As of this
week, I am proud to say that Virginia and I have officially seen every hat in
the collection (that we know of, at least.) When we stored the last box, I
think we were both in some level of denial and frankly it took me awhile to
realize that we were really, truly moving on to something else.
In
celebration of being finished with hats, we watched Pirates of the
Caribbean in order to admire the many hats that appear in the movie (and by
that, I mean admire the people wearing said hats.)
So now
what?
Well, in
this whole process we’ve stumbled upon boxes that we’ll need to address, and
then move on to the aisle storage to look at the boxes there. When we pulled
down the last 4 or so boxes from one of the shelves, we found that actually 3
of them contained garments in need of conservational help. At some point we
will look through these boxes to determine which ones will be “fixed up”.
When
considering items for conservation, two main factors are considered. One is
condition (What kind of damage/wear is there on the garment? What materials are
involved? How much would it take to restore/repair the garment?) and the other
I might describe as “value” (Is there anything particularly important or unique
about this item? Does it have special history or meaning? What is it “worth”?)
It’s
important to balance the two, because we have finite resources. Ultimately it
comes down to deciding what restorations/repairs would benefit the collection
the most. Recently we did lay out a lovely buttery-lemon colored bodice &
skirt to be examined for potential conservation work. While it’s certainly a
possibility in the future, for the purposes of the exhibition this fall it was
not worth it.
We also
need to address our growing list of deaccession candidates. When an item is
taken into the collection (accessioned)
it is assigned an accession number, tagged, etc. After a set number of years
that I can’t recall at the moment, a donation can be considered for removal
from the collection (deaccessioning).
The majority of the time, items will be taken out due to condition issues. For
example, we’ve added fur and velvet hats to the list that had shedding/balding
issues that wouldn’t be easily fixed.
As I’ve
been writing this, I’ve realized just how much work there is left to do…how
much work there will always be left
to do. I couldn’t be happier, though!
And now,
for the very last time, here are some photos of some of the hats I’ve come
across lately:
(The majority of the boxes with yellow sticky notes were looked at by yours truly)
Bye, Hats!
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