A Stitch in Time

Today’s collection is series of Works Progress Administration (WPA) posters showing global historic dress. There were a few of these posters hanging in my childhood home, but they somehow never registered as “ephemera” to me until recently, when my sister bought a new one for my dad (Asiatic Plate No. 39: Chinese Nobility) as a Christmas gift. This naturally led me down a rabbit hole of municipal library websites to try and find more entries in the series. Though the ones in our house were published by the Connecticut WPA, large-scale (around 3 feet tall), and screenprinted in 6-7 colors, it turns out similar costume plates were produced in many states (here’s some from Kansas) and in a variety of sizes and styles—including the ones seen here, from Pennsylvania, which were small scale, printed in black and white, and then hand-tinted. In addition to regional folk attire, there were also plates made for military regalia, ecclesiastical vestments, and theatrical costume. There were also dolls.

The very existence of the WPA—an American agency that provided work for thousands of unemployed artists during the Great Depression—is sort of an incredulous idea in this day and age. It reminds me of the ongoing joke that if libraries had never existed, and were proposed today, they would be rejected for being “too socialist.” The Museum Extension Project arm of the WPA, who are behind these specific plates, focused on producing historic models, puppets, illustrated plates, and maps for use in school districts, especially those with limited access to museums. In an age of AI and general debasement of the humanities, it is nice to imagine a time when our country was expanding access to the arts rather than cutting school budgets for music classes.

It goes without saying that these posters, while beautiful, often depict Western and non-Western cultures in markedly different ways, with the latter frequently “othered” or exotified through stylized poses, attire, and cultural framing. I often wrestle in this newsletter with whether to exclude material that may be offensive by today’s standards (sharing a set that skews very white and European as a result) or to include pieces that, while problematic, offer a broader view of the archive. I always try to make a selection that strikes a balance between these poles, but I always encourage you to explore the linked archives at the ...