Tegan Kehoe

 Many months ago, I co-wrote a couple of posts with Camille Myers Breeze, director of Museum Textile Services, about the history of rayon fabric. I left Museum Textile Services last summer to start my graduate studies at Tufts, but I recently noticed that I never re-posted those last few blog entries here. In November, I had the pleasure of working with Camille again as a panelist in a round-table discussion she led at the New England Museum Association conference. I presented on our experience with e-Hive, a cloud-based collections management system. Below is the introduction to the rayon posts, and links to read for yourself. "A surprising number of historic clothing and textile items we’ve treated at Museum Textile Services in 2013 have been made of rayon -- and we've added some rayon pieces to our study collection, such as the "reliable" rayon yarn we blogged about in April. This has prompted us to refresh our knowledge of this important fiber and take n...

One of my ongoing projects is to review each episode of Ken Burns's ten-part series JAZZ for the Yoko Miwa Trio's blog. Here are my most recent posts. Ken Burns JAZZ Part III Reflections on Ken Burns’ JAZZ part IV Ken Burns’s Jazz Part V   Women in Jazz, and in JAZZ

This lovely sample of wartime-era yarn was recently donated to the Museum Textile Services study collection by Mig Ticehurst of Keswick, Cumbria, England. The company that made this yarn has gone by several names, but at the time, it was Robert Glew & Co, Ltd. We love the slogan on the label of this yarn – “Reliable rayon for dainty garments.” Read more...

In the past month, I've covered jazz past and present at the Yoko Miwa Trio's blog. Here's a sampler of recent posts, click the titles to read the full posts. Reflections on Ken Burns’s JAZZ, Episode 1 After starting to blog for the Yoko Miwa Trio, I felt inspired to learn more about jazz history. I wanted to hear the jazz while I learned about it, so I turned to the documentary  JAZZ , by Ken Burns. In this series of posts, I’ll share my thoughts as I journey through some of the crucial decades in jazz history.... Jazz on the Harbor Unless you only just discovered the Yoko Miwa Trio, you know they’ve won some awards, * but did you know that the performance center they will be playing on Friday, February 15 with special guest  Rebecca Parris  is award-winning, as well? Use Your Smile Mu scles Have you ever wondered about the name of the wine bar where the Yoko Miwa Trio plays Saturdays, and Yoko plays solo piano many Tuesdays? “ Les Zygomates ” (La...

Happy Birthday, Kate! ... Analyzing Happy Birthday, Felicity ! My friend Kate asked me to analyze an American Girls book and point out things that are inaccurate or just plain misleading as a birthday present to her. Because the analysis is a birthday present, I chose a birthday book – Happy Birthday, Felicity! It’s the fourth book in a series following the life of Felicity Merriman, a ten-year old girl in 1770s Virginia. The Felicity books came out in the early 1990s, and while the American Girl empire keeps expanding, Felicity’s stories are one of the ones I remember from my own childhood. Before I begin, I just want to say that there are a lot of great things about the American Girl books, and I don’t mean my criticisms to be a condemnation of the books. Some things are not wrong but oversimplified, and in some cases I would have chosen to simplify them differently or not at all. Some elements of the American Girl books disproportionately represent girls with liv...

Parallels to the Past from Needlecraft Magazine Apart from the familiar finds that I described in previous blog posts, and the fashions that are now vintage, the trove of old Needlecraft Magazines that Camille picked up contains some interesting parallels to the past. Since most of the issues we have copies of are from the early 1930’s, the concerns of the Great Depression are readily present. Much of it sounds familiar in our economically aware times – not just the concerns, but the way people turn to home crafts and do-it-yourself projects to save money or just to find new and affordable hobbies. Article from Needlecraft: The Home Arts Magazine, July 1934, page 11. Read more... Museum Textile Services is New England's premier textile conservation studio. I work there as a collections management and textile conservation intern, and contribute to the blog on a semi-regular basis.

Queerly Bookish: A Very Queer Book Called Straight Straight: the Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality , by Hanne Blank , is the queerest book I have read in quite some time. Straight describes the history of heterosexuality as a concept in Western thought and in American culture. While there have always been people with different-sex attractions, Blank explains that prior to the nineteenth century, people didn’t think of sexuality in terms of identity: there were only specific behaviors. During the nineteenth century scientific craze for creating taxonomies for everything, and the craze for using the nascent field of modern psychology as a basis for moral and legal judgments, the words “heterosexual” and “homosexual” were both invented. Read more... Queerly Bookish is a column I write for Diffuse 5, a Boston-based collection of resources for the LBTQ community. The column presents book reviews and notes on the Boston literary scene, including events, publ...

Profile of a Cantabridgian: Caroline Orne Recently, my reading has introduced me to Caroline Frances Orne (1818-1905), who was a well-regarded poet in her day, and the first librarian of the Cambridge Public Library.  Cambridge Considered: the colorful history of Cambridge, MA is my own public history blog. This blog is not just for historians or scholars, it's intended for anyone who lives in or likes Cambridge. It updates sporadically.