AIC's 45th Annual Meeting

An early pioneer from St. Paul, MN, Tom Welter, treated many battle flags between 1964 and 1982. While his work is known by many veterans in the textile conservation community, the documentation of his historic private practice and his influence on modern-day techniques have not been examined until now. 

Welter was an Army Air Corp pilot in both WWII and Korea, who went on to be a sign painter and custom display specialist at Montgomery Ward’s department store. After a two-day tutorial from Katherine Scott in 1964, he developed a method to encapsulate battle flags. Welter went on to use his method of consolidation for many years. Once the treatment was completed, a flag was able to hang from its staff for long-term exhibition. 

During the 18 years that Welter dedicated to conserving battle flags, he frequently used and or modified every day household items and created extraordinary one-of-a-kind equipment. Within this paper I will review the historical equipment and machinery Welter developed during his 18year career. By examining former treatments, journal notes, documentation, and actual equipment, I will show how Welter’s treatment procedures evolved as he employed creative problem solving to preserving battle flags throughout the country.

National Argentinian Flags, the Bicentennial and the change of criteria regarding conservation. Between the years 2010 and 2016 on the occasion of the Bicentennial of the American Revolutions and the Independence Wars in Argentina, projects regarding the conservation of the historical collections of our patrimony were carried out. Amongst them special attention was given to historical Flags and banners. They are distinctive of the identity of the new national revolutionary armies and represent an important historical document from the XIX century. Changes in the intervention and the exhibition of the vexilological textile patrimony of the country started. Historically, the Argentinian museums collected Spanish flags taken as war trophies and the flags created in the country by the local regiments. Their intervention was carried out until the late XX century by conservators of other materialities such as paper or paintings, the result being restorations with methodologies similar to the ones employed with these types of materials. This process meant a consolidation with organic adhesives on materials such as cardboard, paper or other textile support, turning them into flat rigid pieces. Although in many cases this procedure was effective compare to no intervention at all and numerous flags owe their survival to these sometimes irreversible interventions, we currently prefer less invasive, more reversible methods, with more compatible materials, based in the use of conservation stitches. The same concept was applied to their exhibition; they were exhibited as pictures, tautened vertically, sometimes nailed and framed, or folded inside small wooden and glass cases, thus generating several damages and with no regard for illumination or environmental controls. The present work describes the valuing through the intervention and changes in the display of the most emblematic flags of our history during these last 6 years, all made of silk, including the first flags of the national armies dated 1813, called “Banderas de Macha” (Macha is a place in Bolivia). These siblings textiles are currently located in Argentinian and Bolivian territory and gave birth to an international cooperation project between both nations for the restoration of the flags with the addition of a training course for Bolivian conservators in the city of Sucre, Bolivia. The interventions included a new approach on the restoration of the Argentinian textile patrimony: the complete documentation process of the textile, their analysis, consolidation with stitches and new exhibition systems based on the use of conservation materials on inclined surfaces in order to reduce the mechanical and physical damage on extremely fragile textiles, aiming to achieve an unify exhibition criteria.

*This poster addresses an urushi (Japanese lacquer) based metallic thread that was used on an embroidered Japanese, early to mid-Edo period Nō Theater Chōken.  There were five motifs, each a variation of a naturalistically depicted spray of flowers set in a vase.  The couched metallic thread was used to outline each of the five vase shapes, two insect bodies and their antennas which alone appear on the center back motif, and the four butterflies which are on the lower edge of the front and back body panel.
*The couched metallic thread was originally made by using urushi as an adhesive which bound a metal foil to a paper substrate; the paper was then cut into narrow strips and wound around a silk core.
*These metallic threads suffered from severe surface flaking.  No prior documented stabilization methods for this type of urushi based metallic thread was found in conservation literature or in additional readings.
*Testing was done to establish that the adhesive was most certainly urushi, and the concept of using like materials to stabilize like materials was the basis for my choice of urushi.  Synthetic adhesives posed a greater potential for unforseen long term, incompatibility problems and hence were not used.
*The stabilization method was developed by contacting someone in New York City who gives workshops using urushi to repair broken ceramics, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  This was Gen Saratani.  Even though he was not familiar with textiles in general, he showed me some simple steps as to how to use urushi and how to control the specifically needed levels of humidity.  Skin protection is necessary as urushi is related to poison ivy.  I was also able to procure from Gen a small amount of two types of urushi to test for my project.
*The rudimentary stabilization method used in the treatment of these metallic threads is the topic of this poster.

This paper describes a new approach to visual compensation for hooked rugs, developed during the treatment of Molly Nye Tobey’s 1942 Victory Garden rug. Now in the collection of the Shelburne Museum, this 40” x 147” hooked rug was exhibited at the 1942 Women’s International Exposition of Arts and Industries, where it was awarded first prize and the Grand Award for its design. The enthusiastic response to the rug’s design prompted Tobey to begin her Statehood series of fifty hooked rugs, also in the collection of the Shelburne Museum. Like many hooked rugs in the collection of the Shelburne Museum, the jute ground of this seminal large scale rug is brittle with losses of both pile and ground throughout. Previous repairs of these losses, including flat patches and hooked inserts, were failing and posed two major conservation challenges: First, they were visually distracting, often making use of textures and colors foreign to the initial composition. More importantly, these repairs were structurally damaging, exacerbating existing weakness in the jute ground and accelerating the loss of pile. Building on previously published techniques using polyester felt fills, a method for visual compensation was developed that utilized cut and sculpted densely needled felt, colored with textile paints, to mimic the worn shapes and varying tonalities of the pile elements adjacent to the losses. This paper will include a discussion of Tobey’s chosen materials, review alternative methods of visual compensation for hooked rugs, and conclude with an evaluation of the efficacy of this treatment.

September 11, 1973. The President Salvador Allende is overthrown in a coup d'état and the military dictatorship is installed in Chile. For 17 years, the country faced repression practices and violations of human rights that still have not been completely quantified. The official numbers of Valech report (2011) figured 40.280 cases of voluntary testimony which were proved as a political prison, death and torture crimes. In addition, some 200.000 people suffered exile and an unknown number went through clandestine centers and illegal detention. Of the recognized numbers, 3.065 had been dead and missing. Many of them were kidnapped or escorted by soldiers and were not seen again. Is that so, as the question stuck in the collective memory for more than 40 years has been...and where are they? Leaders and perpetrators of these unconfessed crimes are dying in silence, and many families are still asking the same question. That is why in scheduled excavations or finding within the framework of possible missing detainees, the great goal pursued is identify the victims. However, accomplished this goal a new question is installed...what happened to them? This presentation aims to provide a preliminary account for a conservation expertise for clothing of two political executed. This is an ongoing case and it is carried out by a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists and physical anthropologists, as well as professionals from the Legal Medical Service of Santiago. The conservation area was requested with the purpose to detect any alterations in textiles that provide useful information to clarify the circumstances of the investigated deaths. Were used the methodology designed by the laboratory for archaeological textiles studies and the theoretical framework was a systemic understanding of the formation processes of an archaeological site. Extrinsic/intrinsic factors/agents of deterioration/preservation were review in order to be linked to the alteration effects on clothing. At the same time, the forensic reports, autopsy, and testimonial descriptions were used to contrast the consistency of the observed. On the other hand, were carried out analysis to samples of fibers and other "not identified” elements, by optical microscopy and FTIR, in order to complement the hypothesis about the alteration processes. To date, results indicate some discrepancy between the evidence (or lack of evidence) observed in clothing considering facts and burial context, but unfortunately it will be difficult to establish specific hypothesis regarding this last subject. Reflecting what was referred in the first paragraph, these excavations pointed to identify the victims, therefore times for digging are short and focused to that goal, and the background of formation and transformation process of the site, most of the time are dismissed, especially if the sites had been considered as a disturbed area. However, this presentation also intends to suggest what variables are required to consider in-situ despite the disturbance of the site in order to achieve an accurate conservation diagnosis- further on a reasonable doubt- and helps to respond what happened to them, especially because evidence can get into dissonance with the expected, as it is in this case.

The shirt General Francisco Villa wore the day he was murdered in Parral, Chihuahua on July 20, 1923, arrived at the Textile Conservation Lab of the National School of Conservation, Restoration and Museum Studies (ENCRyM) "Manuel del Castillo Negrete", for study and conservation treatment as part of an academic process.

The garment is now part of the Mexican cultural heritage because its important relation to one of the highest representatives of the Mexican Revolution, and because it is a direct evidence of an important moment in the history of Mexico.

At the time of Villa ́s autopsy, his clothes were removed and handed to Austreberta Renterıá, one of Villa’s wives. Conflicts emerged after the general’s death, due to personal interests, government and legal issues, among others.These clothes were the only tangible possession that Austreberta could keep in remembrance of the man she loved. It is believed that as an act of affection, she washed and mended the shirt trying to minimize the traces of blood and the evidence of bullets that ended their history together, thus becoming a sentimental keepsake for the widow of the leader. In 1965, she donated the clothes to the National Museum of History.

During the study of the shirt, a theoretical discussion took place at the ENCRyM: to respect the second historicity of the piece by not removing the seams made by Villa ́s wife, or to remove them to highlight the historical facts. As conservators and restorers we confronted the disagreement, weighing values, intervention and evidence. After the analysis of the case from various theoretical positions, a proposal for the intervention was developed, based on values and needs, taking into account Villa‘s life trajectory and context.