Rolled Textiles

As you can tell from my less frequent posts, things are really getting busy around here! Prep work has begun for moving approximately 1,500 rolled textiles that are currently stored within cabinets. Here you can see Rich and Matt from C. Coakley working in storage.




The plan is to secure all of the rolled pieces onto their current storage racks and move the racks intact. First, those red plastic caps are inserted into the ends of the rods, eliminating the little bit of space between the rod and the bracket, so now it fits very snugly. Cable ties then secure the rod onto its brackets and the brackets onto the frame.



There are also "bumpers" being created from archival storage tubes cut to specific sizes. Those will be placed between the rolled textiles and the ends of the rod, eliminating any horizontal movement of the textiles. The racks will then be slid onto custom created rolling carts for transport. Once the cabinets are reinstalled into our new storage space, the racks will slide right back into their cabinets. Pretty creative, eh?

Opera quilt

HLATC E1242A, Opera quilt, France, 1897-1900


Intricately embroidered vignettes decorate the front of this European bedspread, which dates to the turn of the 19th century. The amazingly detailed embroidery is credited to the hands of six French nuns, who worked diligently on the piece for three years. The level of detail is so fine that a few of the embroidered women are actually wearing real beaded necklaces.

This impressively sized bedspread (10 ft x 9 ft) is called an Opera Quilt because the scenes depicted on it are from operas playing around the time the quilt was made. The six operas represented: Boheme-1896, Manon-1884, Aida-1871, Cavall Rustice-1890 (Cavalieria Rusticana), Tosca-1900, and Strategia Damore-1896. The images used for the opera 'Tosca' were copied from a series of promotional postcards printed in Italy, probably the year of the premier, 1900. It is likely the other images are also copied from similar postcards.

The quilt is said to have won first prize at the World's Fair in Paris in November of 1900. This gives us some insight into the year the piece was created, as we know that it was finished no later than 1900. Also, since the opera Tosca did not premier until the year 1900, it is likely the quilt was begun earlier and the last vignette added was of Tosca, in 1900.

Archaeological Textiles

WFSA3091, Chancay, Peru, 1100-1400A.D.

These incredible archaeological textiles from Peru are among the oldest pieces in the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection. The fragment shown above, WFSA3091, is absolutely breathtaking in person. The image has not been enhanced in any way, this is the true color of the textile. Dating to between 1100-1400A.D., this slit tapestry weave fragment was woven on a backstrap loom, likely by a member of the Chancay culture in the Central Coast area of Peru. Textiles are among the most fragile of artifacts, making it truly remarkable for pieces this old to have even survived, much less retained the vibrant colors of their natural dyes.


WFAS3091 detail


WFAS 3091 detail


WFSA1848, Peru, 1000-1476A.D.


1996.1.2, Paracas, Peru, 600B.C-200A.D.


WFSA3094, Chancay, Peru, 1000-1476A.D.

In the eighties

If only I was talking about the weather. Fall has descended here in the Midwest, which means it is 50 degrees and raining. It also means we have almost arrived at our big move date! The collection is now eighty percent packed. EIGHTY!! This is great news. And secretly (or not so secretly, since I'm posting it on a blog) we are actually further ahead than the numbers indicate. You might remember from my previous post that we have a significant number of rolled textiles that will not be boxed and therefore aren't being counted in our tallies. So, our progress is actually closer to 90%. Add in the handful of pieces that we are having custom boxes and/or crates built for by fine arts shippers and my goodness we're just about done! Ofcourse, it is always that last 10% that seems to take the longest, so we're not claiming victory just yet.

Here you can see Tara working with some of the rolled textiles that will actually be boxed. We are sorting them by size to make securing them within a box a little easier.

Supplies & Resources

Packing 13,000 textiles takes A LOT of supplies. To date we have used hundreds and hundreds of archival boxes in addition to thousands of sheets of acid free tissue. Tyvek, muslin, twill tape, coroplast, ethafoam, and many others have also made appearances in this packing show. Gaylord Brothers, an archival materials supplier, has been our source for all of our packing materials. If you ever need a large quantity of supplies, I highly recommend contacting their bids department. They eliminated the need to shop around for the best price on every single supply and having a great account representative has made the ordering process a breeze. Less time spent on purchasing leaves me more time to spend on packing and that's a very good thing. Many thanks to Michelle from Gaylord!

Recently, I searched for resources discussing appropriate materials to be used when packing artifacts, so I could share them with members of our move team. This online publication from the Canadian Conservation Institute is really great as is this list of materials from PACIN: the Packing, Art Handling, and Crating Information Network.

Bonnie Cashin Pink Leather Coat

While packing some of our costume collection this past week, Laura noticed some debris in the pocket of the piece she was working with. Upon further inspection, we discovered it was tobacco left behind by the previous owner/wearer. The tobacco had likely been in the pocket for over 30 years! The piece was isolated from the Collection while we inspected it for any signs of insect infestation. After determining that there were no insects, the tobacco and a few scraps of cigarette packaging were cleaned off of the piece.

The coat, HLATC BCC27, is a pink leather Bonnie Cashin design created in collaboration with Philip Sills. Bonnie was an American designer, well known for her work for Coach, where she introduced the metal fasteners which you often associate with Coach products. You can see examples of the metal hardware she is so well known for on this jacket, which dates to the 1970s. Learn a little more about Bonnie in this great post on the FIDM museum blog.

Hattie Carnegie Hat

HLATC 1991.22.8
How does one store a feather hat? In this case, the hat, HLATC 1991.22.8, is a 1950s hat from milliner and fashion designer Hattie Carnegie. The feathered brim makes storing the hat especially problematic.

This hat is often chosen by our 3D patternmaking class for analysis of its form and construction. Considering its relatively frequent handling, we wanted to create a storage method that would allow us to pull the hat from its storage cabinet and display it, all without having to actually touch the piece. We museum people love that sort of thing.

Tara Genske was up for this challenge and the hat become her project. Instead of ordering a custom sized box for this piece, she worked a little magic on an existing one. Since the box needed to be extra deep, Tara extended the height of the sides with pieces of archival board.



The next obstacle was what the hat would sit on. It needed to be elevated high enough to keep the feathers from touching anything, but not so high that it was unstable. Using muslin and blocks of ethafoam Tara constructed a hat stand which was attached to a piece of coroplast board cut to the size of the box bottom.



One layer of coroplast board ended up not being sturdy enough for the weight of the piece, so she used two with a another piece of sturdier board sandwiched in the middle. Tara finished off the coroplast platform by threading loops through each side for handles.



Now when the piece needs to be displayed for a class, we simply use the handles to pull the entire tray out of the box, never having to touch the hat. We imagine all those little feathers are thanking us.