Ladies and Gentlemen, please take partners! The Bergen County Historical Society invites the public to a
Calico Frolic at 6:30 PM on Saturday,
July 16, 2011, at the Steuben House, Historic New Bridge Landing, 1201-1209 Main Street, River Edge, NJ 07661. Watch or join in old-fashioned country dancing to the musical accompaniment of Ridley and Ann Enslow on fiddle and hammered dulcimer. Dance Mistress Denise Piccino will instruct eager beginners in basic steps and movements at the start of the evening. Dancing continues until 9 PM, when guests may partake of Lemonade and other refreshments in the restored tavern in the adjacent Campbell-Christie House until 10 PM. Period dress is welcome, but not required. The donation is $15 per person and $12 for BCHS members.
Dance selections will include:
Well Hall (an English contra dance dating to 1679, named for a Tudor manor in South London),
The Indian Queen (a popular dance tune from 1695, named for John Dryden’s play),
Prince William (a three-couple dance to a 1721 tune composed in honour of George II’s son),
Come Haste to the Wedding (an Irish jig from 1767),
Young Widow (Dancing-master John Griffiths’ original triple minor from
A Collection of the newest and most fashionable Country Dances and Cotillions, 1788), and T
he Duke of Kent's Waltz (an English country dance first published in 1801).
In its plainest form, calico was known as muslin. But the name also applied to cheap, lightweight and often colored cotton fabric, named for Callicut (Kozhikode), its Indian port of origin. By the early eighteenth century, European printing houses succeeded in imitating multicolored Indian fabrics, producing painted, woodblock printed and penciled patterns in cheerful designs. A 1793 inventory of merchandise stored and sold at the Zabriskie-Steuben House includes 116 yards of different calicos and 48 yards of Chintz, a glazed cotton fabric in bright floral prints. Women who could little afford fine silks turned calico into homemade finery, including gowns, bodices, petticoats, jackets and bonnets. These they wore to country “frolics,” which were light-hearted neighborhood gatherings, rich in opportunities for gossip and matchmaking, held before harvest or whenever a communal workforce engaged in barn raising, spinning or husking bees.
Experience History in one of the storied places where it was made! For further info on membership in the Bergen County Historical Society, a non-profit volunteer association, or our museum drive to build a Bergen County Hall of History, visit:
http://www.bergencountyhistory.org or call 201-343-9492.
