By wpengine April 25, 2003
This article is fifth in a series on hidden treasures at Cornell. Most college students spend a lot of time thinking about their clothing. But even though they may spend hours searching for the right outfit to wear to a job interview or party, they only see the outfit as part of their wardrobe. In the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection, however, clothing has become a part of history. The costume collection, which is located in Martha Van Rensselaer Hall (MVR), currently consists of approximately 10,000 items. There is a moderately large ethnographic collection featuring traditional dress from many different parts of the world as well as a textile collection featuring quilts, tapestries and wall hangings. However, the majority of the collection is fashion-related. It features clothing dating as far back as the 18th century up to modern times. The collection includes clothing for men, women and children as well as fashion accessories. Basically, it’s “anything from the skin out that you might wear, or carry, or use as part of dress,” said the collection’s curator, Prof. Charlotte Jirousek, textiles and apparel. The collection was started in the 1920s by Prof. Beulah Blackmore, textiles and apparel, to be used as teaching samples. Fortunately, “unlike [the curators of] a lot of teaching collections, [Blackmore] was careful to collect social history and all the records” of each piece she acquired, Jirousek said. “We have pretty good records on our collection for that reason.” A portion of the costume collection can be seen in the Elizabeth Schmeck Brown Gallery on the third floor of MVR. This set of glass display cases features at least one new exhibit each semester. “Obviously, it’s a very small fraction of what we have in the collection that can be seen in the gallery at any given time,” Jirousek explained, “but that’s true of any museum collection.” The current exhibit features items donated by the Langdon family. The Langdons are known as founders of the city of Elmira and for their connection to Samuel Clemens, more commonly known as Mark Twain. Charles Langdon met Clemens while they were both traveling around Europe and the Middle East. During their travels, Clemens saw a picture of Langdon’s sister, Olivia, and fell in love. They eventually married, and the Clemens and Langdon families remained very close. The exhibit showcases what Jirousek described as “very elegant, wonderful clothing from about the 1870s through to about 1900, including things that [the Langdon and Clemens families] picked up in their travels.” One of the most impressive aspects of the exhibit is how well-documented the pieces on display are. An outfit from Langdon’s trip to Turkey, for example, and the children’s clothing, are accompanied by photographs of members of the Langdon family wearing the outfits. Jirousek and others have also been able to clear up the question of who the dresses on display belonged to. “We have been able to research a couple of pieces that we have, and have concluded that dresses that we thought belonged to [Olivia Langdon Clemens’s sister] actually did belong to Mrs. Samuel Clemens [Olivia],” Jirousek said. This conclusion was based mainly on the size of the dresses in comparison to others. The remainder of the collection is kept in a separate storage area in MVR and is available for viewing only by appointment. It primarily serves as a tool for teaching and research. “I’m teaching a course right now called [TXA 675:] Aesthetics and Meaning in World Dress, and I bring examples of clothing from the history of Western fashion and from the history of world dress to class every day during the semester,” Jirousek said, adding that she does the same for her TXA 125: Art, Design, and Visual Thinking class as well. Students benefit from being able to see these materials up close. For example, Jirousek pointed out that “fashion design students can look [at] and study the construction of garments from a period and take inspiration from it for their own design.” Kimberly McAndrews ’06 agreed, saying, “It’s commendable for Cornell to have something like this on hand. It’s a great resource for [College of] Human Ecology students when they’re designing their own creations.” Other fields of study also examine the clothing and textiles. Freshman writing seminars, anthropology classes and theater classes are a few examples of groups that have come to see the collection. It is occasionally viewed by groups from the local community as well. Research work with the collection focuses mainly on history. “Clothing is a great piece of evidence of what life was like in another period,” Jirousek said. “We tend to think of clothing as just clothes, but the fact is that every time you get dressed you are making a statement about who you are.” She proceeded to explain how although what we wear is a personal decision, that decision is influenced by the cultural norms of society. Therefore, she said, by looking at clothing from a certain era, one can get a fairly good sense of what people were like. “It’s a very interesting way to look at what’s going on in a particular society at a particular time,” Jirousek added. The collection’s holdings are listed in an online catalog which, for some of the listings, also includes pictures. According to Jirousek, the textiles and apparel department is also working on adding an online gallery of past exhibits for the display cases. This will be available on the website within the next week. Archived article by Courtney Potts
By wpengine April 25, 2003
Seven teams and four judges came together at the Statler Kitchen Laboratory yesterday afternoon for the first annual “Iron Chef” competition between graduate schools at Cornell. The event featured an unusual main ingredient — ostrich. After the teams presented their dishes, all of which included ostrich, the results were tallied. Team four, “Ryan’s Angels,” representing the Johnson Graduate School of Management, was announced the winner amidst a flurry of applause from all the competitors and spectators. The team was presented with a trophy made from a small, shiny saucepan bolted to a piece of butcher block with a ladle inside. “Ryan’s Angels”‘ winning dish consisted of three courses described as “Asian fusion” cuisine on the distributed menu. Their success left the team leader, Ryan Folger JGSM ’04, “shocked and surprised.” One of his teammates, Joanne Wall JGSM ’04, said that she “didn’t expect to win, given the tough competition from the hotel school, but as a team we pulled it together.” The rest of the quartet was made up of Alison Reichert JGSM ’04 and Annie Oh JGSM ’04. Overall, four of the teams were from the JGSM, while the other three represented the hotel school. Each of the teams was made up of four members. They all gathered just before 5 p.m. to get their instructions from the event coordinator, Alex Tse ’97, before the cooking began. Each team was allowed use of any of the communal ingredients provided for the event. These supplies included a wide variety of fresh vegetables and herbs and common pantry stock items such as bacon, chicken, cheeses, pastas and red wine. In addition, teams were allowed to bring up to $25 of their own ingredients. They were each provided with chef’s whites and a cooking station that contained all the necessary tools and utensils to enact their culinary creations. The competition was almost exactly like the cult Iron Chef television program often shown late at night on the Food Network. The only changes were that the teams were notified of the main ingredient three days in advance, and the cooking time was expanded to two hours from the TV show’s one. Tse incorporated many details from the show, including the music at the beginning and end of the program, which he played from a laptop and speakers set up in the middle of the kitchen. The teams were judged in four categories: presentation, taste, originality and cleanliness. One of the judges was Mike Washburn, executive sous chef at Wegmans of Ithaca. Before the competition began, he said he would be “observing cleanliness and organization while cooking, though tasting [would] determine a lot.” Washburn earned his gastronomic expertise through many years in the industry following his degree from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). Most recently, he owned the Bull Moose Bistro in Red Lodge, Mo., before moving to Ithaca a few months ago. Another judge was Dano Hutnik, former proprietor of Dano’s in Ithaca, who is currently building a new restaurant outside the city on Cayuga Lake. Though he had never cooked with ostrich in any of his restaurants, he “ate it about four or five years ago, when ostrich was the thing on menus.” Hutnik noted that “it never really caught on, kind of like bear, elk and kangaroo,” despite being “a very healthy lean meat with no cholesterol.” The other two judges were Dean of Students Kent Hubbell ’69 and Ken Cowlan, owner of the Lite 97.3 radio station. When he first entered the kitchen, Cowlan noticed that he aroma [was] overwhelming.” “Even if you weren’t hungry when you came in here, you’d work up an appetite fast,” he added. The time allotted for cooking went by very quickly. Most teams spent the better part of the first hour preparing their ingredients by chopping vegetables, reducing stocks and tenderizing the ostrich meat. Some teams deep-fried vegetables and flatbreads to use in their presentation, while others used their broilers to roast peppers, brown puff pastry or candy almonds. The organizational techniques ran the gambit. Some teams arrived with typed gameplans broken down by team member, while others were heard volunteering to take on a particular task ad hoc as the team leader announced what needed to be done. Most teams did not begin plating their meals until the last few minutes of competition. As time was called, however, the long table that once held all the communal ingredients was filled with impressive offerings from each of the seven teams. The first team to present its menu was “Team Hotel School Graduate Year Two,” which had an interesting centerpiece. While they prepared their menu, they heated a large, flat stone in the oven. That stone was then oiled and used to cook strips of marinated ostrich on the presentation table right before the judges. The ostrich was then added to lettuce leaves with a tomato-based sauce and bean sprouts, among other vegetables. The second team to present its menu to the judges, “The Bawachis,” which is Hindi for “The Chefs,” offered a trio of dishes to the four judges. An Indian theme was present throughout their courses of caramelized walnut and ostrich salad, ostrich puri and ostrich saag. Next came the dishes from the third team, which also represented the hotel school. They offered ostrich roulade, ostrich wellington with caramelized carrots and potatoes au gratin and a grilled ostrich salad. The winning team, “Ryan’s Angels,” presented fourth with its menu of ostrich rice-paper rolls with Vietnamese dipping sauce, followed by tangy, poppy seed salad with warmed ostrich and finally shafis ostrich curry. Fifth, the team “Not-So-Naked Chef” presented one of its dishes in a hollowed-out half-pineapple. Their cuisine also featured an Asian theme. The pineapple curry dish was of Polynesian origin, which joined the Japanese- and Thai-inspired dishes on their menu. The last team from the JGSM to present their menu was “Team Chicken Livers.” Their menu started with ostrich sushi, continued with ostrich won ton soup and finished with the only dessert offering of the competition — assorted skewers with mole sauce. The seventh team was called “Thursday Night Poker,” and spoke a lot of French throughout the competition. Their five items included an ostrich tartare that was paired with a citrus sauce and several julienned vegetables. Once the menus were presented to the judges, competitors each took a glass of wine and fork around to taste their competitors’ dishes. Compliments abounded and the dishes disappeared while the judges carefully savored the portions reserved for them. Though the event only included two of Cornell’s graduate schools this year, Tse hopes it will expand in the future. “The idea is to make it a competition with one team from each of the graduate programs to promote integration across Cornell graduate programs,” he said. “We also want to make it a charity event with a more festive atmosphere.” While it might appear that hotel students would have an advantage in a cooking competition over their business school counterparts, most of the JGSM students turned out to be avid cooks. Many of them are members of Cook with Books, the Johnson School cooking club founded by Tara Fallon JGSM ’04. “We’re a first-year club, and we’ve had prix fixe dinners at local restaurants where we got to talk to the chefs, as well as large potluck dinners with the Johnson Wine Club,” she said. All of the competitors seemed to enjoy their experience. Some offered things that they learned: “You should never be on a team with your boyfriend, but it was great overall,” said Lesley Oakes JGSM ’04. When Carroll Rheem grad was asked how she felt about her hotel school students being defeated by a team from the JGSM, she said, “It’s not about winning or losing. This was my first live cooking competition, and I really e