Work at the Museum stores continued throughout the cold and
gloomy winter months. Collections and conservation staff are systematically
improving the storage of vulnerable collections and those things considered
difficult to move and access in their current storage. We replace old boxes
with new conservation grade materials. To this end we have completed the
arrows project, re-storing and locating all arrows in storage, adzes and axes
have been moved to larger shelves and we are now working on mats and fibre
clothing.
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Mats retrieved from storage in the conservation lab for humidification
© Pitt Rivers Museum |
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Tubing cut to size to roll mats onto © Pitt Rivers Museum |
The Museum has a good collection of mats from all over the
world, which are currently stored rolled on shelves on movable racking. When
the racking is moved to access collections behind or in front of the mats the
mats are at risk of falling off the shelving or being squashed. The solution to
this is to store the mats rolled on tubing which can be easily removed from
brackets on the shelves. We have been taking the mats back to the Museum so
that Senior Conservator, Jeremy Uden can humidify the mats, check their
condition and eventually roll them onto the tubing once the tubes have been cut to size.
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Unwrapping a Malaysian mat; 1940.3.028 (above and below)
© Pitt Rivers Museum |
Sometimes at the store we come across objects wrapped in
brown paper packaging, often the packaging that the object came to the Museum
in the first instance in. Unwrapping the brown paper is exciting for us. Last
week we unwrapped a fabulous mat and pillow from Malaysia. The mat is richly
embroidered with silk and sequins and belonged to the Sultan Idris.
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Detail of embroidery on Malay mat © Pitt Rivers Museum |
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Plant fibre fringed skirt in new box
© Pitt Rivers Museum |
Whilst or technical team work on constructing the new
storage unit for the mats we have been working through the fibre clothing
including many grass skirts from Polynesia, Japanese fibre rain capes and
African masquerade costume. The fibre clothing is made from grasses, palm
leaves, bark and other plant material. This material gets very brittle over
time and becomes delicate and fragile. These items of clothing were often worn
and danced and used, they were not supposed to last forever by their very
nature. Given the age of the some of the pieces and the distances they have
travelled to be in the collections they are in remarkably good condition. The
re-storage project will involve moving the clothing to larger custom made Corex
boxes. We have already discovered an important fibre skirt from Captain Cook's voyages to the Pacific which had been previously un-located.
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Plant fibre skirt from Tahiti, Forster 36, 1886.1.1179 © Pitt Rivers Museum |
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Custom made Corex boxes filled with plant fibre clothing
© Pitt Rivers Museum |
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Conservation grade standard sized boxes for
smaller garments © Pitt Rivers Museum |
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Fibre clothing laid out on the table at store for cataloguing (above and below)
© Pitt Rivers Museum |
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Custom Corex boxes on store shelves © Pitt Rivers Museum |
Faye Belsey & Jeremy Uden
Assistant Curator & Senior Conservator
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