Emerging Conservation Professional
Conservation Treatments
During my undergraduate studies at the University of Delaware, I was able to undertake multiple conservation projects both in and outside of class in disciplines such as preventive, textile, and painting conservation. Click the images below for information on different projects, as well as associated documents.
Textiles
Cleaning & Documentation of an Early 20th-Century Child's White Dress
This picture shows the dress that I chose to treat. I chose to work with this dress because I was curious about the identity of the dark red-brown stains that can be seen in the yoke and skirt. I felt this dress would provide a challenge in designing its treatment.
To measure the success, or at least the color change to the dress after our wet cleaning, we performed colorimetry. We took measurements at three spots: one relatively normal, one stain, and one discolored spot. To ensure that the readings were taken at the same exact spots before and after treatment, we created these mylar templates.
Pictured above is the custom archival padded hanger that I prepared to ensure the safe storage of this dress for when it was returned to the University of Delaware's Historic Costume & Textile Collection.
This picture shows the dress that I chose to treat. I chose to work with this dress because I was curious about the identity of the dark red-brown stains that can be seen in the yoke and skirt. I felt this dress would provide a challenge in designing its treatment.
During the class ARTC-464: Textile Conservation Internship at the University of Delaware in the Spring of 2018, I completed a wet cleaning of an early 19th-century child's white dress, as well as a condition and treatment report. This was a multi-step project, including:
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Documentation of dress before treatment
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Mechanical cleaning of dress with vacuum
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Wet cleaning of dress with Orvus and Citric Acid in deionized water
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Documentation of treatment and post-treatment
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Preparation of an archival padded hanger for the safe storage of the garment
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Preparation of a condition and treatment report
For more information about this treatment, click the button to the right to view the full condition and treatment report.
Wet-Cleaning of an Early 20th-Century
White Dress
During the Summer of 2017, I and another undergraduate student, AnnaLivia McCarthy, assisted Dr. Vicki Cassman in the preparation of multiple early 20th-century garments for the exhibition Fashion on All Fronts: Stories from the Wardrobe, 1914-1918. The garments were stored in the University of Delaware's Historic Costume & Textile Collection, and some of them needed to be cleaned before they could be displayed.
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One dress in particular was made of a very thin cotton and had been overly starched, resulting in flattening and severe wrinkles and creases throughout the garment. AnnaLivia and I wet-cleaned the dress in a 1% Borax solution in distilled water to remove some of the starch, and to release some of the wrinkles. However, before the dress could be bathed in the solution, we had to remove the mother of pearl buttons because they would be damaged by the bleach.
Photo Credit: AnnaLivia McCarthy
Photo Credit: AnnaLivia McCarthy
Photo Credit: AnnaLivia McCarthy
Photo Credit: AnnaLivia McCarthy
Now that the dress was wet and less stiffened by starch, we laid it on a table to dry, stuffing the interior with netting to improve its shape and reduce the flatness of the garment. We dried it using a blow dryer set to cool, and smoothed the skirt with our hands as we went. However, the dress was so wrinkled that creases still prevailed. We placed the dress on a mannequin and dampened it again with a Dahlia sprayer and repeated the same drying process while the dress was vertical. After this process, not only was the dress ready for display in an exhibition, but it was also much more stable and returned to its original appearance.
Natural History
Cleaning and compensating for losses on a taxidermy toad
In this image, you can clearly see the losses to the brittle skin on this taxidermied American Toad.
Using cosmetic sponges, I removed grime and arsenic from the surface of the skin. I am wearing PPE to protect myself from arsenic exposure. Photo Credit: Hannah Blank
Once the toad and its companion were treated by myself and a fellow classmate, they were photographed in our studio. The photos were edited for color accuracy in Adobe Lightroom and then uploaded to the condition and treatment report.
In this image, you can clearly see the losses to the brittle skin on this taxidermied American Toad.
Supervised by Dr. Mariana di Giacomo, I carried out the treatment of a taxidermy American Toad from the Iron Hill Science Center in Newark, DE as part of the ARTC-464 internship in Natural History at the University of Delaware.
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I began by assessing the condition of the toad, then prepared a condition report and came up with a treatment plan. The toad's skin was very brittle, and was exhibiting some cracks and losses due to being overstuffed with cotton. Dr. di Giacomo had previously tested the toad using Portable X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) which had determined the presence of arsenic on the toad's skin, a common pesticide used in the production of historic taxidermy.
I began the treatment by mechanically cleaning the toad with cosmetic sponges while wearing proper PPE to prevent arsenic exposure. Then, I steamed the toad's skin to reduce the brittleness, which allowed me to remove the excess padding without causing further damage to the skin. Once this was done, I painted Japanese tissue paper to match the toads skin. Once the paint dried, I used Beva-371 film to attach the patches to the inside of the skin surrounding the tears, which would prevent the tears from worsening and visually compensate for the losses to the skin surface on the sides and underbelly of the toad. Lastly, I performed after-treatment photography and prepared a treatment report detailing my work on this object. It was truly rewarding to gain hands-on experience working with natural history specimens, and I hope to be able to perform similar treatments in the future.
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Paintings
During the class ARTC-464: Painting Conservation Internship at the University of Delaware in the Fall of 2018, I assisted in the treatment of the frame of a painting of Major John Patton, both of which had been damaged in a fire. The damage consisted of staining, losses to the gilded surface of the frame, the formation of "popcorns" due to the swelling of the wood underneath the gilded surface, and some structural damages.
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I inpainted the losses of the bottom proper left edge and corner of the frame using Golden PVA Conservation Colors and Mica Colors. The corner had sustained some structural damages, but a plaster Flügger fill had already been made by Megan Abercrombie to compensate for this loss.
Photo Credit: Sydney Cole
Photo Credit: Sydney Cole
Consolidating the Losses of a Fire-Damaged Frame
Preventive
The padded board is made of three pieces of matboard glued together, which is then covered with polyester batting which is adhered to the back of the board using double-sided tape. The board is then covered with a blue, plain-weave cotton show fabric which is adhered to the board with BEVA film tape. The pieces of the shattered flag were carefully arranged on the padded board using tweezers and a microspatula before being placed covered with the Optium Acrylic and sealed into a package.
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Optium Acrylic was chosen to mitigate the reflection of light on the glass that would interfere with viewing the object, and because it is less fragile. However, it does have a higher static charge associated with it which is a concern if the object is removed from the package. However, the object will most likely stay in the package for the foreseeable future.
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Another part of this project involved making a reproduction of the flag to be installed into the diorama in the place of the shattered flag. The original flag was a 48-star flag, despite the fact that the event depicted took place when America used a 46-star flag. Using the website contrado.com, I was able to order a digitally printed 48-star flag on silk, which I then stained with ProFab Fabric Paints to match the color scheme of the diorama. The flag had to be cut from the larger piece of silk I ordered and then hemmed using a back stitch.
During the Fall semester of 2018, I prepared an archival sealed-package pressure mount for the shattered American flag from the Matthew Henson North Pole Diorama from the Tuskegee University Collections. The first step in preserving this flag was deciding what the safest type of mount would be for the flag, which I discussed with Laura Mina and William Donnelly from the Textile Conservation Studio at Winterthur Museum. We decided to use a sealed-package pressure mount because it would not cause any changes to the object over time, and because it would be safe for both the storage and display of the object.
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I began this project by creating a prototype of the mount to test the effectiveness of the pressure mount to hold up the shattered fabric by using samples of shredded silk. The sealed package contains a padded board mount, a piece of Optium Acrylic, and a piece of coroplast for stability, sealed with 1 inch JLAR tape. The package was then placed inside a shadowbox frame with 1 inch depth, the rest of which was filled out with two more boards of coroplast and then closed.
Photo Credit: Jesse Kraft
This image shows me using 1 inch JLAR tape to seal the Optium Acrylic, flag, padded board, and coroplast together. Photo Credit: Sydney Cole
Preparing a Sealed-Package Pressure Mount for a Shattered Miniature Flag
I gave a presentation on this project at the first Annual Art Conservation Vicki Cassman Undergraduate Symposium in February of 2019. Click the button below to watch the recording of my talk. A report on my work on this project is available for download by clicking the PDF button as well.