Our Threads and Needles, Scissors and Pins, Stitched and Snipped Through A Brilliant Year of Textile Conservation and Restoration

2022 is a Wrap. Here’s to 2023, and to you—
our wonderful textilian friends!

2022 was peppered with covid, but in between we conserved, surveyed, examined, dressed, and prepped over 200 textiles thanks to our dynamic team of Julia, Kaitlyn, Katherine, Emilee, and Peyton. 3 wedding veils, 12 samplers, 2 Folk Art dolls from the 1960s, 3 christening dresses, 2 kimono, 2 Chinese temple banners, 3 Medieval fragments, 80+ quilts, 40 Dior dresses, 5 political pennants, an Asafo flag, and a Steelers banner!

Here are some of our highlights from 2022

How about starting the year with the SHROUD OF TURIN?  Exquisitely woven and imprinted facsimiles for an exhibition at the Museum of the Bible took 3 of us to press out creases. We had to keep checking our emotional reactions to these ‘powerful’ copies.

And then a Jolly Roger Pirate flag – shiver me timbers!

1968 Poor People’s Campaign Pennant, salvaged after the rally, now conserved and mounted.

Justice Brandeis Robe, circa 1930, which arrived in the studio the day after the Supreme Court Roe v Wade “memo leak.” What an honor to preserve this piece of American jurisprudence.

Some of our favorite quilts were these three, made by our client’s great-grandmother.

Quilts inside of quilts, fabrics from 1900 to 1960s, embedded with secrets and stories and so much love.

Spring Blossomed as we worked on the Hillwood Grace Kelly Dior exhibit.

Re-dressing the dancing dollies of Possum Trot for Smithsonian American Art Museum with Leah Bright.

Speaking of the stories woven into textiles, these three large Guatemalan embroideries are from a dynamic cooperative called Multicolores. We prepared them for display in the US Embassy in Guatemala City. (See more of the collections at Amy Kaslow Gallery)

These rare and exquisite silk brocade temple banners 18th c were extensively treated by Peyton during her summer internship.

Installing the tour de force 30′ x 18′  MONUMENTAL by Sonya Clarke, at the Renwick Gallery

Kaitlyn visited the MET to see the Fannie Criss dresses she conserved, in the exhibit In America: An Anthology of Fashion.

A chance to examine and document the most stunning collection of Amish quilts, ever.

This reminds us why we really love our work…because we get to pause, look deeply, hold and touch, repair, and care for such extraordinary pieces of textile art conveyed through the ages from those hands to our hands.