by Julia M Brennan and Anna Tendler Mulaney In these hurried days leading up to the holidays, we invite you to slow down and engage in a little stitching meditation. Listen. Pictured above is a late 19th c Meiji period Japanese uchikake, a ceremonial robe custom made for a bride. It is decorated with symbols from the […]
Honoring Authenticity
by Julia M Brennan The flag was flying during Hurricane Katrina, battered, wind-torn, soiled with mud and rain…..this is how it came to the conservation studio. Like many personal objects from scenes of tragedy, the context, and its used appearance is central to understanding and verifying historical details. In conservation, the central philosophy is to […]
Adorable Alert: Christening Gown Photos…Baby Included!
We work on quite a few christening dresses here at Caring for Textiles. However, we don’t often get to see the final result once we send these precious pieces on their way. Imagine our delight when we received a greeting in the mail with two photos of a gown we had worked on—and the adorable […]
The Bobbinet Blog, or “Tulle Tales”
By Julia Brennan and Kaitlyn Munro Recently I met my lovely friend Claire Chen, who was wearing a gossamer tulle skirt, which fluttered around her like a butterfly. It was enchanting, so was she, and my curiosity about tulle was stirred. I started noticing the tulle explosion everywhere …… in the fashion magazines Chanel, Dior, Mango, […]
Gloriously Blessing the Baby…and Restoring the Glory to the Gown
Over the years we have cleaned, conserved, and repaired hundreds of historic christening dresses. Each one is different, short or long, tiered or sheer, embroidered or laced, pleated or smocked – each with its own family stories. Most have very yellowed ‘bib’ areas from sweet milky spittle, and often a host of rips and tears…..it […]
Fit for a Queen: Remarkable Restoration, Exquisite Embroidery & Innovative Invisible Mannequins
In Celebration of Her Majesty’s 7th cycle Birthday 2016 July is always a busy month at the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in Bangkok, as annual preparations take place for Her Majesty’s August birthday. This year was a big one—7 cycles of 12 is very auspicious and the museum pulled out all the stops. Two new […]
Puppet Masters: Conservation in Miniature
In the first partnership of its kind, I led the The Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in Bangkok and the Taiyuan Asian Puppet Museum in Taipei for a puppet textile conservation training workshop. In the lively one-week session, conservators Nuchada Piranprasankit and Yaowalak Bunnag, from the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles, and I trained staff […]
Let’s Hear it for the Boys #3: The All-American Installment
The final post in Julia’s three-part series dedicated to the gentleman. If you missed my first two posts on ‘man-centric’ textiles (or if you just loved them so much and you want to reread) – you can find the first post here, and the second post can be found here. Over the years, Caring for Textiles has […]
Why we never run out of steam!
Here’s a story on a workhorse of our studio – our beloved Jiffy steamer!
Ahoy there, Mateys!–Part 2 of Let’s Hear it for the Boys!
The second of Julia’s two three-part* series dedicated to the gentleman. If you missed my first post on ‘man-centric’ textiles – you can read it here. Here are a few more of my favorites: *NOTE from Julia: I found so many great guys in our collection, I’m planning a third installment of this blog…stay tuned! Sailors’ […]
