Theatre Design & Technology - Oct 1971 - 31

in the b's alone, the terms "bases,"
"brags," "bosses," "bents," "belette,"
"blanchet," and "bugles," while not everyday terms today, were important to their
period and should have been included. The
last three terms were in use in one or more
spellings for the better part of three centuries or more. "Bugles" is even known to
us today as bugle beads. The individual entries in The Dictionary of Costume are clear,
short and somewhat casual in nature, such
as the following typical entry:
ALNAGE an ell, or forty-five inches, the former
English measurement of CIOlh, now lillie used. Of
varying measure in diHerent countries.

Extended discussions are rare and one
must usually settle for a general description.
More extensive and scholarly entries may
be found in Cyclopedia of Costume, for example. Even A Dictionary of English Costume: 900-1900 documents some obscure
entries. The Dictionary of Costume, therefore, will probably be most valuable to students and beginners in the field of costume.
Some terms, such as "Incroyable" and
"kibr," seem to defy adequate verbal description and are amply illustrated, despite
the fact that the illustrations are not always
next to the corresponding entry. Not infrequently, an illustration is halfway down the
page from the entry or in another margin altogether. Costumers will find the illustrations have a famil iar look to them, as most
have appeared in Wilcox's previous volumes. In some cases some minor touchingup has taken place; in others, compiete
pages have been incorporated without
change. In addition to the profusion of illustrations collated with the text, Wilcox
has added well over one hundred full pages
of drawings for various costume entries.
One or two pages of drawings seem reasonable to cover two thousand years for the
entry "boo!." But, when twenty or more
pages of drawings accompany the entry,
"Twentieth Century Costume" or "Nineteenth Century Costume," they pass the
point of defining the respective entry and
approach a survey of costume history, which
by definition is not the purpose of this

Painting, Photography, Film
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. A translated "Facsimile" reprint of the 1925-27 edition.
MIT Press. Cambridge: 1967.150 pp.,
74 ill. $7.95.
An introduction, thirteen essays, many
illustrations, and typography that catches
the eye is the substance of this classic of
Bauhaus modern art theory. Photography is
certainly the principal focus of the essays,
but the continual reference to motion and
time variations in association with images
produces the implications which are so persuasive in ki netic art today. All the i ngredients of a classic are here. Some ideas

~ THEATER DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

book. As the number of drawings increases,
they contribute less and less toward the
task of defining the term and hence cannot
be justified in such large quantities in a
dictionary.
While we do not seriously expect a definitative single volume costume dictionary,
because of the sheer body of terms applicable to costumes through the ages and
throughout the world, we do expect the
dictionary to meet its stated purpose. Along
this line, the costumer should expect to
find all names and terms used in Wilcox's
own books to be entered in The Dictionary
of Costume. Sadly, this is not the case.
Terms used in just the first few chapters of
Wilcox's The Mode in Footwear, such as,
pedi la, saccus, peribaride, calceus and
others, are omitted. The conclusion is
that additional drawings have usurped the
space where these and other terms should
have been entered. The dictionary has thus
occasionally lost sight of its own preface
stated purposes: that a dictionary lists
"terms or names important to a particular
subject." The preface also suggests that a
costume dictionary must no longer confine
itself to the definition of western world
costume, but must incorporate terms from
around the world. We do find the traditional and historical terms of western costume and terms from non-western costume
which are important by virtue of their significance to the fashion industry. However,
there are almost no entries of non-western
costume not related to the fashion industry.
In all fairness to The Dictionary of Costume, it has done a decent job of supplying
a more expansive and readable list of entries than previous dictionaries, but one can
not help wondering what might have been
achieved had another forty or fifty pages of
entries been substituted for some of the
full page drawings. A plus is the Bibliography which contains the titles of many
specialized costume dictionaries.

Robert Lewis Smith
Syracuse University

seem as fresh today as they must have
been incredible fifty years ago, other ideas
have been discarded by now, and many still
await the richness of understanding.
Theatre seems to demand the implication
of emotion and humanity, where the thrust
of these essays is really very sterile. While
isolated quotes in this case are more dangerous than usual, consider what is offered in criticism of lumia work. "Far too
I ittle work has so far been done in the field
of moving light display. It must at once be
tackl ed from many a ngles and carried forward as a pure discipline. While I value
what their experiments have achieved, I
consider it a mistake to try, as HirschfeldMack and A. Laszlo do, to combine optical-

OCTOBER, 1971

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