On this project, I worked with the Artifacts Conservation students in assisting the Agnes Etherington Art Centre with an immersion washing treatment of a donated, vintage dress. The account is described by Sophia Zweifel, 2017 Isabel Bader Fellow in Textile Conservation and Research:
While one of the main goals of this project is to highlight and preserve historical finishes and traces of cleaning, when faced with the realities of a textile collection it is sometimes necessary to weigh other preservation priorities over those of the fabric’s surface or “hand.” This is precisely the conundrum that was presented to us when we came across a dress made of lace and white organdy (a fine, sheer cotton), dated to 1918–1919, in the Queen’s University Collection of Canadian Dress. In fact, I selected this dress as one of the candidates of study precisely because of the interesting and challenging questions it raised in this context of conservation decision-making. (Read More)