FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sampler Study Day, January 26, 2013
Sponsored by the Peabody Historical Society & Museum Textile Services
December 18, 2012 – The Peabody Historical Society of Peabody, Mass. and Museum Textile Services of Andover, Mass. will host a Sampler Study Day at the Historical Society's Smith Barn at 38 Felton Street, Peabody on Saturday, January 26, 2013 from 10-12. This event is for individuals who own antique needlework samplers and pictorial embroideries and would like to learn more about the condition, significance, and proper care of these textiles. Members of the public are invited to bring their samplers to the Society's Smith Barn on Sampler Study Day for a professional evaluation. The fee to participate in this program is $20 per sampler.
Camille Myers Breeze is a textile conservator with over 20 years of experience in the field. She is the founder and director of Museum Textile Services, a full-service textile preservation studio providing conservation, collections management and outreach for collectors and institutions. Breeze will evaluate the condition of each sampler brought to the event and provide participants with a one-page conservation worksheet. She will also discuss potential conservation issues and make recommendations for the appropriate mounting and framing of these heirlooms.
Peabody Historical Society Curator Heather Leavell and Assistant Curator Lyn FitzGerald will share information related to the age, decorative motifs, and overall style of each sampler. They will also provide resources for researching the history of a sampler's maker. To ensure the long-term preservation of these textiles, Leavell and FitzGerald will advise participants on the proper care of samplers, including optimal storage and environmental conditions. Additionally, Museum Textile Services staff will be available to help participants complete a short survey to include their samplers in a searchable online database administered by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America (www.nscda.org). The goal of the NSCDA Sampler Survey is to inventory all extant samplers and pictorial embroideries in museums and private collections to promote the preservation and study of this important art form.
Samplers and pictorial embroideries were a popular form of needlework in America between the 17th and 19th centuries, and were often produced by schoolgirls and young women as a demonstration of their skill in this domestic art. Today, these textiles provide valuable information about the social and cultural history of women during this period. Samplers may feature the alphabet; religious or moral quotations; decorative figures, motifs and borders; and sometimes the name of the maker and the date of creation.
To attend Sampler Study Day please register by contacting Heather Leavell at the Peabody Historical Society at 978-977-0514 or heather.leavell@peabodyhistorical.org by Wednesday, January 23, 2013. Drop-ins are welcome and will be accommodated as time permits. The Peabody Historical Society's Smith Barn is conveniently located off of Route 114, near the NorthShore Mall. For directions and other information, visit www.peabodyhistorical.org, or call 978-977-0514.
_Camille Breeze will present a hands-on workshop on textile conservation at the 93rd Annual New England Museum Association Conference November 16-18, 2011, in Hartford, Connecticut.
Andover, Mass. – Camille Breeze, Director and Chief Conservator at Museum Textile Services, will be leading a hands-on textile conservation workshop at the 93rd Annual New England Museum Association Conference. The conference will be held at the Hilton Hartford Hotel in Hartford, Connecticut, November 16-18, 2011.
_On Thursday, November 17, Camille will lead a hands-on workshop to teach museum staff how to safely stabilize fabrics in their collections. Textiles deteriorate over time, and conservators often use nylon net to stabilize fabrics and provide preventative conservation. "Textiles are among the most common museum artifacts and their fragility can be an obstacle to safe handling and display," said Camille. "Stabilization with nylon net is appropriate for museum staff and volunteers to learn, assuming they have a knowledge of hand-stitching. Taking care of this procedure in-house can save a museum thousands of dollars, which allows them to use their conservation budgets more constructively." Participants in the workshop will learn to evaluate a variety of textiles to determine which are suitable for nylon net stabilization and which should be turned over to a professional conservator. Participants will then practice stabilizing textiles with nylon netting, gaining invaluable hands-on experience that can be used on the objects within their own collections. The 93rd Annual New England Museum Association Conference will begin with PechaKucha on the evening of November 15th. The conference will run from November 16-18, 2011 and will examine how museums throughout New England reflect the diversity of our communities. For more information, please visit the New England Museum Association’s website at www.nemanet.org.
The 30th Annual Northeast Conference on Andean Archaeology and Ethnohistory will take place October 15-16, 2011 at the R.S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology in Andover. Andover, Mass. – Camille Breeze, Director and Chief Conservator at Museum Textile Services, will be speaking at the 30th Annual Northeast Conference on Andean Archaeology and Ethnohistory. The conference will be held at the R.S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology in Andover, Massachusetts, October 14-16, 2011. On Saturday, October 15, Camille will share her experiences as Director of the Ancient Peruvian Textiles Workshop. Camille established the Ancient Peruvian Textiles Workshop in collaboration with Rommel Angles Falcon, Director of the Municipal Museum of Huaca Malena, in 2004. The need for the project was first documented by Rommel. In 2008, Camille published a paper documenting the project’s development and success. Huaca Malena is a pre-Inca ceremonial complex. During the period of regional development, 400–500 A.D., it functioned as an administrative and religious center. Between 700 and 1100 A.D. the upper platform was used by the Wari culture as a cemetery. To the ancient Peruvians, textiles played a fundamental role in the dispersion of political and religious ideology. They were used to clothe the body, both in life and in death, as well as for social functions such as paying taxes. Every hand-weaving technique invented anywhere in the world was also known to the ancient Peruvians, which illustrates their ingenuity and resourcefulness. It is this unique textile legacy that has brought North Americans to the Municipal Museum of Huaca Malena to collaborate with Peruvians in the conservation of artifacts from the collection. Over the course of five years more than forty textiles, mummy bundles, and mummified heads were conserved by forty-four participants in this collaborative effort. The 30th Annual Northeast Conference on Andean Archaeology and Ethnohistory will begin with an informal gathering on the evening of Oct 14, will continue on the 15th with plenary session talks, a reception, dinner, and a keynote talk by Richard Burger (Yale University) on Hiram Bingham and Machu Picchu, and will conclude with a half day of plenary session talks on the 16th. For more information, or to register for the conference, please visit the conference website. About Museum Textile Services Museum Textile Services, the premier textile conservation studio in New England, specializes in the preservation of fabric-based materials for cultural institutions and individuals. Museum Textile Services documents, cleans, stabilizes and mounts historic textiles. Through educational programs and outreach initiatives, Museum Textile Services teaches individuals and cultural heritage institutions how to ensure better preservation of their textiles. For more information, visit www.museumtextiles.com.
New site provides improved navigation, a new blog and a rich array of textile conservation resources for museum professionals, conservators and private collectors. Andover, Mass. – Museum Textile Services has launched its new website. The redesigned site at www.museumtextiles.com, created by staff and interns, embodies the company’s forward-thinking vision and commitment to the growing needs of cultural heritage institutions and those who own historic textiles. The new website offers improved navigation, a new blog and a rich array of textile conservation resources for museum professionals, conservators and private collectors. The website’s homepage welcomes visitors with a simple design and clear navigation bar. It also provides direct links to connect with the organization on various social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. Visitors to the site can also sign up for occasional email newsletters filled with resources and textile-related news. “We’re so pleased that our new website is up because it makes it so much simpler to get information to visitors,” said Camille Breeze, Director and Chief Conservator at Museum Textile Services. “The individual pages in the Conservation section really showcase the amazing projects we’ve been involved in and tie those projects in with research and scholarship on those topics.” One of the greatest aspects of the new site is that it can be updated easily. This allows Museum Textile Services to share new information as soon as it becomes available. “Our Education and Disaster Response pages are a wealth of free information about textile conservation, collections care and becoming a conservator – definitely our most frequently asked questions,” said Camille. Now, staff and interns can share conservation stories and answer questions on the MTS Blog. Blog posts and photo uploads help visitors access the depth of services available and provide further opportunities for hands-on learning for interns, who have always been an important part of the work done at Museum Textile Services. “It’s also great to see the gallery of past interns, all of whom have made such great contributions to MTS,” said Camille. “We look forward to feedback from our users and exciting new developments to come.” About Museum Textile Services Museum Textile Services, the premier textile conservation studio in New England, specializes in the preservation of fabric-based materials for cultural institutions and individuals. Museum Textile Services documents, cleans, stabilizes and mounts historic textiles. Through educational programs and outreach initiatives, Museum Textile Services teaches individuals and cultural heritage institutions how to ensure better preservation of their textiles. For more information, visit www.museumtextiles.com.
Andover, Mass. – Museum Textile Services will turn over the last of 18 Tibetan thangkas to the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College next month. The thangkas – cloth paintings depicting Buddhist deities and symbols, sewn into fine silk textiles – were the focus of a two-year conservation project. Picturing Enlightenment: Thangkas in the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College will open August 26, 2011. This will be the first time the thangkas have been seen by the public since 1953. To protect these fragile objects from the potentially damaging effects of light, the collection will be displayed in two parts. The first group of 10 thangkas will be on view from August 26, 2011 to January 1, 2012. To accommodate the careful exchange of the works, the exhibit will close briefly and the remaining eight thangkas will be displayed from January 20 to June 3, 2012. Camille Breeze, Director of Museum Textile Services was thrilled to work with the staff at the Mead Art Museum. “In April 2009 Collections Manager Stephen Fisher called us to survey the collection of thangkas. As a part of that process, we examined each piece, took extensive photographs and recorded measurements, construction details and current condition. The thangkas had been in archival storage for several years and were extremely fragile. When Elizabeth Barker, Director and Chief Curator, discovered the thangka collection, she really wanted to make them accessible – first through an exhibition and then later for study.” A few months later, the thangkas made their way to Museum Textile Services, where they were gently cleaned, the painted surfaces stabilized and the silk supports reinforced. “We cleaned the thangkas with a gentle hand vacuum and vulcanized rubber sponges that absorb and remove a lot of the dirt and grime that accumulates over time. The thangkas were covered in an oily residue, which is probably from the traditional yak butter lamps used in Tibetan culture,” said Camille. “We took a lot of time reinforcing the silk supports to ensure that the thangkas would not be damaged when they are exhibited this fall.”  Museum Textile Services used vulcanized rubber sponges to gently clean the Tibetan Thangkas. This August, the last of the thangkas will be returned to the Mead Art Museum. "We have really enjoyed learning about the thangkas and Tibetan Buddhism," said Camille. "From a conservation perspective, this project had a lot of exciting challenges. Thangkas consist of two distinct components - the painting and the textile boarder - that are conserved in two very different ways. It allowed our team to draw upon all of our skills as conservators."
About Tibetan Thangkas
Thangkas function as objects of Buddhist meditation. They are also used as teaching aids and serve as a visual recording of history. Each thangka has a central painting surrounded by a fabric mount, usually made of Chinese silk. This fabric can become damaged over time from rolling, moisture, light exposure and the weight of the hanging thangka. Many thangkas have a silk veil that hangs over the image and can be raised and held in place by a silk cord for viewing. The images depict Buddha, bodhisattvas, other deities or eminent monks. The deliberately conservative artistic styles and iconographic forms used by painters of thangkas have changed little over the course of this thousand-year tradition. During the painting process, the artist performs specific rights. At its completion, a consecration ceremony called the "opening of the eyes" ensures that the resulting image is an accurate reflection of the deity depicted. Most of the thangkas in the Mead's collection were commissioned for a single monastery in Lhasa, Tibet. Religious leaders specified the paintings' subjects and the completed thangkas were displayed in groups, sometimes numbering more than one hundred in a single room.
About the Mead Art MuseumThe Mead Art Museum houses the art collection of Amherst College, totaling more than 16,000 works. An accredited member of the American Association of Museums, the Mead participates in Museums10, a regional cultural collaboration. During the academic term, the museum is open Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to midnight and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. For more information, including a complete schedule of events, all free and open to the public, please visit the museum’s website. About Museum Textile ServicesMuseum Textile Services, the premier textile conservation studio in New England, specializes in the preservation of fabric-based materials for cultural institutions and individuals. Museum Textile Services documents, cleans, stabilizes and mounts historic textiles. Through educational programs and outreach initiatives, Museum Textile Services teaches individuals and cultural heritage institutions how to ensure better preservation of their textiles. Accompanying ImageA high resolution copy of the image included above can be downloaded here.
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