1844, " let it merely be suspended in the
air, and in the absence of a better expedient it may be pinned across a string
by one of its corners." So off I go in search of the history of the
clothes peg.
Googling
reveals some ‘Victorian’ pegs made of a split stick, or two sticks bound, or
nailed, together at the top. This one looks attractively primitive, don't you think? Dead authentic, surely, and even if I last did whittling at guide camp, maybe I could
actually make some myself?
But I do eventually turn up an article (The Economist no less) on the
history of the clothes peg which tells me the ‘dolly’ peg - as used by my Mum and available passim for making dolls - was patented in 1809.
Wouldn’t Messrs Adamson and/or Hill have simply raided the domestic washing
basket and used what was used these? I also
confirm that the “new and useful or improved…spring clamp for clothes
lines” came along earlier than I would have thought in 1853, but not quite early
enough.
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| Old pegs for new?** |
So it’s
back to the old-fashioned peg – But somehow these don’t feel quite right. Won’t they look too
new? Can I age them by leaving them out in the rain or staining them? Or should
I splash out on ‘vintage’ versions (i.e. shabbier models sold at a premium!)
Here I
remind myself that the Victorians did not live in a world of antiques and sepia mists – they
might just have bought some brand new clothes pegs like me. But authenticity,
as someone once said, is not about accuracy. It’s at least in part about
meeting the expectations of the reader/viewer and I just have a feeling that
light bright pegs will look
anachronistic even if historically they are perfectly okay.
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| Curioser and curioser |
Yes I am
now truly obsessed and spend time empathising with my heroes in their candlelit rooms as well as Googling more clothes peg stuff just for the hell of it. I even
turn up an exciting looking wire version of a U.S.
My heroes were nothing if not resourceful –
even if these weren’t around in the shops or on the doorstep, maybe they would
have made their own? But presumably only if they didn’t they have anything else to hand which would
work. I abandon my designs on a wire coat-hanger as hopelessly extravagant.
So it’s
back to the washing-line drawing board. Let’s get an old peg, some paper and string, and see
if it works.
I’m sure this is what any self-respecting calotypist would have done.
Meanwhile if you have any clothes pegs which look like they could be very old, you know where to find me!
Ali's novel In the Blink of an Eye (Linen Press 2018)
is a re-imagining of the life of Edinburgh artist and photographer D. O. Hill.
Join Ali for its Edinburgh launch in Blackwell's South Bridge, Edinburgh. on October 17th.
21st Century Calotypist, http://www.papershadowsandlight.com/
**Old pegs from https://www.objectlessons.org/houses-and-homes-victorians/dolly-clothes-pegs-victorian-original/s59/a1067/
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