By Mark St. John Erickson, merickson@dailypress.com
The Virginia Gazette
6:42 p.m. EDT, April 1, 2014
 

Shielding Pamunkey Indian Wendy Taylor from the crowd as she walks to the spot where the famous couple married 400 years ago will be an elaborate jacket embroidered by more than 70 women — all of whom traveled to Williamsburg from across the country over the past 10 weeks for a show of sisterly support totaling more than 1,200 hours.

Part carefully researched reproduction and part educated guess, the striking black-on-white garment is designed to reflect the kind of attire that might have been made by the small community of female colonists at James Fort for the marriage of someone important, Historic Jamestowne senior curator Bly Straube says.

Decorated with more than 130 figures of fish, fowl, flowers and beasts from Virginia, it's also been personalized in a way that celebrates the natural world in which Pocahontas lived, adds Brenda Rosseau, manager of the Colonial Williamsburg Costume Design Center.

Then there's the unseen but heartfelt embrace of all the women who spent so much time adding stitches to a garment inspired by one of early America's most revered figures.

"So many people wanted to work on it — and so many simply wanted to touch it," says Sheryl Mays, director of public programs and operations at Jamestown for Preservation Virginia, who recruited the volunteers.

"That tells you a lot about Pocahontas and the importance of her story."

Two years in the making, the recreated wedding is the product of a new programming initiative between Preservation Virginia, which owns the site of historic James Fort, and Colonial Williamsburg, which became a partner in interpreting and administering the internationally known landmark in 2010.

Billed as "The World of Pocahontas," it started March 1 with a series of interpretive re-enactments as well as lectures exploring Pocahontas' indispensable role in shaping the relations between early Jamestown and the Powhatan Indian people.

But this week's Thursday lecture, Friday dinner and Saturday wedding re-enactment are expected to draw the largest crowds in a commemorative effort that continues through April 17.

"We want our visitors to understand that — when they walk on the grounds at Jamestown — they're walking where John Smith, Pocahontas and John Rolfe walked," Mays said.

"And when they come to see the wedding, it will be on the exact spot where Pocahontas and John Rolfe married 400 years ago."

With only a scant surviving description, Rosseau had to turn to other sources as she put the wedding party's attire together.

But her previous research in the costume collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London provided a model that was both historically appropriate and well within the expertise of the women living at Jamestown in 1614.

Known as the Falkland jacket, the faded silk and linen garment dates between 1605 and 1625, Rosseau says, and it would have been considered fashionable wear among the English gentry.

The menagerie of real and mythical creatures that fills its swirling foliar design was executed with careful but simple embroidery stitches, making any reproduction a complex yet not insurmountable task for anyone with basic needlework skills.

"We have no earthly idea exactly what Pocahontas wore at her wedding. But this is very plausible," Rosseau says.

"It's something that every English women of a certain class at the time would have known and recognized. Many of them did this kind of needlework."

After Mays put out the call for volunteers, more than 200 embroiderers from across the country submitted samples.

Among those who ended up contributing stitches were former Virginia First Lady Roxanne Gilmore as well as volunteers from as far away as Alabama and Seattle.

Copyright 2014, Virginia Gazette