Baskets and How We Store Them

This last academic quarter I had the opportunity to teach a class in the Museum Studies program here at Central Washington University. While I work with students as interns all the time, teaching a class was a whole new experience. I had the privilege of teaching a course on Registration and Collections Management, which is what I do every day!

My goal for the course was to teach the students practical fundamentals, and what better way to do that than with hands on projects? The basket collection was an immediate candidate. The baskets are beautiful and likely to be handled frequently for exhibit and research. The students were tasked with a four part assignment: Complete a catalog form, a condition report, rehouse and support the basket, and enter the information they gathered into the museum database.


The rehoused baskets on carts.

All students were required to make a custom sized box from archival cardboard and support the basket if necessary. Many of the baskets chosen for the project are wide, shallow baskets for which we needed to construct supports to help prevent the sides from slumping. Gravity is a mighty foe which must be fought with….

…custom carved blocks of ethafoam.

Carving foam to match the curve of a basket proved to be a very tricky proposition, but the students were up to the task. Not all baskets required such specific mounts. Some were fine without external supports.


This flat bottomed basket is very stable as it is. A handling tray lined with ethafoam prevents sliding and accidental bumping into other baskets on shelves.


This unique piece was too nearly flat for the sort of carved supports which worked best for other items, but small bumpers made of ethafoam tube cut length wise was just about perfect for supporting the basket and preventing movement in the box.
Some pieces, however, proved too difficult to build a mount for in the limited class time dedicated to the project and stop-gap measures were put in place.


The ring at the base of this basket prevents the basket from shifting in the box and more equally distributes the stress at the base, but does nothing to alleviate warping that may already be occurring due to gravity. This basket will receive further attention before going back into storage.

Through this assignment, 16 baskets from the collection were thoroughly documented and now have housing which will protect them for years to come. Additionally, 16 museum studies students now have the experience of creating a custom storage mount for important museum objects. I declare that to be a success all around.

Sharing Collections

Part of my motivation in starting this blog was to share a peek of what behind the scenes looked like for a collections person. My favorite things to share are cool objects from the collection, and box making. Because making boxes, or object mounts more generally, is one of my favorite activity. One of my goals, once the collection move was completed, has been to photograph our collection objects and get those photos online, so that you all can see what I get to see everyday, and so that I can learn more about them from people who know more than me! Because I'm always looking to expand my knowledge about the collections.

This past week I've begun uploading some photos to Flickr. Why flickr? It's fairly cheap, easy to get access to, and you can comment on it! Also, I've seen that other museums, like the Magnes Museum have been sharing their collections there. So I've sent out a trial balloon - uploading 408 images of our collection.

Agates from the Bentley Collection
387 photos of beautiful agates.


Baskets from the Collection
An incomplete photoset - it will be expanded as we photograph more of our baskets. But baskets are a wonderful and important aspect of our collection, and we believe that the more we can learn about them, the greater the stories we can tell.


And now, a question: What sort of objects would you like to see from our collection? What interests you most?

Packing the baskets

Now that we're mostly done packing the World room, we've moved on to the Native American collection. This means that we are packing many, many baskets. I thought I would give you a run down on the packing process.

The first thing to do is assemble a box, choosing the large or small size of box depending on what you're packing. Then find the next box number (we're up to box 225) and write it on the box in three place and on the packing list. Then, to be brief, put some stuff in the box. Make sure the stuff isn't going to shift when moved, and isn't being crushed. This usually results in a box looking like this:

or this:

Those objects are being surrounded by packing foam with a buffer layer of either tyvek or archival tissue paper. This method of packing ensures that objects are safe against the box tilting and minor vibration. What it does not ensure against is the box falling or being placed upside down. We will be relying on constant vigilance to ensure that nothing ends up upside down.

Each object in the box is listed on the packing list. The packing list is then entered into a master spreadsheet and each object's temporary location is updated in the PastPerfect database (ie "Object packed in Box 215 for the move to Dean Hall"). Once this step is complete and no errors have been found, the boxes are closed, the packing list is slipped into an adhesive envelope and stuck to the box where it will stay until the box is unpacked sometime this spring. So the final box looks like Box 191 in this photo.


And after that... the boxes are stacked in corners and shelving columns until moving day! And moving day is coming up fast. Two weeks from today!

A Broken Bottle

Yesterday and this morning I've been constructing storage for one of the most fragile objects in the collection. Not only is this object fragile, it's actually broken. It's a brown glass bottle, enclosed by basketry and was probably made by an individual in the Makah tribe. Problem is, at some point in the past, the glass bottle broke. The basketry is still completely in place, but when moved you can hear the glass shards clattering into each other within the basket. (click on any of the photos below to see larger versions)



My first step was to make a box that the bottle could be isolated in. The box has ties on the sides which means that the sides drop down, making it easier to get the bottle out for research.



But just setting the bottle inside the box isn't going to stop it from tipping over and breaking further, so I made two Tyvek pillows. These pillows are filled with polyester quilt batting and sewn shut. The pillows are then attached to opposite sides of the box with velcro.



Then I closed up the box, tied the sides, and, viola!, the bottle is immobilized but it is not subject to too much undue pressure. The pillows can also compensate for any shifting that may occur within the body of the object.



This housing should help to mitigate further damage to the object and help to support it as well. It's a beautiful object, so I'm pleased that this box is a success.

I looked around the internet, and if you'd like to see similar basketry bottles, check out the Ethnology Collection at the Burke Museum, which is available to look at online.