1860s Fancy Dress ball images now available

[NoahBriggs]

I am pleased to announce that I have posted the pictures of the 1860s Fancy Dress Ball to my blog. You may view it at http://acwotaku.blogspot.com.

Noah Briggs

[Anna Allen]

Too bad I couldn't make it. It looks like everyone had a fabulous time!!

[col90]

Too bad I couldn't make it. It looks like everyone had a fabulous time!!

We had an absolutely wonderful time...good music, food, dancing, games, and friends!! The few members of the public that were there to join in with us after 8:00 all wore costumes of some sort as well, so at least we were not looking at any modern clothing!! And we raised a good bit of money for Beauvoir, which was our goal!!

Colleen

[Spinster]

Noah--I wandered into those images late last night off another link, after an absolutely horrific and grueling day, one that had as its highlight having to drop everything in late afternoon and spend 7 hours at the emergency room with a single mother for whom I hold medical power of attorney----and at a time when I simply have no more steam left in me for 'others'.

Those wonderful images were refreshing. Funny, to think of such as a 'blessing'--but they sent me to a good, if very short, nights sleep. Thank you.

[col90]

There are more pictures on our AGSAS photo site. Here is a direct link to the album:

http://agsas1861-65.dotphoto.com/CPViewAlbum.asp?AID=3716996

Colleen

[col90]

There are more pictures on our AGSAS photo site. Here is a direct link to the album:

http://agsas1861-65.dotphoto.com/CPViewAlbum.asp?AID=3716996

Colleen

And in case any of you are wondering what Mike Mescher was dressed as.......there is one period account of a woman coming as a "cat".....fur, cat's tail, mask, etc.. Mr Mescher took his inspiration from that, and then found a period poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning describing her dog "Flush"....and so he is "Flush, the Dog"...even to the red ribbon on the neck with the name "Flush" embroidered on it!

Colleen

[NoahBriggs]

Mrs. Lawson, I am too pleased to hear the pictures made your day. Thanks for the kind words, and I hope your companion recovers.

Tune in for more weird ramblings from a variety of events as they occur.

[jcraig]

The Fancy Dress Ball was a blast and one of the best events I have been to in a while. The costumes were all unique, interesting, and well researched. The music, food, parlor games, and of course, the company, all made for such a pleasant evening I didn't want it to end.

This event just seemed "right" - the appropriate setting (Belair Mansion), activity (well researched and executed), and people who just acted as people would have at such a gathering. It was really nice.

Kudos to all involved in planning this event, from the pre-event research, the hard work everyone put into their costumes, to the amazing staff at Belair who provided the amazing spread of period food!!

We had fun, recreated something pretty unique and raised money for a very worthy cause. What more could you ask for?!

Jess Craig

Atlantic Guard Soldiers Aid Society

[NoahBriggs]

What more could you ask for?!

$2.5 billion to restore a coastline which has culture, commerce and strategic value to the nation? :o

Well, we can wish. We did our part to contribute. Even one drop of water contributes to the ocean. (How Zen)

[Julio C. Zangroniz]

What more could you ask for?!

$2.5 billion to restore a coastline which has culture, commerce and strategic value to the nation? :o

Well, we can wish. We did our part to contribute. Even one drop of water contributes to the ocean. (How Zen)
>
In the next week or so, Zangroniz Photography will have *a couple of hundred* more images about the Fancy Dress Ball online. We hoped to have the task done by the end of this week, but an unexpected funeral has interrupted our regular proceedings.
As we assured the gathering at the ball, we will have an "Event Photo CD" available for purchase (already, we have about a dozen orders for it). The collection will be available both to those who attended the event, as well as to anyone else who might be interested, and we will be sending the folks at Belair Mansion a donation from each sale to add to the kitty for the evening's receipts, because it goes to a good historical preservation cause, even if it's just another "drop in the ocean."
The images look great, and that makes "winnowing" them down to an acceptable number that much more difficult.
All the same, the Fancy Dress Ball was a great evening and we were happy to be part of it, and we sure hope that the event will be repeated.
Julio C. Zangroniz

[MissAnnaMae]

I, too, have thoroughly enjoyed the photos. Thanks for sharing them with those of us who could not be in attendance.

Any word yet on how much this soiree raised for the Cause?

[Emmanuel Dabney]

To date we have about $575 in ticket sales from the ball. As Julio has mentioned a portion of the proceeds from the sale of photo CDs will also go to the Beauvoir restoration and reconstruction efforts. Furthermore, AGSAS is continuing to take donations made out to the Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society with a note "Beauvoir preservation" or simply "Beauvoir" in the Note line. If anyone wishes to make their donation this way, please contact me (GeneralMahone64@aol.com), Colleen Formby, AGSAS President (col90@yahoo.com), or Hilary Isacson, AGSAS Treasurer (jkihla@adelphia.net).

No donation to Beauvoir's work is too small or too large.

[Julio C. Zangroniz]

I have just posted another 160+ new images of the Fancy Dress event posted at the following website:
www.zphotos.smugmug.com
Once you log onto this page, simply scroll down to the gallery named:
6fancydress.
We advise everyone to click on the "slide show" hyperlink in the upper right hand side of the page so you'll be able to see each and every one of the images for about three seconds on your screen, projected as large as possible.
However, if you prefer, you can simply click on each image in the gallery and peruse it for as long as you wish.
This was a wonderful 19th Century evening at the Belair Mansion in Bowie, MD last month.
Enjoy!
Julio

[NoahBriggs]

All those great-looking costumes - and you took a picture of my feet ? :p

[Delia Godric]

Could somebody illustrate the games and entertainments?

Anna Worden

[Emmanuel Dabney]

Illustrate as in telll you? Many of the games we played with forfeits are on Julio's website.

Games included Puss in a Corner, a 19th century "board" game, one where we blew a feather about and whomever failed to keep the feather up had to pay a forfeit, and Question & Answer.

Jen will be along soon I'm sure but Michael's book on this subject plus various games can be found for sale at www.raggedsoldier.com.

[Delia Godric]

Illustrate as in telll you?

Yes. I meant what were the games like when they were played? What did you learn? What was fun? Which would you do again? Was the space suitable for each game? That type of thing. It's one thing to read about the games/amusements in books and articles. It's another to hear other's experiances with them or to actually play them.

Anna Worden

[Emmanuel Dabney]

The space we used as you can see from the photos was a 1745 mansion. I would say that if we had any more people it would have been too much for the space for EVERYONE to play (including our paying public who didn't know us from a hole in the wall but we included them in the heart of our game playing).

Puss in the Corner is always fun. If you haven't played, shame on you. You're missing a great amount of fun. We had one slip up and there is a picture of me helping the young lady from the floor. She wasn't injured and we all had a great laugh about it. Especially for one gentleman who was thrice in the middle.

Blowing the feather game (which I hope Jen or Mike will come on and remind me and everyone else of the title) was very amusing and less active for those who cannot run around the floor. The Pious Pilgrim Lady (Jess Craig) repeatedly had to pay a forfeit until basically she had no accessories to give up.

I think the important part of the evening was playing forfeits and Mike's book on games certainly includes forfeits. The Nun's Kiss was one of the most interesting in which a chair was lifted over the gentleman's head and through the splat (back of chair) a woman must kiss him. My forfeit in the feather game was to make a toast to myself, which everyone said suited me (Self Proclaimed King of America, long story but amusing).

Several of us feel like this obsession with waiting for the next time the Yankees or the Rebels show up has left citizen reenactors to think it is all real life Civil War people did. The war still allowed for amusements to take place, and some amusements were created because of war.

However, it was nice in this setting to be ca. 1860 and have no war talk, no military uniforms, no thread counting. It was the nineteenth century's era to be "farb" and fun (i.e., crinolines with 18th century clothing).

[Julio C. Zangroniz]

All those great-looking costumes - and you took a picture of my feet ? :p
>
Noah,
I tried to document *everything* that evening --including those bare feet!
As the only shoeless person in the building, you had to expect to attract some attention.
All in all, it was a great fun evening, regardless of which side of the camera we found ourselves, wasn't it?
Julio

[NoahBriggs]

I still think we should have took a picture of each other taking a picture of each other.

but I had fun. :D

[VIrginia Mescher]

This is Virginia's spouse, Michael, chiming in. I was asked to be the game leader for the games. We had both parlor games to play as a group and some board or other indoor games that could be played between two players or in a small group. I think all of the games were fun because I culled the most popular games from several experiences leading parlor games. We adapted the games to fit the space and conditions we had and the only one where we had to regroup was The Flying Feather (see discussion below). Our circle was initially too big (about 15 people) and we split roughly in half which seemed to work much better. With this group we could also collect forfeits which it seemed was almost as much a part of the entertainment as the games themselves.

As Emmanuel mentioned, we played Puss in the Corner as our starting game. This game is very popular both as a parlor game for adults and as a children's game.

Following that, we played a session of Question and Answer which involves the gentlemen taking turns reading a question from a deck of cards with one question per card and the ladies answer from their own deck of answers.

We also had a session of Consequences. This is a serial story where individuals take turns writing parts of it without any knowledge of what other players have written before them. The completed stories are then read aloud to the company.

When we played The Flying Feather (when played with a bit of cotton fluff, it is Cotton Flies), we collected forfeits for failures in the game which was a period alternative to keeping score.

I think that is it for the games. The competition was then ended with the redemption of the forfeits. Since I probably knew the most forfeits, I was the judge. As each forfeit was held over my head, I assigned a task for the owner of the token to perform in order to redeem their forfeit. These redemptions included some challenges to figure out how to perform them, performing comic activities, e.g., Emmanuel giving himself a toast or going around the players and yawning very dramatically in order to get them to yawn, or Bev's Nun's Kiss where she kissed a gentleman (redeeming his forfeit) through the upright slats of a chair back. We only had time for a small sampling of redemptions so absolution was granted for the rest of the forfeits.

As Emmanuel mentioned, the games are described fully in my parlor game book or in "The Sociable" or "Book of Parlour Games" which are both on my website.

The members present really got into the spirit of the games and the most common element of them all was the laughter that echoed in the room. I think I speak for the company that we would look forward to doing them again.

For the table games, we had Mansion of Happiness, a spiral pursuit game first published in 1843 but still played at the time of the civil war; jackstraws which are like pick up sticks, the Checkered Game of Life, a game that used a board like a checker board and was developed by Milton Bradley just before the civil war; and The Endless Landscape which is non-competitive activity involving a set of cards that can be reordered to create different scenes (based on a set produced in the 1830's).

As Emmanuel mentioned, this gave a cross section of some types of games that people of the time period could play.

Michael Mescher

[Delia Godric]

Thank you Emmanuel and Mike. Your descriptions are very helpfull.

I used to have your book Mike. I tend to lose track of my books as they are loaned out. It was very helpful when I did games with school groups at GCVM. I think I also used it for a small event where we tried out a few different group games in a large round gazebo. I remember having fun but don't remember which games we played besides Blindman's Bluff. I do know we did something with hoops (not graces).

Thanks again, Anna Worden

[Julio C. Zangroniz]

Noah,
Next time --and there WILL be a next time, at least at Belair Mansion-- we will take a picture of each other taking a picture of each other.
At one point during the Fancy Dress Event, I noticed you trying to do exactly that and I think that, out of pure instinct, I may have jumped out of the way.
At that particular time, I was trying to get a full-length portrait of Beverly Heath (a photograph that appears in the collection posted at www.zphotos.smugmug.com, by the way).
Normally, as I peruse things through my lens, I try to be keenly aware of anacronisms, and if I detect one, I either try to "crop it out" of the picture or simply turn away and look for a "better" image.
This particular time, I turned away from you. No disrespect intended.
On another front, I just sent a check to Pam Williams at Belair Mansion, as well as a copy of the Event Photo CD for her records, representing our company's donation from the night's proceeds.
Anybody know the total that the evening contributed to the cause where the donations were headed?
I think Pam was quite enthusiastic about how the evening went, and I believe she fully intends to have a repeat of the evening next year. I sure hope such a repeat comes to be.
Julio