Over the years we have cleaned, conserved, and repaired hundreds of historic christening dresses. Each one is different, short or long, tiered or sheer, embroidered or laced, pleated or smocked – each with its own family stories. Most have very yellowed ‘bib’ areas from sweet milky spittle, and often a host of rips and tears…..it […]
Field Trip: Williamsburg, Virginia
We visit “Printed Fashions: Textiles for Clothing and the Home” By Kaitlyn Munro Lauren and I recently returned from a fabulous trip to Colonial Williamsburg (Virginia) to attend the symposium, Printed Fashions: Textiles for Clothing and the Home. We were honored to present a paper “Burn Out”, about a range of conservation techniques for stabilizing […]
Jean Pierre Le Mayeur Buckskin Hunting Jacket
By Kaitlyn Munro Last spring we conserved a stunning buckskin hunting jacket for The Valentine Museum, Richmond, Virginia. Go check it out in their current fashion exhibit The Virginia Man: Respect, Responsibility, Rebellion until January 29, 2017. But first, a little history about the gentleman (a fascinating man we might add!) who wore this jacket long […]
Fit for a Queen: Remarkable Restoration, Exquisite Embroidery & Innovative Invisible Mannequins
In Celebration of Her Majesty’s 7th cycle Birthday 2016 July is always a busy month at the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in Bangkok, as annual preparations take place for Her Majesty’s August birthday. This year was a big one—7 cycles of 12 is very auspicious and the museum pulled out all the stops. Two new […]
The ‘Lesage’ of Lao: Master Tiao Somsanith
I recently met Tiao Nithakhong Somsanith at the 5th International Conference on Lao Studies, in Bangkok. He transformed a drab classroom into a sacred space—golden embroideries of the Buddha, lace-like stencils of angels hovering like snowflakes on the windows overlooking the Chao Praya river, and an aura of the timelessness that imbues these ancient arts. Amongst […]
Puppet Masters: Conservation in Miniature
In the first partnership of its kind, I led the The Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in Bangkok and the Taiyuan Asian Puppet Museum in Taipei for a puppet textile conservation training workshop. In the lively one-week session, conservators Nuchada Piranprasankit and Yaowalak Bunnag, from the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles, and I trained staff […]
Let’s Hear it for the Boys #3: The All-American Installment
The final post in Julia’s three-part series dedicated to the gentleman. If you missed my first two posts on ‘man-centric’ textiles (or if you just loved them so much and you want to reread) – you can find the first post here, and the second post can be found here. Over the years, Caring for Textiles has […]
Why we never run out of steam!
Here’s a story on a workhorse of our studio – our beloved Jiffy steamer!
Ahoy there, Mateys!–Part 2 of Let’s Hear it for the Boys!
The second of Julia’s two three-part* series dedicated to the gentleman. If you missed my first post on ‘man-centric’ textiles – you can read it here. Here are a few more of my favorites: *NOTE from Julia: I found so many great guys in our collection, I’m planning a third installment of this blog…stay tuned! Sailors’ […]
Let’s hear it for the boys!
Ahoy there, Mateys! – Part 1 Often, when we think of textiles, we think of fashion or women’s handwork. But in many cultures, it is the men who are the master weavers, dyers, block printers, and high-end tailors. So this two-part post is dedicated to the gentlemen! Just for you, I have selected some truly […]
