"When Jane [Farwell] was teaching German dances, that would be the theme, we would be dressed in lederhosen, dirndls, and fancy dance costumes” - Lila Boyd , Interview 1995
Lila Boyd, Interview in 1995
At Folklore Village, the costume collections serve a wide variety of purposes. First and foremost, Jane’s lessons used costumes to teach about the cultures that they came from. Jane gave this lesson on Norwegian bunads in an interview in 1995.
“The bunads, as they are called in Norway, were copied from the court and came down through the centuries through the little villages to the land, to the little villages. And then they had to reproduce them with whatever they had to make them with. Every cottage had a weaving room but you had to grow flax for the linen and you had to grow wool, I mean you had to have sheep for the skirts and things. And almost entirely, except for a few exceptions, they were made out of wool and linen entirely….There was not any one person that made them, you made them for yourself, but more especially you made them for your partner kin, so for your niece. You didn’t get to wear it until you were confirmed. It was beautiful to see the processional of the girls and guys as they came out of the churches. ”
Below, we’ve included more quotes from Farwell as she explains the details of a variety of Norwegian folk costumes.
Through traditional clothing, Jane taught about the types of relationships that people had with each other, the materials they were surrounded by, and the activities that they participated in. Jane’s stories of these costumes also tell us about her own life, the places she visited, and the people she connected with. In the images above, for example, we see Jane’s deep knowledge and respect for the clothing. We learn from her how the stomacher in a Norwegian context, for example, undergoes change like so many traditions; we learn about the ways the clothing is used to signify different life stages; we even learn about some of the “rules” that are a part of wearing regional pins, for example. This collection, thanks to the work of Farwell and others, helps us better understand the ways in which clothing is used and passed down and how that clothing helps people connect to a community.
Makers and Makers-do:
Many of the collectors of costumes involved in folk dance believed that the costumes were meant to be worn, rather than just put on display. At Folklore Village these costumes were used and danced in by many people. In that process, the costumes often became worn, jumbled, or lost. Community members stepped in to help make these repairs or modifications and used their skills and the materials at hand, very much in the spirit of the historic garments they are modeled after. Community members often have fond memories of wearing and using these costumes and frequently told stories about certain moments that they repaired or salvaged these garments, but the practice of wearing and using costumes sometimes meant mixing old and new materials or borrowing pieces from other garments.
The collection is also filled with a number of notes and letters with commentary about their costumes and their use by the Folklore Village community. Many of the costumes are made of mixed pieces, despite best efforts to keep outfits together. Keeping the costume collection functional and organized for events was an enormous task that relied on the help of many people who wore and repaired them, and the notes left behind tell of how these items were used and maintained.
Images come from the Folklore Village Archives
“One of the questions we are going to ask of each costume is 'Should we pull it out of the costume show lineup for its own safety?” So even maybe a costume that isn’t worn at all, but we consider valuable and important enough that we don’t use it for in this context…'"
Doug Miller, 1992 Interview with Jane
In the years since Farwell’s death, the care and use of her collection has been largely in the hands of the community members of Folklore Village. With time, the functionality of the collection for dances has come into question. Many of these costumes are made of valuable, antique, and fragile materials and they can’t be worn for dance performances without damaging the costumes. They would benefit from being stored in special boxes to preserve their materials for future reference. Because clothing is expensive to store, many organizations do not have the time and space to care for the garments properly, especially if they have been mixed around and worn out over the years.
At the same time, the costumes are significant to the community of Folklore Village and the wider international folk dance movement because they were gathered and worn by the community at dances, for dances. For many of the collectors, it was important for them to be worn and used, which is perhaps why so many people left their costumes to Farwell and Folklore Village, rather than to a museum that would choose to store them away for preservation. Additionally, many of the collections belonging to people like the Hermans and Karin Gottier simply get dispersed and disappear completely when collectors pass.
The collection at Folklore Village sits at the tension of these questions around use and collecting. Ultimately, the creation of the Folklore Village Costume Collection was dependent not just on Farwell, but on the large community she was a part of. Paying attention to this community as well as the valuable garments in the collection provides an opportunity to use the costume collection for community building and education, but also as a point of connection.