Museums, textile conservation

Saltzman, M. "Analysis of Dyes in Museum extiles" or "You Can t Tell a Dye by Its Color", in Textile Conservation Symposium in Honor of Pat Reeves McLean, C.C., Connell, P., Ed. The Conservation Center, Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, Calif., 1986, pp. 27-39. 

I am indebted to James W. Rice, Chemist Consultant, Textile Museum, and Joseph V. Columbus, Conservator, National Gallery of Art, both in Washington, D. C., for their long-time guidance and assistance in textile conservation. My thanks also go to Susan Gould for her valuable editorial work on my manuscript. 

Textile Conservation for Period Room Settings in Museums and Historic Houses... 

This investigation was supported in part by the National Museum Act, which is administered by the Smithsonian Institution. We are grateful for this assistance. We also express our gratitude to Katherine Dirks of the National Museum of American History for providing historical fabrics from their study collection and to Francesco Pertegato, Textile Conservator at the Museo Poldi-Pezzoli, Milan, Italy, for providing yarn samples from a 16th-century Flemish tapestry. 

Bogle, M. M. The Deterioration of Silks Through Artificial Weighting Textile Conservation Center Notes, No. 11 Merrimack Valley Textile Museum North Andover, MA, 1979. 

Notes of interview with George Colman by Margaret Fikioris (July 9, 1984) on file in the Textile Conservator s Office. George B. Colman. formerly Supervisor, Mechanical Maintenance and Fire Marshall, worked at Winterthur from 1938 to 1942 and then from 1946 to 1983. He was in charge of the textile changes in the early years of the museum. 

Notes of interview with John Sweeney by Margaret Fikioris (March 2,1983) on file in the Textile Conservator s Office. John A. H. Sweeney was in the first class of fellows in the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture. He wrote Winterthur Illustrated (A Winterthur Book, 1963), the first comprehensive guide to the collection. He was Curator of the museum from 1960 to 1965, Deputy Director from 1966 to 1967, and then Senior Deputy Director for the Collections and Interpretations from 1968 to 1974. He served as Coordinator of Research from 1975 to 1979 and then became Assistant to the Director in 1979 to the present. 

Notes of interview with Everett Boyce by Margaret Fikioris (February 17, 1983) on file in the Textile Conservator s Office. Everett M. Boyce is currently Supervisor, Museum Services Section. He has worked at Winterthur since 1948. He became Supervisor, Cleaning Maintenance in 1964 and has remained in charge of the cleaning of period rooms since that time. 

As mentioned earlier, any information obtained from the artifacts of a preliterate society helps us to understand them. There is another very important reason to determine the nature of the dyes used in museum textiles. This applies particularly to textiles which are to be exhibited. Thanks to the work of Padfield and Landi (15), we have a reasonable amount of information about the lightfastness of natural dyes. With some exceptions, indigo, madder, and cochineal are the most important they have relatively poor lightfastness. We shall have to determine the fastness of the yarns dyed from Peruvian plants. When we know these facts, we can then help the curator or conservator to make decisions regarding exhibition, lighting, conditions of storage, and safety of conservation treatments. 

Kerr, N. and Batcheller, J. (1993). Degradation of polyurethanes in 20th-century museum textiles. In Postprints of Saving the Twentieth Century The Conservation of Modem Maierials Ottawa, 15-20 September 1991 (D. Grattan, ed.), pp. 189-206. Canadian Conservation Institute. 

Kite, M., 2010. Modem textile conservation at the Victoria and Albert Museum roots, evolution and rapid changes. In Ewer, P., Leonard, F. (Eds.), Textile Conservation Advances in Practice. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, pp. 30-36. 

Blum, D. (1996). Adhesives in textile conservation an evaluation of past and present uses. In Textile treatments revisited Harpers Ferry Regional Textile Group 8th symposium November 6-7, 1986 (pp. 102-103). National Museum of American History. 

Hofenk de Graff, J. H. and W. G. T. Roelofs (1978), The analysis of flavonoids in natural yellow dyestuffs occurring in ancient textiles, Proc. bit. Council of Museums Committee for Conservation, 5th Trienial Mtg., Zagreb. 

M. Trojanowicz, J. Orska Gawrys, I. Surowiec, B. Szostek, K. Urbaniak Walczak, J. Kehl and M. Wrobel, Chromatographic investigation of dyes extracted from Coptic textiles from the National Museum in Warsaw, Stud. Conserv., 49, 115 130 (2004). 

Meredith Montague, Assistant Conservator, Materials Conservation Laboratory, Texas Memorial Museum, carried out the replication of the experiments done with the vacuum suction table, and completed the treatment of the unnumbered tapa from the University s Department of Textiles and Clothing. 

BASF AkticngeseUschaft, 188 Carnegie-Mellon University, 54 Clemson University, 13 Getty Conservation Institute, 108 Library of Congress, 63 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 134 North Carolina State University, 94 Textile Museum, 168 The British Library, 34... 

Today, instead of the Japanese rice past method, I am using the vacuum hot table (2) with a heat-activated adhesive, which is also harmless and reversible. I am stressing here the use of the vacuum hot table in the treatment of textiles as it is a fairly recent technique for us. The vacuum hot table was designed for painting conservators and used by them in re-lining old paintings. The first published account I know of in the use of this table for textiles is by Sheila Landi (3) of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Another reference is by Kathryn Scott... 

NEDCC is located in Abbot Hall on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. It is the only regional center in the country specifically oriented to conservation of library and archival materials as opposed to museum collections. Having begun life in the basement of the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum, we are pleased that we now have windows on all four sides. We have a large, spacious paper conservation laboratory, and specialized equipment such as our Israeli-made leaf caster. This is used to fill losses in book pages or documents and to reinforce crumbled edges. 

Curators, collectors, and conservators need to be on constant guard against acidic tissue paper that has discolored with age. Textiles stored with highly acid tissue papers also will become discolored with time. There are acid-free and alkaline-buffered tissue papers commercially available through archival paper and supply firms. In the last several years, paper companies have become aware of the needs of historic textiles and costume departments in museums, historical societies, and universities and are placing into production acid-free rolling tubes, tissue paper, and storage boxes for costumes and accessories. 

References in general entomology usually include insects specific to fabrics and paper, although the special concerns of museum or historic conservation, older materials and natural dyestuffs, usually are not considered. A comprehensive analysis of the complete insect-related problem, including fumigation and control of textile pests, is available in Ebeling (9), or in an earlier treatise by Mallis (10). 

In gathering material for this article, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to all those individuals who kindly shared their knowledge of Henry Francis du Pont and Winterthur as it developed over the years, especially John Sweeney, George Colman, Everett Boyce, Charles Hummel, Mrs. Edmond du Pont, and Mrs. Leslie Potts. Also I would like to acknowledge the kind assistance of Barbara Hearn, former Museum Archivist Paul Hensley, current Museum Archivist Catherine Hutchins, Associate Editor, Publications Office Ann Clapp, former Paper Conservator Joyce Hill Stoner, Director, Winterthur-University of Delaware Program in Conservation of Artistic and Historic Objects and Mrs. Charles Montgomery, former Assistant Curator of Textiles. 

Long term burial of artifacts recovered in archaeological excavations often leads to friability, salt encrustation, physical damage, and severe corrosion. Field conservation is limited to such measures as are required to preserve the artifact until it may receive the attention of specialists in the museum laboratory. Typical conservation treatments for textiles, waterlogged wood, bone and ivory, cuneiform tablets, and cast and wrought marine iron are reviewed with particular emphasis on the effects such treatments may have on the subsequent technical examination of the artifact. 

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