Museum Textile Services
  • About MTS
    • Our Team
    • Contact
    • Client List
    • Press Room
  • Textile Conservation
    • Architectural Interiors
    • Asian Art
    • Ethnographic Textiles
    • Flags & Banners
    • Historic Clothing
    • Quilts and Coverlets
    • Samplers & Embroideries
    • Sports Memorabilia
    • Tapestries
  • Collections Care
    • Vac & Pack
    • Surveys
    • Disaster Response
  • Education
    • LL
    • Porto
    • C3 >
      • C3 readings
    • HPRH
    • Becoming a Textile Conservator
  • Resources
    • MTS Magazine
    • Textile Conservation Basics
    • Textile Stabilization
    • Textile Storage
    • Displaying Historic Costume
    • Displaying Flat Textiles
    • Museum Pests
    • Disaster Response
    • Advanced Topics
    • Class Readings
    • Staff Publications
    • Resources in Spanish
    • MTS Videos and Slide Shows
  • Blog
  • Andover Figures™
    • Our Mission
    • The Andover Figures System
    • Choosing a Form
    • Purchasing Andover Figures
    • AF Contact Form

Brilliant and Gleaming: Egungun Costumes from Benin

6/6/2016

0 Comments

 
​While we make Andover Figures manikins at Museum Textile Services for a variety of historic costume, some garments require an entirely different approach. One look at this large, heavy, beautiful, and multi-material African costume confirms its special display needs. Called an Egun, the bright and visually energetic costume was commissioned in 2015 for the permanent collection at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. After surface cleaning and documenting this complicated garment, our challenge was to make a safe and sturdy storage/exhibition mount. 
Picture
Costume partially installed on its custom-made display/storage mount. Photo courtesy of Wheaton College.
​Egungun are costumes worn in masquerades, religious festivals, and funeral services in Yoruba culture. The Wheaton Egun was made in Benin specifically for the college's permanent collection, but many West African countries produce similar masquerade and religious garments. Seeing this type of costume in motion is really the best way to understand how it works. Around minute 1:45 of the video below, you can see the first of many Benin Egun of similar construction to the one we recently conserved.
The dancing of the performers is particularly impressive considering these richly decorated garments weigh about 60 pounds. As seen in the video, the performer looks through a loosely woven mesh, covered by cowrie shells, and each costume is decorated and constructed in a unique hand-crafted fashion. The wearer’s entire body is covered during the performance. The under-garment of the Wheaton Egun is a deep indigo blue jumpsuit that covers the performer from the head to the fingertips and down over the toes. A pair of matched decorated shoes completes the costume. Looking out from under the hanging panels at the top is a stylized wooden face, painted bright yellow. 
Conservators Camille Breeze, Morgan Carbone, Megan Creamer and Cara Jordan built a custom mount that resembles a small table inside a plastic crate. Due to space limitations, the mount measures just 55 inches tall--shorter than the dancer who wore it. Made of poplar plywood wood wrapped in Tyvek, the galvanized reinforcements and bolts allow the mount to be easily disassembled, or affixed to a platform for exhibition. Two Ethafoam crescents on top of the mount cushion and balance the heavy wooden disk, much as it would have been balanced on a dancer's back or head. The costume has nearly two dozen fabric panels, each of which we padded with archival polyfelt and rolled to fit on the base of the mount. The enclosure consists of corrugated polypropylene panels connected to the base with Velcro, and a removable Tyvek cover. The base of the mount is bolted to a dolly for easier transport. 

​For more historic context, take a look at the historic visual culture of Benin and much older Egungun costumes in the online collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. 

​
Picture
Megan Mary Creamer, Technician, has a BFA in industrial design from Massachusetts College of Art, and has an ALM in museum studies at Harvard University Extension School. She joined MTS as an intern in 2014.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    MTS Blog

    Want Answers?

    Get the Blog

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Abigail Brooks Adams
    Adams National Historical Park
    Admiral Perry
    AFL
    Africa
    American Institute For Conservation
    Amherst College
    Andover Figures
    Armor
    Arts And Crafts Movement
    Assuit
    Awvs
    Ballardvale
    Ballard Vale Mills
    Bamboo
    Banner
    Banshou In Temple
    Baseball
    Bed Hangings
    Bicorn
    Bleach
    Bombing
    Boning
    Books
    Boston
    Boston College
    Boston Marathon
    Boston Strong
    Brooks Brothers
    Bulldog
    Burnham
    Button
    Buttonwoods Museum
    Campbell Center
    Casablanca
    Chinese
    Christening Gown
    Christmas
    Civil War
    Cloak
    Cold Water Army
    Colonial Dames
    Concealed Objects
    Concord
    Copley Square
    Corset
    Costume
    Cotton
    Cotton Net
    Coverlet
    Crewel
    Crochet
    Digitally Printed Textiles
    Display
    Dog
    Dress Form
    Duchesse De Choiseul
    Echo Lake Aquarium
    Education
    Egypt
    E Magazine
    E-Magazine
    Embroidery
    English
    Ethafoam
    Exhibition
    Exhibits
    Fairbanks House
    Fancy Dress
    Farnsworth Museum Of Art
    Father Diman
    Featherbone
    Felting
    Filet Darning
    Fire
    Flag
    Flags
    Folly Cove
    Frame
    Framing
    France
    Ft. Knox
    Fur
    Furniture
    George Patton
    Gore Tex
    Gore-tex
    Handsome Dan
    Hat
    Henry Adams
    Hermansville
    Higgins Armory Museum
    Historic Replica
    Hitchcock
    Hockey
    Honest Marketing Revolution
    Hooked Rug
    Hopedale
    Huaca Malena Museum
    Infestation
    Insects
    Installation
    Intern Ryan
    Internship
    Ixl Museum
    Japan
    Jifu
    Journeymen Tailors Union
    Judaica
    King Louis
    Knitting
    Ky
    Lacquer
    Laundry Bluing
    League Of Their Own
    Leipzig
    Lily Yeats
    Ma
    Mannequin
    Marines
    Mary Baker Eddy
    Mascot
    Massachusetts
    Mead Art Museum
    Middlesex School
    Military
    Mold
    Mon
    Monuments Men
    Moths
    Mourning Wmbroidery
    Moving Messages
    Natural Sciences
    Navy
    Nazi
    Needlecraft Magazine
    Negro League Baseball
    Nema
    New England Museum Association
    New Hampshire
    New Hampshire Historical Society
    News
    Oberlin College
    Olympets
    Olympics
    Painted Textile
    Painting
    Peabody Historical Society
    Peace Flag
    Peru
    Pests
    Phillips Academy
    Presidential Seal
    Quilts
    Rayon
    Religious Textiles
    Restoration
    Reverse Painted Glass
    Robe
    Rug
    Sack Suit
    Salescaster Inc
    Sampler
    Samurai
    Self Portrait
    Shaker
    Shakespeare's Tomb
    Shawl
    Sheer Overlays
    Shelburne Farms
    Sign
    Silk
    So Clan
    Sodium Borohydride
    Softball
    Soot
    Sports Uniforms
    Stays
    St. George's School
    Storage
    Study Collection
    Swatch Book
    Synthetics
    Tapestry
    Textile Conservation
    Textile Manufacture
    Textiles
    Thangka
    Trapunto
    Trustworth Studios
    Tru-Vue Optium
    Tsushima
    Uniform
    Uniforms
    Union Railroad Station
    Velour
    Versailles
    Vietnam War
    Waves
    Wedding Dress
    Western Task Force
    Wheaton College
    Will "Cannonball" Jackman
    Wisconsin Land Lumber Co.
    Women
    World War One
    World War Two
    Yale
    Yarn

Join Our Mailing List

Picture

Museum Textile Services, LLC

P.O. Box 5004
Andover, MA 01810
admin@museumtextiles.com
​
978.474.9200
  • About MTS
    • Our Team
    • Contact
    • Client List
    • Press Room
  • Textile Conservation
    • Architectural Interiors
    • Asian Art
    • Ethnographic Textiles
    • Flags & Banners
    • Historic Clothing
    • Quilts and Coverlets
    • Samplers & Embroideries
    • Sports Memorabilia
    • Tapestries
  • Collections Care
    • Vac & Pack
    • Surveys
    • Disaster Response
  • Education
    • LL
    • Porto
    • C3 >
      • C3 readings
    • HPRH
    • Becoming a Textile Conservator
  • Resources
    • MTS Magazine
    • Textile Conservation Basics
    • Textile Stabilization
    • Textile Storage
    • Displaying Historic Costume
    • Displaying Flat Textiles
    • Museum Pests
    • Disaster Response
    • Advanced Topics
    • Class Readings
    • Staff Publications
    • Resources in Spanish
    • MTS Videos and Slide Shows
  • Blog
  • Andover Figures™
    • Our Mission
    • The Andover Figures System
    • Choosing a Form
    • Purchasing Andover Figures
    • AF Contact Form