#Cora LEVINSON💜

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Nobody come to the bookstore today I need to research Cincinnati in the 1870s-1880s, the American dry goods trade, Reconstruction socioeconomic reform, women's fashion, and the history of Jewish immigration to the Midwest for a Downton Abbey fanfiction

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Was trying to remember the French word for those tall coffee pots that come with tea sets and found a Tiffany collection--"baluster bodies with beaded borders and leafy bud finials, the tray with roses and other flowers and ruffled shells"--and my brain immediately went "Levinson family silver, part of Cora's dowry" and sure enough it was American, circa 1891

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Reading the second good fanfic I've found that really reckons with Cora's Jewishness. I'm studying their approaches as much as I'm studying actual primary sources and, like, my grandparents' antiques atelier and my own firsthand knowledge of assimilated upwardly mobile American Judaism for inspiration

UPD: THEY WOULD NOT USE HEBREW TERMS FOR GRANDPARENTS AS A SECOND-GEN GERMAN JEWISH FAMILY IN CINCINNATI CIRCA 1891, STOP LETTING THOSE CONVENTIONS SATURATE YOUR FICTION, CORA LEVINSON WOULD NOT FUCKING SAY SABA OR SAVTA

UPD 2: Rage quit this fanfiction because the imposition of Hebrew usages like this on a past context where they weren't present, even if unintentional mistake by the author, is a kind of reifying Zionist backshadowing that makes me fucking insane

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Took a weed gummy for my leg pain and a Downton dinner scene gave me an idea by association for the Yung Cora Levinson Fanfiction (Thanksgiving/Passover, highly specific interiors, dark walnut and Persian rugs and cut crystal and china service with silver cutlery)

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The source material I was given:

The research I am doing about it:

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And that's how you do Violet Crawley subtle understated antisemitism by showing not telling in prequel fanfiction!!! 😤

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They had a wedding dress from 1880s Cleveland on Antiques Roadshow and I've been doing so much obsessive concentrated research for Yung Cora Levinson Fanfiction that I immediately clocked it as a wedding dress from Cleveland circa the 1880s

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Yes...YES

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I love to have autism I was reading a paper about German Jewish economic advancement in Cincinnati between 1840 and 1875 at the register and a customer came in with the surname Levinson (we search co-op members by surname in our system because they're entitled to discounts, store credit, etc.) and I said "oh! That's the protagonist's last name in the story I'm writing!" and he was delighted and said to name one of Cora's relatives after him lmao. I did not disclose that it was Downton Abbey fanfiction

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"And your mother never considered converting?"

"I don't think so."

"Was it difficult, having a different religion from your father's?"

"Mm, not that I recall."

"But you're not ashamed of him."

"Lord Sinderby, I would point out that WE never changed our name!"

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Reading Edith Wharton because I'm relying on memories of my grandma's antiques atelier for Gilded Age/Edwardian design (malachite, buhl, those barrel-shaped chinoiserie ceramic stools, Louis Napoleon-era micromosaics, bronze busts, cameos of the children, particular textures of carpet and upholstery, particular stains to the wood, etc.), but nobody DESCRIBES those interiors like Wharton, and I want to evoke her language when I write about the Levinson house

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I get so much secondhand embarrassment from these American Jewish culture industry op-eds published when Downton was airing, mostly because it's mortifying to admit my preoccupation with the same questions

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Robin's egg blue tea gown from 1889? Oh you know that is newlywed Cora Crawley honeymoon core

House of Worth 1880s deep navy blue floral-print high bustle gown with a waterfall front and goldenrod accents? Oh you know that is Cora Levinson's debut season core

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Delighted when my friends pick up what I'm putting down re: what's so funny about Downton Abbey's approach to Jewishness and then riff on it

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If you retcon this a little bit to the previous decade then you can imagine Cora Levinson wore it to her first season in London circa 1888

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Lady Sisyphus is a Downton fanfiction par excellence for many reasons, but its attention to historical detail is breathtaking--e.g., Cora's father sends her to London in 1888 with a resplendent-to-the-point-of-gaudiness sapphire necklace, "subtly" advertising the family's wealth, and of course the color would complement her eyes, but it's also period-accurate to the fashion for sapphires as status symbol after companies began mining that unusually pristine deposit in Kashmir circa 1880. Sorry I'm watching a Vermont episode of Antiques Roadshow and it reminded me of the 1880 Kashmir landslide and how popularly sapphires figured in late Victorian/early Edwardian jewelry