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.

The Bell Pull

HLATC 1999.7.4

While we are primarily a "flat" textile collection (few garments) we do have our fair share of three dimensional objects. Most are tools used in creating textiles or they are objects which a textile is a part of, such as this Victorian bell pull, HLATC 1999.7.4. It was evident as soon as this piece came out of storage that it was going to need more than tissue paper padding to pack it safely. The bell pull was a packing challenge with its delicate, beaded textile element combined with very heavy and fairly sharp edged cast bronze pieces at either end.



To protect the textile from the metal, our first step was to pad out the spaces between the bronze ends and the textile with pieces of ethafoam wrapped in tissue. We used the ethafoam instead of just straight tissue pillows because the heavy, sharp edges would have torn through just tissue.



Next, we needed to immobilize the heavy bronze ends. This was done by placing the entire piece onto a piece of coroplast which had been cut to the exact size of the box it was to fit into. Slits had been cut in predetermind spots allowing us to thread cotton twill tape through them. A trusty paperclip worked beautifully for threading the twill tape through the slits.



The cotton twill tape was used to tie down the bronze ends, securing them to the board.







A layer of padding beneath the entire piece and a layer of padding covering it were all tied into place and voila! Our immobilized bell pull is ready for its box.