While doing research for a personal project, I happened to stumbled upon an interesting article called “52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s, Week 23: Dressmaking”. Just the title alone was enough to pique my interest, because I felt it went hand-in-hand with the goal of day by decade.
Curious to know more about these “How-To’s”, I clicked on the author’s name, hoping to find the rest of them. And I did…after having to search through a significant amount of their posts. It turns out that the author posted it under the University of St. Andrew’s Special Collections Department’s account. With how the site is set up, I couldn’t narrow down the search by name and tags; just one or the other.
So, after scanning through the posts, trying to get to the year the “How-To’s” were posted in, I finally found them. And since I didn’t want anyone else to have to do that much work, I’ve linked each week down below 😁!
I hope you enjoy their posts as much as I did!
52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s
Posts by the Special Collections Department (Speccoll) of the University of St Andrews
- Introduction
- Week 1: Special Collections Ghost Tour
- Week 2: Mrs. Edwards’s Cook book
- Week 3: Talbot’s Photogenic Drawing in The Pencil of Nature
- Week 4: The Complete Servant
- Week 5: Stir up Sunday
- Week 6: Victorian Christmas decorations from the Girl’s Own Annual
- Week 7: A Complete System of Cookery
- Week 8: The Great Mince Pie Bake Off
- Week 9: Special Collections Christmas Party Part I
- Week 9: Special Collections Christmas Party Part II
- Week 10: Artificial Fireworks from the Boy’s Own Book
- Week 11: Parlour Magic
- Week 12: La Vénerie
- Week 13: Burns Night
- Week 14: Lighting a Portrait
- Week 15: The Wet Collodion Process
- Week 16: Valentine’s Day Cards
- Week 17: How to Pack for Active Service
- Week 18: Pancakes Pancakes Pancakes!
- Week 19: Diderot’s Encyclopédie and the art of making paper
- Week 20: Iron Gall Ink
- Week 21: Calligraphy
- Week 22: An experiment in early 19th century hen-keeping
- Week 23: Dressmaking
- Week 24: Singing the Collections
- Week 25: Easter Baking
- Week 26: Brewing Scurvy Grass Ale!
- Week 27: Embroidery
- Week 28: Translating 17th century verse into Esperanto
- Week 29: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick maker…..How To shop local
- Week 30: A short mountain walk
- Week 31: Vegetarian Hotch-Potch
- Week 32: ‘To make a Hedge Hog’
- Week 33: The Art of Stained Glass
- Week 34: Headache Remedy
- Week 35: Knitted Cap
- Week 36: A honeymoon trip through Perthshire
- Week 37: How to improve your mind
- Week 38: How to take a 16th century bath
- Week 39: Compile a dictionary
- Week 40: Lace making
- Week 41: Drawing with a Camera Lucida
- Week 42: How to read minds!
- Week 43: How to Play Golf
- Week 44: The Art of Horsemanship
- Week 45: How to Matriculate
- Week 46: How to Make Paper Models
- Week 47: To Make Yeast
- Week 48: How to Borrow a Library Book!
- Week 49: How to Write a Whaling Report
- Week 50: How to Varnish a Collodion Plate
- Week 51: How to discover a planet
- Week 52: A Special Scrapbook and Commonplace Book
- Reflections and Visual Index

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