Historic Costumes and How to Make Them Book

A fanTAStic book on historical costuming of England for stage. The introduction is a general overview of what you can reasonably expect to achieve as far as accuracy, and goes into some detail with lighting and visual effects and how they affect what you should use for colors on stage. I just completed a lighting workshop at the local theater guild, and from what I can tell, the advice contained in the introduction is still applicable today. Honestly, while the lighting tech may have changed a very little for most of the intervening time between this books publish date and today, even the colors used by LED lights still follow the basic rules. Our local house combines a variety of lighting methods--the gels referred to in the intro have moved from REAL gelatine color slides to colored plastic, but it's basically the same.

The middle section of the book neatly chops up the years from old Saxon rule to the 1880s into various reigns, and gives lovely written descriptions. A bit sparse on the illustrations, but in this day and age one can hardly gripe about that. The final section is pattern pieces for the simpler costumes. Wisely, Ms. Fernald has left the complicated stitchery to more specialized patterns and instructions than she can briefly give in this book. The historic costume descriptions and intimate details of the fashions of each era are invaluable, and no less so are the general pieces of advice regarding costuming for any stage work given in the introduction. Five stars!