Category: Exhibition

Camille Myers Breeze returns to teach at the Campbell Center

8/13/2014

Camille Myers Breeze returns to the Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies on September 22-24 to teach Textile Stabilization Using Sheer Overlays. Camille has been an instructor for the Campbell Center since 2012.

Conservators employ three main types of sheer overlay to stabilize deteriorated textiles: net, silk sheer, and synthetic sheer. Each material has its pros and cons including cost, availability, invisibility, ease of use, and archival stability. The benefit of any sheer overlay is that it provides immediate stabilization as well as preventative protection.

Participants will learn how to use all three of these sheer materials and, more importantly, how to determine which overlay is best for a given situation. You may choose to bring your own clean, pest-free textile that is quilt sized or smaller. This workshop is intended for people with excellent hand skills and experience working with museum artifacts. Non textile-specialists and students at the beginning of their conservation training are encouraged to attend.

The tuition and materials fee for this class is $880. This class is held at the beautiful Campbell Center campus in Mount Carroll, IL. Students may apply credits from this class toward Specialty Track certification in Textiles. To register, visit the Campbell Center web page at www.campbellcenter.org.

For more information about this workshop, please contact Camille Myers Breeze. Read about the other educational opportunities with Museum Textile Services in the Outreach section of our web page.

Camille Myers Breeze founded Museum Textile services in 1999. She is a prolific author, and educator of museum personnel and emerging conservation professionals in the US and abroad.

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Patton's Pride

4/8/2013

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By Courtney Jason

On December 10, 2012, a shipment of 20 flags arrived at the MTS from Fort Knox, KY. These flags have a particularly interesting history, as many hail from the personal collection of General George Patton. They belong to the General George Patton Museum of Leadership, which is undergoing a major renovation and reinterpretation.

Camille Myers Breeze examining the Nazi flag on site at the Patton Museum in September, 2012. Image courtesy of the General George Patton Museum of Leadership.

The Ft. Knox flags range from a 11.5" x 17" Confederate Calvary guide on to an 80" x 130" Nazi flag. The collection also includes several WWII Army flags, and a North Vietnamese flag that was recovered from a booby-trapped location. The collection is here to be cleaned, stabilized and mounted for display when the Patton Museum reopens later this year.

Gen. Patton wrote on many of his flags. This note explains that this is the first Nazi flag ever captured by US forces, on Nov 11, 1942. Image courtesy of the General George Patton Museum of Leadership.

So far we have vacuumed the flags with a HEPA filtering vacuum to remove any particulate matter. Next we will humidify those with planar distortions using the Gore-Tex system described in a previous blog about the Orra White Hitchcock textiles from Amherst College.

This two-star flag bears the initials of the Western Task Force. Wrinkles and folds will be relaxed using the Gore-Tex humidification system. Image courtesy of the General George Patton Museum of Leadership.

The majority of the flags will be mounted on aluminum solid-support panels manufactured for us by Small Corp, Inc in Greenfield, MA. Each panel will have a layer of 1/4-inch Polyfelt from University Products in Holyoke, MA, covered with khaki-colored cotton poplin from Phillips-Boyne in Farmingdale, NY.

Gen. Patton's inscription on the WTF flag, stating that it landed with him on Nov 8, 1942. Image courtesy of the General George Patton Museum of Leadership.

All of the flags except for the Nazi flag will be pressure mounted on a solid-support panel. They will be centered on the panel and hand stitched to the cotton using a curved needle. Only minimal stitching around the perimeter, along several strategic points in the body, and along the fringe, is required.

The Second Corps Flag has a heavy bullion fringe that will require thorough stitching before pressure mounting. Image courtesy of the General George Patton Museum of Leadership.

A sheet of UV-filtering acrylic will provide the rest of the support for the mount. The museum has chosen Small Corp's powder-coated aluminum frames to complete the mount system. The first batch of eight flags will undergo this process through mid to late April, before being shipped back in early May by US Art of Randolph, MA.

Gen. Patton wrote "II Corps Tunesia 43" on the hoist binding of this flag. Image courtesy of the General George Patton Museum of Leadership.

The Nazi flag will receive a different treatment due to its large size. A future blog will highlight this highly-technical process. We hope you're looking forward to seeing more of these flags as much as we're looking forward to working on them.

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Displaying Textiles

1/28/2013

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By Camille Myers Breeze

The latest in our series of MTS Handouts is called Displaying Textiles, and is designed to help you choose the best locations and methods for displaying your textiles.

By the time you see visible changes, such as color fading, yellowing, tears, or insect activity, your textile has already been irreversibly damaged. Continuing to display a textile under poor display conditions will accelerate deterioration and shorten the textile’s useful and/or decorative lifespan. Having a textile conservator stabilize the textile can allow it to be displayed again, but only if sensible precautions are taken.

Displaying a framed textile in an area of low or indirect light is not enough to protect it from light damage. Photo courtesy of the Fairbanks House, Dedham, MA.

Displaying a textile in a frame with no glazing, or with non-filtering glazing, is harmful to the textile. Anything framed prior to the 1980s will have plain glass or acrylic with no ultraviolet-filtering capacities. All framed textiles should be retrofitted with UV-filtering glazing or stored safely. Even with UV-filtered glazing, a framed textile can be harmed by light, particularly sunlight, which heats up the fibers causing harmful expansion and contraction.

The best place in your home for a framed textile is an interior wall that receives little or no light, such as a hallway.

Tapestries, quilts, and other large, flat textiles, can be safely displayed on a wall without a display case if the conditions in the room are suitable. Once a safe location has been determined to hang your flat textile, a conservator can provide a Velcro hanging system. Ideally, two textiles, such as two similarly-sized quilts, will be rotated to allow each one six months on display followed by six months in an archival storage box kept in a safe location.

Upgrading to a display case made of UV-filtering acrylin can allow for longer-term, safe textile display.

For more information about this important subject, read the entire Displaying Textiles Handout, which is available with all of our free handouts in the resources section of the MTS website.

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Project EXHIBIT!

12/3/2012

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by Camille Myers Breeze

For nearly a week, the Beard & Weil Galleries at Wheaton College in Norton, MA, was the scene of great collaboration and ingenuity as students of ARTH 335 Exhibition Design installed their Fall 2012 show, "100 Years 100 Objects." The exhibit showcases an object for each of the 100 years since Wheaton Female Seminary became Wheaton College.

"100 Years 100 Objects" will be on display December 3, 2012, through February 15, 2013.

Camille Breeze was hired to participate in two days of teaching and exhibit prep thanks to funding from the Art/Art History Department and the Evelyn Danzig Haas '39 Visiting Artist Program. After a short presentation about careers in conservation, Camille broke students into teams according to what remained to be done to install a pair of priceless textiles conserved by MTS.

Pair of Buddhist scrolls, conserved with assistance of Wheaton College interns Michelle Drummey and Gabrielle Ferreira in summer 2012, were already hanging when Camille arrived.

The first team underwent the final framing of a silk embroidery depicting "Hagar and Ishmael are Cast Out by Abraham" (Genesis Chapter XXI), by Eliza Wheaton Strong (1795-1834). This exquisite textile is very fragile but together the team cleaned the framing materials, placed the embroidery behind the custom mat, and backed the new frame with Marvelseal before hanging it in the gallery.

Upon Eliza Wheaton Strong's death, family members established Wheaton Female Seminary, which later became Wheaton College.

The remaining student teams addressed tasks related to the mounting of the c 1780 costume of the Duchesse de Choiseul, which had been conserved at Museum Textile Services in 2012. You can read about this project in intern Gabrielle Ferreira's first and second blogs.

Josephine Johnson '13.

The bust of the custom manikin was covered with show fabric by senior Josephine Johnson, who is planning for a career in conservation. The base for the manikin was assembled by a team including senior Morgan Bakerman, who is writing her thesis about the dress.

A third team addresses the skirt support, which originally was accomplished with rigid paniers. Students started with a replica of the skirt made by Cara Jordan from cotton muslin. Next, they machine sewed 3-inch twill tape in two rows across the skirt and threaded flexible polypropylene tubing through the channel. The tubing provided the shape of the paniers, and additional pieces of twill tape tied across the underside created the correct, flat silhouette.

Camille Breeze models the paniers after final touches were made by students.

During the final push on Saturday afternoon, the base was attached to the exhibit platform, the manikin bust was installed, the paniers were tied to the manikin, and finally the costume was dressed.

The costume of the Duchesse de Choiseul, c 1780.

Working with an academic institution like Wheaton College is one our favorite jobs at Museum Textile Services. Many thanks go out to Leah Niederstadt, Museum Studies Professor and Curator of the Permanent Collection, and Zeph Stickney, Archivist and Special Collections Curator, for asking Camille to help in this intense and rewarding project.

Leah Niederstadt and Zeph Stickney editing label copy written with the help of students.

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2012 NEMA Conference

11/13/2012

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By Camille Myers Breeze

Burlington, Vermont, was the scene of the 2012 New England Museum Association conference, where five MTS staff members, and many former staff, gathered last week.

In the very first session time slot, Camille and Cara joined other conservators in presenting "Condition Reporting Meets Speed Dating." For 90 minutes, attendees traveled from table to table spending 10 minutes learning about condition reporting different artifact types. Our presentation on Condition Reporting Textiles, is available as a short slide show in the Resources section of our web site.

Camille visits the University Products booth where Pat Foster and John Dunphy held down the fort.

With our speaking responsibilities out of the way early, we relaxed and took in several sessions on topics as diverse as working with university museums, crafting a collections management policy, and social media marketing (we're way ahead of the curve on that one thanks to Erica Holthausen and Honest Marketing Revolution!)

Cara and Camille horsed around at Shelburne Farms. There was free cheese, of course.

There was plenty of time to sit back and enjoy the local museums, restaurants and breweries. ECHO Lake Aquarium was the sight of the opening reception, where we petted star fish and chatted with colleagues. Our newest hire, Operations Manager Andy Grilz, proved to be a huge asset in the trivia game! The following day, Camille and Cara visited Shelburne Farms a 1,400-acre working farm and nonprofit education organization. We learned they also have an inn and restaurant, which is just the excuse we need to return to Burlington in the near future.

Courtney waiting for a chance to hold the jousting lance.

The most entertaining session we attended was probably "Cats & Dogs Living Together: Exhibit Design as a Collaboration between Educators & Curators," presented by Curator Jeffrey Forgang and Education Director Devon Kurtz of the Higgins Armory Museum. Suffice to say we we're considering a holiday field trip to see their interactive exhibit, Extreme Sports: The Joust.

If you weren't fortunate enough to attend the NEMA conference, you can still access the handouts by downloading the NEMA Conference App from the NEMA website. We hope to see you at the 2013 NEMA conference in Newport, Rhode Island!

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Mannequin Madness!

9/10/2012

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by Camille Myers Breeze

There are many times when conservators feel like we are doing the same thing over and over again. Fortunately, most of us like this repetition, or else we wouldn't be happy conservators. In 2012, the thing we have found ourselves doing again and again at Museum Textile Services is making mannequins.

Although there are wonderful suppliers of archival mannequins for the museum world, our clients sometimes require a custom form. Other times, we can save a client money by constructing their mannequin ourselves.

The MTS website has lots of resources for those of you who are in the position of making a mannequin or retrofitting a dress form for museum use. The first of these is Customizing Mannequins. It walks you through some of the considerations when using an existing form to make a safe mount for historic costume.

A more detailed set of instructions on using existing forms for safe costume display is Retrofitting Dress Forms. This handout also touches on the topic of which historic under-garments should never be used and what supplies you should have on hand when mounting a costume exhibit. In response to questions from clients who were using T-bars to display clothes, we created a handout about Building T-Bar Supports.

For the more experienced costume mounters, Museum Textile Services has a new handout available on our website entitled Making Ethafoam Disk Mannequins. This is meant to be used in conjunction with the Polly Willman mannequin-making system, which results in a series of measured disks that are stacked and fine tuned to form an archival dress form. Polly Willman's Ethafoam "Disk" Form instructions are also available, with her generous permission, for those who have not trained with her.

Before you attempt any of the mounting solutions presented in these handouts, please make sure that the items you are mounting are good candidates for exhibition. Consult a textile conservator prior to beginning if you have any questions.

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Camille Myers Breeze returns to teach at the Campbell Center

Patton's Pride

Displaying Textiles

Project EXHIBIT!

2012 NEMA Conference

Mannequin Madness!

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