Preparing and packing artifacts for shipment

"Have artifacts. . . will travel"

By Gwen Spicer

Any time an artifact travels, there is a great deal of risk.  However, travel they must.  Especially since part of the mission for a museum is education and displaying the artifacts to the public, and sometimes the public is far away, perhaps even on another continent.  Such is the case with collections from several New York State institutions that are traveling to Germany for the exhibit: On the Trail of the Iroquois, to open in Bonn, Germany later this year. This is an opportunity for a broader audience to see these amazing artifacts.

Spicer Art Conservation has been fortunate to be part of this great exhibition.  Several former posts have discussed some of the artifacts that are included in this exhibit.  But this particular post is less about the content of the exhibit, and more about the logistics of getting rare, unique and exceptionally delicate artifacts packed up, put on an airplane, and ultimately delivered to the other side of the world.  And then of course displayed before being packed up and flown back home.

The important part of such an endeavor is for all of the artifacts to safely arrive and then return. That is where the experience of Professional Art Packers and craters come into place.

First the individual artifacts need to be carefully supported. Then they and their supports need to be boxed and placed into sturdy creates.  It is a mathematical and geometrical problem that needs to be worked out in three-dimensions.  It also must be performed so that all the parts can be easily understood.  Standard systems have been worked out over the years by specialized Art Packing companies.  However, since each artifact is so individual, there is also a lot of custom work that is necessary.

Below are a few examples of such packing techniques that were designed by professional art packers.

One type of packing is called cavity packing.  It consists of foam that is carved slightly larger than the size of the artifact, the cavity is lined with polyester batting and covered with a layer of soft Tyvek.  The foam fills the inside of a box, and several boxes fill a create.  The individual artifacts are arranged to fit a specific area.

The small artifacts were kept in place with small pillows attached to twill tape.

Cavity packing of a larger artifact.

Larger three dimensional artifacts are boxed.  Below are several stages of a support for a basket.  The box is made of Gatorboard.  Both the base that the basket sits upon, and the support mid-way up, slide out.

Basket being fitted.

Internal support for the basket.

Below is the inside of a box for a ceramic pot.  The pot is secured and surrounded with the same materials and methods as Cavity packing.

The pots rests on a cushion and is secured with two halves that surround the neck
of the pot. The front sides pulls out, using the tabs. The pot can be safely removed.

The smaller boxes fit inside of this create.  The larger box is for the basket and the two smaller boxes are for two ceramic pots.

Create with the boxes installed.

The vertical box behind is only to fill the space.

As you can begin to see, the artifacts are grouped by their needs, shapes and sizes.  For this group of artifacts, size was a determining factor, as well as weight.  One long crate was created for all of the long artifacts that included javelins, arrows, and a pestle.  The storage trays for each of these artifacts were incorporated into the packing.  Some additional supports were added.  The heaviest item, in this case the pestle, was positioned as the bottom tray.  The vertical Ethafoam sides of the tray supported the tray to be placed on top.

Detail of buckle support.

Each tray's height was pre-determined.  So, when all of the trays were placed inside the crate and the lid is closed, all of the inside layers are precisely stacked and supported without too much pressure, but also not loose, for that would cause additional vibrations.

The Cane and Blow gun.

Another crate was sized for two larger artifacts, one being an overdress.  Other mid-sized artifacts were groups to fill additional trays.

The Ethafoam frame work is incorporated in the design to
support the upper trays when placed in the crate.

Individual bumpers were secured to the underside of the straps
that secured the mounted Snowshoes.

Straps were not used with this artifact, instead an Ethafoam
beam was  used to provided overall gentle pressure. 

A Volara layer was secured to outer surfaces of the Ethafoam bumpers.

Archival packing and crating is a geometric three-dimensional puzzle.  The individual packing occurs on site, but before the professional art packers arrive, there is extensive work that is done first.  A full plan is mapped out where all of the artifacts are to go.  Each tray and the amount of space is predetermined and pre-cut Ethafoam pieces are provided that are pre-sized.

It is critical that an institution provides as many accurate dimensions as possible. The dimensions must include not just the standard, height and width, but also depth.  If storage trays or other supports are present, these too need to be disclosed.  No company that is being asked to perform this task can know the size of these, and communicating as much as possible is necessary.

So many steps exist prior to an exhibit opening.  The orchestration of borrowing artifacts from several institutions, and then conserving, conditioning and packing these artifacts will be for nothing if they are not transported with the utmost care by the experts.

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Gwen Spicer is a textile conservator in private practice.  Spicer Art Conservation specializes in textile conservation, object conservation, and the conservation of works on paper.  Gwen's innovative treatment and mounting of flags and textiles is unrivaled.   To contact her, please visit her website.

Conserving works on paper of the Native American traditions painted by Ernest Smith

by Gwen Spicer

Thanksgiving is fast approaching, and for me, I cannot help but think of corn.  While corn may not have been what you would have thought of, let me explain why it's on my mind.  Corn is everywhere.  Corn is a symbol of the autumnal season.  "Indian corn" with it's beautiful brilliant colors are seen in decorations and corn stalks are tied together and grace lampposts everywhere.  The corn that grows at some of the farms near our studio is used to feed livestock and some cobs are harvested to be used as a fuel source.  And let us not forget corn kernnels, whether creamed or simply buttered, will undoubtedly appear on your Thanksgiving table, I know they will be on mine.

"Woman Preparing Corn" by Ernest Smith

Besides preparing for a big dinner with family, much of my time these days is spent working on items which will be included in an exhibit, "On the Trails of the Iroquois," which will take place in Germany next year.  Having the opportunity to treat such a wide array of Native American ethnology has been a tremendous experience.  I have also read a tremendous amount about the various collections, most notably those at the Rochester Museum and Science Center (RMSC) and the New York State Museum.  Collections of Iroquois ethnology exist due to a huge effort that went into capturing the true essence of daily life in the various tribes through actual objects, garments, illustrations and daguerroetypes by people such as Lewis Henry Morgan, and later by William Stiles.

Another important figure in the preservation of authentic Haudenosaunee (term used by the Iroquois to refer to themselves) was Arthur C. Parker, great-nephew of Caroline and Ely Parker (see blog post for 10/19/12) and director of the Rochester Museum of Arts and Sciences from 1924-1945.  In 1934, Arthur Parker initiated a program, The Works Progress Administration (WPA), to essentially rescue the native arts and crafts of the New York Indians before they were lost.

Washing corn after leaching by Ernest Smith

Parker sees that the world perceives American Indian art as nothing more than a souvenir industry dictated by Victorian tastes, which has caused it to be devoid of ethnological value.  He feared the extinction of traditional artistic methods and wanted to save as much as could be preserved.  However, Parker's vision was not just for preservation,  he also thought that a resurgence of true Indian art, and the instruction of these traditional styles to the next generation, would produce new art that may also offer a method of self-support to a financially struggling population.

Through the WPA, artists were provided with all the tools and materials they would need to create art.  This included access to photographs, illustrations, patterns, and tribal elders to provide oral history and folklore.  Most notably used are some of the original illustrations from Morgan.  In fact, if you look at the leggings and underskirt in the painting above, you will see that the woman pictured is "wearing" some of Caroline Parker's clothes.  Arthur Parker is clear however, that there is never any direction of what to create.  Instead, once the artists had been trained, they were encouraged to spontaneously produce their own original art.

Ernest Smith (1907-75), a Tonawanda Seneca, is one of these artists.  In the six years he spends with Arthur Parker and the WPA project, Smith produces 240 watercolor and oil paintings, each one capturing a moment of daily life or illustrating Native American mythology.  Smith's work is wonderful, and clearly some is more simplistic with the image centrally located in the painting, and the background is simply left in the color of the original board.  Other paintings (his "Sky Woman", for example) are the opposite: the paint covers every inch, the images have depth, light, shadow, and movement.  Smith's paintings are filled with symbolism and knowing what the symbols represent makes his work even that much more beautiful and complex.  It is in this way that Smith is truly able to "speak" through his paintings...if you know how to listen to his language.  Visit this link to RMSC: http://www3.rmsc.org/museum/exhibits/online/lhm/IAPpaintings.htm, here you will find beautiful photographs of their collection of Ernest Smith's paintings, plus an in-depth description of the story being told in each painting.

The Three Sisters and the Jo'ka:o turning the squash to ripen

Reverse side of the board that Ernest Smith used.

Ernest Smith, despite his incredible collection of work, remains virtually unknown.  His work survives at both RMSC and the NYS Museum as well as a small collection at the Iroquois Museum and the Smithsonian.
The WPA ended in 1942 when funding dried up and a fire destroyed the building used by the artists.  For all his efforts, Parker's vision was only partially fulfilled.  Art was produced and traditions were recorded.  But the artisans never quite experienced an appreciation for their own unique style and therefore never were successful in selling "real" native art.  The outside world had too strong of an influence and sadly the demand for Indian art reinterpreted into "souvenir style" was what sold, and so that is what artists produced if they wanted to sell their work and therefore survive.


If you would like to read more about the trade industry of the American Indian at this time and how it was effected by not only cultural influence, you must read, "Trading Identities - the Souvenir in Native American Art from the Northeast 1700-1900" by Ruth B. Phillips.  Also interesting is James Gifford's "The Predicament of Culture".  Both of these authors discuss the influence of culture on art and present the inevitable outcome when cultures clash.  It begs the question: is there really "pure" cultural art, or is art evolutionary as cultures develop?


While I ponder that question, I will be treating and cleaning the ethnology of the Haudenosaunee, thinking about Ernest Smith and how I wish he had painted on better archival quality board, and making corn bread for tomorrow's feast.  Ernest Smith's images of early Native American life is humbling and leaves me with an appreciation of how challenging life was for the subjects in his paintings.  It makes me especially thankful for family and traditions, no matter how they have changed.  


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Gwen Spicer is a textile conservator in private practice.  Spicer Art Conservation specializes in textile conservation, object conservation, and the conservation of works on paper.  Gwen's innovative treatment and mounting of flags and textiles is unrivaled.   To contact her, please visit her website.

The conservation of textiles belonging to Caroline Parker, the Seneca woman known for her clothing.

by Gwen Spicer

Caroline Parker, was a Tonawanda Seneca and older sister to Levi Parker. They were both friends with Lewis Henry Morgan, a pioneering ethnographer and lawyer from Rochester, New York.  It was Morgan who, with the assistance of the Parker family, amassed collections in the mid-nineteenth century of Iroquois artifacts that are now housed at the New York State Museum in Albany, New York; National Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark; and the Rochester Museum & Science Center in Rochester, New York.

Caroline Parker, ca. 1840. Daguerreotype

Caroline Parker wearing articles of traditional
Seneca clothing that were sent by Morgan
to the NYSM in 1851. Colored lithograph

Caroline Parker is unusual in the fact that up to recently, she was only known for the clothes that she was pictured wearing and that she had possibly been the creator of these clothes.  Morgan's two published reports on the collections made for the New York State Regents and his subsequent League of the Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee or Iroquois included colored lithographs of Caroline and her brother, Levi, dressed in clothing, and of the individual articles of dress, now in the collections of the New York State Museum.  The full standing figure image is often used in publications or illustrations in exhibitions of a "typical Iroquois woman".  It is fascinating how the clothing has personified not only her, but all Iroquois.  Her image, as well as that of her brother, have become the ideal or stereotype of the well dressed Iroquois.

In 1849, Morgan acquired complete Seneca woman's and man's ceremonial costumes of the day, including this skirt (see above image).  In the daguerreotype, Caroline Parker is shown wearing the woman's costume, consisting of beaded moccasins, leggings, skirt, overdress, blanket, and handbag.  Most, if not all, of which she herself had made.

A note on the images, first between the daguerreotype and the lithograph, the artist did make a few changes.  But also when daguerreotypes are created, the image that they produce is a mirror image of the subject.  The most notable element is the beaded flower on the skirt.  The lithograph, as well as the photograph (both are featured in the images below) of the skirt show it as the object actually exists. 

The images below are the plates from Lewis Henry Morgan's Third Regents Report, Chapter 8.  The clothing articles are the items that Caroline Parker is wearing in the above images. 

Pl. 6  Over-dress, front

Pl. 6a  Over-dress, back

Pl. 5  Skirt

Pl. 4  Female leggings

Pl. 2  Moccason, for female (spelling in the report)

Pl. 11  Work bag

What wonderful luck to have these images of the individual artifacts, and how the assemblage would have been worn. A true treasure. This is especially the case as the the vast majority of the artifacts were destroyed by the devastating 1911 fire of the New York State Capital, where all of the collections were on exhibition.  Below are the clothing articles that survived, which consists of only the overdress and skirt.  Thanks to an IMLS grant in 1998, these and other fragile textiles from the collection were stabilized and rehoused for study.

Red overdress, NYSM

Beaded skirt, NYSM

The surviving overdress and skirt are considered to have been made by Caroline herself.  Her mother, Elizabeth Parker was also known as a needlewoman, so it might be that she also had a part in their construction.  However, the RMSC has two beaded textiles, an overdress and table cover, that are attributed solely to Caroline.

Even in the mid-nineteenth century, Iroquois had made adaptions and were influenced by their surroundings. One case in point is the style and cut of the overdress. It has many similarities to the cut of garments worn by the larger New York community during the 1840s. The exception being the beadwork, in particular, which distinguishes it as Native American. (A non-Indian woman, for instance, would have worn lace-trimmed pantalettes instead of bead-trimmed leggings.) 

Now, thanks to Deborah Holler, a historian, Caroline Parker's biography has come to light. We now know the important roll that she played with her family, clan, and larger community.  It was a time of change and turmoil for the Tonawanda Seneca.  Land was sold, new means and ways of living where needed to be found.  With her knowledge of English, promoted by Morgan himself, she acted as translator for her community during the later half of the nineteenth century.  Her education, as a female at the time, was extraordinary.  She attended Baptist Missionary School at Pembroke, later the Cayuga Academy in Auburn, and lastly the State Normal School in Albany, New York.

The New York State Museum has on their website all of their collections: http://collections.nysm.nysed.gov/morgan/. To read more about the skirt www.nysm.nysed.gov/womenshistory/skirt.html.

Rochester Museum & Science Center also has some of their collection online at: http://www3.rmsc.org/museum/exhibits/online/lhm/LHMmain.htm

Many thanks to George Hammell and his assistance with this post.
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Gwen Spicer is a textile conservator in private practice.  Spicer Art Conservation specializes in textile conservation, object conservation, and the conservation of works on paper.  Gwen's innovative treatment and mounting of flags and textiles is unrivaled.   To contact her, please visit her website.

Versatile Mannequin Design for textile display

It is always a struggle.  Whether you are a conservator, costume professional, or a museum curator, displaying garments on a suitable display-form leaves you dissatisfied with the results and exhausted from the struggle.  History has produced a variety of mannequins and display-forms: from ready-made, to custom-built, dress forms in passive and molded buckram, as well as carved mannequins, just to name a few.  Yet, each was specifically designed for a specific situation, leaving the mannequin "pigeon-holed" in its purpose.  But not any more.  The mannequin, as we know it, has stepped out of the ho-hum and has evolved into the hot-diggity!

What if a mannequin could be as versatile as the entire collection it needs to display? What if a single mannequin could be used to display a mid-century taffeta gown, or just as easily, an 18th century military uniform?

These questions, along with a set of specific demands, led to the development of just such a mannequin.  During a project to create 33 mannequins for the National Air and Space Museum's exhibit, "America by Air", Spicer Art Conservation (along with the museum staff and SmallCorp) were able to come up with an easily dressed form for both male and female garments, displayed at various heights and positions.  This reliable and versatile form is easy to produce and easy to use.  It's novelty is the internal armature, known as "side-ways ladders"(see illustrations below: left: original drawing of mannequin; right: side-ways ladder embedded in foam)

A display from NASM's 

Often it seems that conservators take on all steps of mannequin production.  But by allowing the metal armatures to be made by a metal smith, the conservator can focus on the careful shaping of the ethafoam forms.  The other benefit is "straightness on the base".  How many times has a conservator spent hours carving a form, only to have it inserted on an angle onto the metal display post?  (The answer: Too many times!).  With this design, the placement of the armatures ensures straightness on the base.  An added bonus is that the procedure is quite quick. Dressing a mannequin is made simple as all the parts disassemble.  What is more, is that the design is not limited to a specific fashion period, gender, or ethnic group.

Above: Carving the foam 

So we have a mannequin that is easy to dress, looks great, is adaptable to any display situation, and can be used multiple times with flexible and versatile components that are able to be mixed and matched.  Did I mention that the upper portion could be used for both the display AND the storage of the artifact? (see 4/25/12 blog entry: "Conservation is More Than Treatment")

 

(series of three photos above:  a gradual progression of building a mannequin for Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society's exhibit, "Trial of Red Jacket".)                                                        

As a conservator, I love a challenge.  And I especially love when an item in our daily repertoire can be reinvented to become something extraordinary.  My hope is that museums (both large and small), institutions, and those in private practice can use this design in a successful way to display a wide variety of costume garments easily over the course of many exhibits.

This blog post by Barbara Owens summarizes a paper and talk given by Gwen Spicer, "A Versatile Mannequin" presented at American Institute for Conservation's 34th Annual Meeting. To download a copy of the paper, just click on the link.

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Gwen Spicer is a textile conservator in private practice.  Spicer Art Conservation specializes in textile conservation, object conservation, and the conservation of works on paper.  Gwen's innovative treatment and mounting of flags and textiles is unrivaled.   To contact her, please visit her website.