Steam cleaning 1920s Wedding Dress

With preparations for our summer fashion exhibition well underway, we spent a morning last week preparing a beautiful 1920s wedding dress back to its former glory. The dress had been recently donated to the museum but unfortunately it had been packed away for years with other costumes, left in an attic. When the dress arrived at the museum it was extremely creased and crumpled, having been untouched for so long.

 

We aired it out and let it hang for a week, in the hope that gravity would take its toll and some of the creases would just fall out naturally. However this didn’t have the desired effect and so we decided to try steam cleaning it, using a hand held clothes steamer. As we are a small organisation we don’t have any external funding to employ professional costume conservators; in this instance we relied on the much appreciated help of volunteers.

We tested a small area of the dress first and, satisfied that steaming wasn’t going to damage the material, we went ahead with the rest of the garment. Soon, to our excitement, the creases began to disappear and the true beauty of the dress was revealed. The wedding dress has lots of different layers to it, in a variety of materials, so we found that starting from the underskirt and working our way outwards was the best technique.

 

 

The delicate velvet flowers on the front of the dress got a steam too and turned out beautifully. The dress will be on display this summer in our exhibition “Furs, feathers, frills & florals: four decades of fashion 1919-1959” alongside many other beautiful pieces.

 

Displaying Costume - some hints & tips

Museum curator, Sam Bannerman, recently went on a trip to London and Bath to research costume displays in preparation for our summer exhibition Furs, feathers, frills and florals: four decades of fashion, 1919-1959. The trip was funded by the Art Fund’s Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant Programme.

Here, Sam shares some hints and tips for displaying costume. These hints and tips came about through visiting different costume displays and through discussions with Rosemary Harden of the Fashion Museum in Bath and Georgina Ripley of National Museums Scotland.

We invite feedback and would love to hear your own experiences of working with costume.

1. Tie in with visitors expectations.

An important point that Rosemary Harden highlighted is that you need to remember who your exhibition is for; an obvious point that is often overlooked once you get into the finer details of planning any exhibition.
 

Our exhibition will mainly be seen by tourists, many of whom will know that St Andrews is ‘the home of golf’. I was apprehensive about displaying a pair of plus 4s (golf trousers!) for various reasons, however Rosemary pointed out that our audience will expect them. As well as giving our audience what they expect, we can reel them in and then tell them something new with our other pieces.

This point particularly hit home the day after meeting with Rosemary. I was standing in the V&A’s Wedding Dresses: 1775-2014 exhibition and the majority of visitors were watching a film of royal weddings despite there being an array of stunning wedding dresses to ogle. Of course they were watching the film! This is exactly the kind of thing they expect and want to see when visiting London.
 

2. Ensure that you have the skills and materials to create the display. If not, scale it back.

This is a really important point. At the early stages of planning this exhibition, I had big, big ambitions that, if attempted, would have been too difficult with the resources available. Conduct an audit not only of the physical materials that you have, but also the skills that you and your team have.

3. Try not to over-crowd cases.

Presentation is vital. The display should not be over-crowded as this will detract from the costume. There’s a clear different between a creative, active display and a cluttered one. Take these two shop displays as an example:

 

Image taken from http://chelseaamelia.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Image taken from http://retaildesignblog.net/

Planning a costume exhibition is similar to window dressing – you are trying to attract people to your display. The first image appears crowded and somewhat uninteresting because the mannequins are static; they are in the same pose, at the same height, looking in the same direction. The second image has the same number of mannequins, however there is action. They are also interesting due to the variety of poses and different heights.

                         4. Make a scene!

Backdrops can really help tell the story of the costume being displayed. Take this display of post-WW2 Dior at the V&A. To emphasise the elegance of Dior's ‘New Look’, a decorative gold mirror has been mounted behind the costume. It is simple, yet it adds a touch of class in keeping with the style of costume.

 

 5. Create a colour spectrum.

Rosemary highlighted this point to me and afterwards I could not stop noticing it! Colour co-ordination is easier on the eye - it helps visitors to flit from costume to costume. Here’s an example from the V&A:

1930s display. As well as keeping to a colour spectrum, notice how the plain and print styles complement each other and have been laid out plain-print-plain-print. Print-print-plain-plain would result in the prints clashing with the plain outfits looking too similar if side by side. There’s an intentional flow using colour and pattern, height, and careful positioning of mannequins.

Here is an example from the Fashion Museum in Bath:



Dior display. Green, pink and cream make up this colour spectrum, with the dress in the centre incorporating the green from the dress on the left and the cream from the dress on the right

With special thanks to the Art Fund, Rosemary Harden (Fashion Museum, Bath) and Georgina Ripley (National Museums Scotland).

 

New Trainee

We are currently hosting a new Trainee, Francesca Purvis, who is undertaking her SVQ in Museums Practice with us. The traineeship lasts a year and consists of a selection of modules that Francesca will complete through various work experience within the museum. It is a great time for her to be joining the museum as there are lots of exciting projects taking place in the forthcoming months. It may only be her second week in but already Francesca has experienced the unique occurrences that come with working in the museum! Whilst flicking through and old Fife Almanac from 1926, her attention was caught by a familiar name, McFarland (her mother’s maiden name.) Sure enough, the article detailed her Great Grandfather’s appointment as the new Minister of Balmerino Church and few details about his life works along with a picture!

 

 

 

 On further investigation she managed to find another article detailing his untimely death 11 years later, with a lovely accompanying piece giving a glimpse into his personality. What a small world!

 

 

 

 

Great War Memory Board

Our Great War exhibition closed at the end of September, but one of the legacy's of the exhibition was the contributions made to a Memory Board. The Memory Board was installed in the gallery over the summer, and visitors were invited to add an 'In Memory of' postcard to the board. By and large, due to the subject matter of the exhibition, the remembrances were of those who had served and / or been killed during WW1. Unfortunately, we did not receive any cards that remembered women, however we have decided to continue the Memory Board over the course of the Centenary years.

Here are ten postcards that were submitted to the board. We will continue to post these on our blog in due course. Please note that some of these cards can be fairly detailed and upsetting to read.

 

 

From our Photographic Collection by Pat Harvey

Can you guess what is going on in this picture?



Mr Gourlay (left) teaching swimming at Step Rock c1940s.
Photographer: G. M. Cowie.

The girl in the photograph is being prepared for a swimming lesson in the Step Rock Pool, St Andrews, in the late 1940s. A length of rope is being attached to the girl’s bathing costume. She then enters the pool with the instructors standing on “dry land” holding on to the rope and telling her what to do. Maybe a case of sink or swim!

 

The Step Rock Pool was where the Sea life Centre is now. It was built in 1903, 300ft long by 100ft wide. The depth graduated from 2ft 4ins to 8ft.

 

In the 1930s proper shelters and huts were built to form the Step Rock complex. Women were then permitted to use the pool. Until then, it had been “men only”, while women used the pool behind the Castle.

 

At the Step Rock, as well as the swimming pool and changing facilities, there was a paddling pool for young children and a kiosk which sold ice cream, cups of tea, buckets and spades etc. On the beach beside the pool, adults sat on deck chairs while children played in the sand.

 

For swimmers there was a diving board, spring board and a chute. The pool was cleaned by high tides. The temperature of the water did not vary much. It was always cold until we “got under”. On sunny days young people sunbathed on the concrete area beside the pool.

 

Over the years, many different acquatic events were held, -

Bathing Belle competition

Diving exhibitions

Water polo

 

and the annual swimming galas which attracted hundreds of spectators.

 

The huge success of the Step Rock was due to the formation of the Step Rock Amateurs Swimming Club in 1928. Local people and visitors alike would retain happy memories of summers spent at the Step Rock.

 

 

Recent Donation - RNLI Medal

Last Saturday the Museum received a wonderful donation of a RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) medal awarded to Robert brown of Kingsbarns in 1915. The donation is fitting considering our current Great War exhibition, but the medal is also very relevant to the Museum’s existing maritime collection. As well as the medal, the donor gifted the accompanying certificate and letters of thanks sent to Robert Brown from those he rescued.

Robert Brown was awarded the medal on the 14^th of January 1915. He assisted in the rescue of two pilots when their seaplane crashed during a storm off the east coast of Scotland on the 1^st January 1915. Local newspaper reports: “The hydroplane was in the vicinity of Kingsbarns when it descended and on touching the water it turned turtle. The two aviators managed to cling to their partially submerged machine and meantime the lifeboat was launched from St Andrews on receipt of the news of the airmen’s peril”.

Robert Brown, David Ritchie and Archibald Ritchie were fishing in the area and managed to reach the men before the lifeboat. They rescued the pilots in treacherous conditions and took them to St Andrews where the pilots recovered from their ordeal. The two pilots were Flight Commander Hans Acworth Busk (later killed in action in Gallipoli in January 1916) and Lieutenant Colonel L. H. Strain. They both later wrote to Robert Brown thanking him for his efforts, and the Museum is delighted to have also obtained these letters for our archive.

Winifred McKenzie Acquisition

Museum Curator Samantha Bannerman
with the painting

The Museum is delighted with its newest acquisition Still life with red and blue poppies by Winifred McKenzie. With the assistance of the National Fund for Acquisitions we were able to table a competitive bid for the painting at auction in Edinburgh, and our bid won. Using archive material relating to Winifred and Sister Alison, it was possible to determine that the painting was first sold at a St Andrews Art Club exhibition in 1977.
 
Although we hold an archive of information on the McKenzie sisters, we do not have any of their oil paintings in the art collection, making this a really important acquisition for the Museum. The painting will go on public display in the Museum for one month during Easter 2015 alongside a number of other recent acquisitions.

We are extremely grateful for the support from the National Fund for Acquisitions.