Class Project Part 2: Rehousing a Peruvian Knit Bag

A while ago, I mentioned that CWU's Curation and Collections Management class is working with some of our textiles. Part of their assignment included working with me to rehouse the object they chose.

Using a series of videos from the Minnesota Historical Society as our guide, we set out to house the textiles. The first piece we did was a small knitted bag, probably from Peru.


The bag had two major needs: a new tag to replace the fading ink on its current tag, and some padding, to relieve pressure on the creases that had formed from being stored flat for many year.


Our first step was to relabel the object. To do so, I first removed the old tag, very carefully, so as not to pull on the knit stitches of the fabric. Meanwhile, Taylor, a student in the class, wrote the catalog number on a piece of twill tape with an Identi-pen; this will be our new label.


Sewing labels to textiles is always a very delicate procedure. The sewing needle and thread need to be very carefully placed between the thread or yarn of the textile that needs to be labeled. To sew down this label, I tacked both ends of the label to the bag without tying knots that might pull on the fibers and cause stress or damage.

We then padded out the bag with some unbuffered acid free tissue paper. In this rather unscientific process, we crumple some tissue paper and place it inside the bag, giving it some bulk and taking some pressure off of the creases that have developed from years of being stored flat.



We then placed the stuffed bag on another sheet of unbuffered acid free tissue paper which will serve as a handling sling, allowing us to easily lift the bag into and out of the box in which it will be stored. In this case we also added a small pillow to stabilize the delicate 'handle' on the bag.


In the interest of space, many textiles will be stored in a single box. Each piece will have a tissue paper sling, and a larger muslin sling will allow us to take all the pieces out of the box at the same time.


Finally, the box is closed up and put back into storage until the textile is needed for research or exhibit.


Each of the students in the class had a different textile to work with, and each faced different challenges to housing it appropriately. By the end of the quarter, each piece was successfully rehoused and readied for storage. A very successful project!

Class Project, part 1

One of the really neat things about having a museum as part of a university, particularly a university with a museum studies program, is that students have a chance to participate in the collections work. Every year, the museum studies program offers a class on curation and collections management. As part of that class, the students choose an object to research, catalog, and rehouse, if appropriate.

This year, the students are working on a collection of textiles. The textiles have not been researched or housed. In fact, when they were moved last year, they were in a stack in a box. That stack was transferred to the compactor storage, where it's stayed for the last year.


To prepare for class today, I took the textiles from storage and laid them out in the collections workroom. The students each choose a piece to research and rehouse.


I'm really glad the class will be working with these textiles. They need new storage - the flat storage is putting a lot of stress on the fibers, particularly on the knit pieces, which are meant to be three dimensional. I'm also glad these pieces are being examined, because I discovered that the ink used to mark the pieces is fading, in some cases quite badly.


So I'll be replacing those labels that are fading before we finish this project completely. It should be very interesting to see what sort of information the students can find on these pieces.

Progress Report

This week is Spring Break for Central Washington University. That means that it is extremely quiet in the building, which normal bustles with undergraduates during daytime hours. The quiet has given me a chance to take stock of progress. But first, a progress shot of our future museum home:



The Dean Hall renovation is progressing! The bottom floor walls have been moved out - I can see framing for them around - and the front of the building is being added on to. Dean Hall will house more than the museum; it will also be home to the Dean of the College of the Sciences, the Geography Department, the Anthropology Department, and several large classrooms. But it's exciting to see progress being made.

Progress is being made inside the museum as well. I had three hard working interns helping me this quarter. They worked on a variety of tasks including cataloging, rehousing, photographing, and updating the PastPerfect records for nearly 250 of our collections objects. Receiving special attention was our collection of West African material, including many pieces of jewelry, our collection of spears, arrows, and bows, and our collection of Southwest Pottery. I cannot thank these interns enough for their hard work, and am grateful that two will be returning for the Spring Quarter.




In addition, Anthropology 362: Curation and Collections Management researched our small collection of Navajo weavings and rehoused them. Previously, these textiles had been half-rolled, half-folded, but now they are rolled and hung on our impromptu textile storage rack.


So we've made some really excellent progress this quarter, and I think we're going to make some really excellent progress next quarter. We've come a long way, but there's a great deal more work to be done.

This is how we roll

Last Friday's Whatzit garnered 2 guesses: serape or a "contemporary version of a Buddhist sand mandala." While both guesses are interesting, I'm afraid it's much simpler than that; it's a rug.

More specifically, it's a small woven rug from Iran and it is the first textile in our collection to be rolled.

Yep. Rolled. Rolling is standard practice for storing museum textiles. Folding rugs, blankets, etc. like you might do to store them in your linen closet is not good for long term preservation. The fibers along the fold become brittle and it becomes difficult for the textile to be laid flat. Small textiles can be stored flat, but when it comes to a blanket or a quilt, most museums simply don't have the space to do so.

The rug in question has been folded, probably for several years.


These are the rolls that our textiles are going to be rolled around.


Yes, they look like giant paper towel tubes. And, in essence, they are. Except they are acid-free and unbuffered, which makes them more expensive than giant paper towel tubes. The first step involved wrapping the tube in Tyvek. Even though the tubes are "museum quality" they'd been shipped unwrapped and moved around in that state, so I wanted to provide a definite layer between the textile and the tube.

Then I unfolded the rug and laid it on a long piece of acid-free, unbuffered tissue paper. I carefully, tediously, made sure all the fringe was laying straight:


Since the rolling will have the textile resting against itself for a long long time (unless we use it for an exhibit, or it is the subject of research), any bent fringe, any folds in the textile will be reinforced over time, putting extra stress on the fibers - the exact thing we are trying to avoid. In the same vein as having all the fringe straight, it's important not to let the roll drift, and to make sure the edges of the rolled textile are stacked exactly:


In the above photo you can see how ingrained the creases are already. The tube, prepped with tyvek, is placed in line with the textile. Then we're ready to roll!

Halfway rolled:


To get to the halfway rolled point, I had to start rolling a half dozen times, each time adjusting slightly to make sure the edges of the textile stacked exactly.

All the way rolled:


The textile is entirely rolled, with an outer covering of tyvek to protect it from dust, and a couple of cotton twill tape ties, along with a very important label to let folks know exactly what is inside this mysterious roll.

CWU's Collections Management and Curation course is working with our collection of Navajo textiles this quarter, part of which will require them to roll or otherwise properly store the textile they are working with. So, in the near future, an important portion of our textile collection will be stored this way.

In the words of Optimus Prime: Roll out!