INSIGHT INTO INNOVATION
Interviews have now been obtained with Winifred Brown, granddaughter of a transplanted Welsh textile miller who immigrated to Ohio during the years of the Guild’s suspected formation. In the interview Winifred recounts a story told her when she was a girl by a male cousin who had overheard her father planning a guild meeting. The story supports the theory that guild meetings were originally held primarily for the purpose of sharing technical design innovations within the militant fraternity.
The function of the meeting as a means for sharing new tailoring techniques emerging from the rank-and-file of the guild’s membership is consistent with what we understand to be the MGRT’s basic charter. By sharing innovative new approaches to rural tailoring the guild could ensure that its membership was privy to the most important technical developments which would in turn help ensure that the guild continued to develop and maintain competitive advantages over the purveyors of mass produced goods from whom this knowledge (or gnosis) would be kept secret.
[Research indicates the Militant Guild of Rural Tailors was rarely violent and only ever acted in self-defense. Militant symbols like the brass-knuckle shears as well as the thimble-tipped-bullet worn as a charm around the neck by some guild members were intended to reflect a clear stance of creative self-defense and a pointed resistance to the taylorists forces threatening both artisan jobs and the value of quality and innovative design]
ANNUAL TEST GARMENT TESTAMENT
It is not known how often regional chapters of the guild convened. However, the Winifred interview indicates that one meeting was more important than all others. This was the annual TEST GARMENT TESTAMENT meeting during which these innovations were reviewed and rewarded by the brotherhood. This was the meeting which would bring militant rural tailors in from the greatest distances, some even making ocean voyages to take part and to share their innovations with others and to obtain greater tailoring gnosis which they could bring back to their own districts of activity.
THE FIRST MEETING
The story holds that a feature of the first ever meeting of the guild was a tailor-by-tailor review of new techniques. There were apparently eight founding tailors in the guild. During this first meeting certain events took place that would set the tone for all future gatherings.
TRADING-IN THE SCISSORS
Each would-be inductee was asked to justify his application and was given a fair chance to convince the others of the merit of his pledge. If his reasons were sound, his talent manifest and his character worthy, he was asked to trade-in his own scissors for a pair of brass-knuckle scissors, which would become a sign of his membership from that day forward.
THE MILITANT TAILOR’S CROWN
Having all handed-in their eight pairs of scissors during the first meeting, these were hammered and welded into a primitive MILITANT TAILOR’S CROWN which would serve an important ceremonial purpose for the second event of the meeting.
SHARING THE TAILOR’S GNOSIS
Each tailor was seated in a circle within the inner sanctum of the guild hall. One by one each tailor was asked to step forward and “give testimony” of his commitment to the Rural Tailors Standards & Ethics. They did this by drawing out their brass-knuckle scissors walking toward the wall of the hall and with a swift blow jabbing their scissors into a wooden wallboard or post.
NEW IDEAS HANGING IN THE GRIPS OF A TAILOR'S SCISSORS
The scissors were left potruding from a wall allowing the tailor to use them like a primitive coat hook to display a test garment of his own design that he felt represented worthy innovation in the rural tailoring arts. The tailor would stand next to his creation where it hung and give an accounting to his brothers in which he would testify to the origin of his innovation and explain how it expressed the spirit of the RTS&E.
A SECRET BALLOT
One by one each member did this originally resulting in eight standing tailors and eight hanging examples of rural innovation. After everyone had presented in this manner the group held a secret ballot in order to determine which of them had done the most to advance the gnosis of rural tailoring (heroic in its role in protecting and advancing the life of the guild and the spirit of its anti-industrial charter).
A NAME ON THE CROWN
The one recognized as having achieved the highest standard was awarded by having his name engraved inside the rim of the MILITANT TAILOR’S CROWN, indelibly recording his contribution to the honorable struggle of the guild on the artifact.
MEETINGS REMAIN UNDERGROUND 100+ YEARS ON
Reviewed elsewhere in this research is our postulation that the guild may never have completely disappeared. As we’ve outlined in a section on the RTS&E Today, certain contemporary men’s clothing makers appear to manifest a profound simpatico with the philosophy of the Militant Guild of Rural Tailors.
The research group has watched recent events very closely and has heard rumors of present day guild activity within makeshift guildhalls established temporarily at NAKED/181 Martel in Los Angeles as well as the “Gallery” of An Earnest Cut & Sew in New York City. Earnest Sewn in particular has mounted what it describes as “exhibitions” featuring many clothiers included in our RTS&E Today review such as Rogues Gallery, Cloak and a pending project with Young Meagher.
Although the Research Group has not been allowed access to these events we suspect that they may serve as an innocuous front for modern Guild Meetings including possibly the present-day equivalent of the Annual Test-Garment Testaments where new rural innovations are being reviewed and new tailorwise gnosis is likely being shared.
