Managing Costume Collections: An Essential Primer

By Louise Coffey-Webb and Robin D. Campbell

Managing Costume Collections offers systematic approaches to organization, accessibility, record keeping, safety, and a host of other stewardship concerns related to managing costume collections of every type. Conceived to address needs long identified by the Costume Society of America, this guide is written for a broad spectrum of collection managers at museums, historical societies and houses, university theaters and study collections, and company archives, as well as for vintage dealers, private collectors, and living history performers.

Drawing on the wisdom of many disciplines, Coffey-Webb takes a holistic approach to problem-solving, explaining appropriate procedures and the reasons behind them, to arm collection managers, specialists and nonspecialists alike, with sufficient tools to make informed decisions on their own. She also offers alternative solutions to the recommended guidelines.

Although there are books on costume conservation, there is a paucity of 04 Activeable material on costume-collection management. Managing Costume Collections is the first work in collection management to address a wide audience, from general to academic and hobbyist to professional, interested specifically in costume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
• Release date: Apr 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9780896729582

Louise Coffey-Webb

Louise Coffey-Webb has worked as curator, collection manager, adjudicator, professor, conservation assistant, and independent consultant with costume collections both large and small. Her knowledge of managing costume collections comes from moving collections into new storage, traveling and lecturing internationally, and helping save collections from imminent destruction. She divides her time between the United Kingdom and Culver City, California.

Book preview

Managing_Costume_Collections_Cover.jpg

Costume Society of America series

Phyllis A. Specht, Series Editor

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Managing Costume Collections

An Essential Primer

Louise Coffey-Webb

Foreword by Robin D. Campbell

Texas Tech University Press

Copyright © 2016 by Louise Coffey-Webb

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including electronic storage and retrieval systems, except by explicit prior written permission of the publisher. Brief passages excerpted for review and critical purposes are excepted.

This book is typeset in Minion Pro. The paper used in this book meets the

minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

Cover photograph/illustration: Angels Costumes London.

Photograph by Louise Coffey-Webb, with permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Coffey-Webb, Louise, author. | Costume Society of America.

Title: Managing costume collections : an essential primer / Louise

Coffey-Webb ; foreword by Robin D. Campbell.

Description: Lubbock, Texas : Texas Tech University Press, 2016. | Series:

Costume Society of America series | Includes bibliographical references

and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015039969| ISBN 9780896729575 (paperback) |

ISBN 9780896729568 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780896729582 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Costume museums. | Museums—Collection management. | BISAC: DESIGN / Textile & Costume. | DESIGN / Fashion.

Classification: LCC NK4701.8 .C64 2016 | DDC 706—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015039969

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 / 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Texas Tech University Press

Box 41037 | Lubbock, Texas 79409-1037 USA

800.832.4042 | [e-mail] | www.ttupress.org

This book is dedicated to all those along my path, who

recognized my passion for costume and its place in our world, and who encouraged me to continue in my pursuits.

Contents

Illustrations

Foreword

Acknowledgments and Photography Credits

Introduction

Chapter 1: What Is Collection Management?

Chapter 2: Record Keeping

Chapter 3: Controlling the Environment

Chapter 4: Exhibitions and Display

Appendix 1: Useful Resources

Appendix 2: Forms You Can Use

Glossary

Select Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Men’s jackets organized by size and color 14

Dry-cleaning-style automated rack for reproduction clothing 16

View of the atrium storage area 17

Wall plan of holdings showing color-coded sections 18

1930s sweaters grouped by color in well-labeled corrugated

polypropylene archival boxes 21

Early-nineteenth-century shoes in compact storage drawer 23

Earlier storage version of similar period footwear 24

Shoes stored in commercial shoeboxes 25

Study storage drawer under acrylic with former placement

method, 1992 26

Former director Edward Maeder holds the pallet for a pair

of eighteenth-century shoes 27

Shoes in a polypropylene box with size tags 27

Fan storage at the Gabriella and Leo Benarek Textile

Conservation Laboratory 29

Supported brisé fan at the Gabriella and Leo Benarek

Textile Conservation Laboratory 29

Drawer of parasols resting on Ethafoam bridges 31

Hanging parasols in muslin bags 31

Headdresses and footwear from Varekai designed by

Eiko Ishioka 33

Custom hat box with mount 34

Hats on shelves with glass sliding doors 35

Easy-access hats on pegboard 35

Hat storage on enclosed pull-out shelves 36

Howard Greer’s sketch and annotations for Marion Davies

in the film Cardboard Lover, 1928 38

Sample page from ICOM International Committee for

Museums and Collection of Costume’s Vocabulary of

Basic Terms for Cataloguing Costume 52

Makeshift photography studio in collection workroom 56

Archival costume box labeled with photographs 58

Large manila tags are attached with a tag gun 64

Man’s rental jacket organized by size and date 65

Hanging tag sample 66

A bar code being adhered to a man’s shirt 68

Refrigerated and humidity-controlled fur storage interior 74

Refrigerated and humidity-controlled fur storage exterior 75

Celluloid button (1940s coat) with chemical deterioration

in the form of crystals 82

Examples of sausages made of ecru muslin over

polyester needle-punched batting 84

John Galliano and author, not wearing gloves in order to

unhook closures with dexterity 86

Rolling clothing rack with canvas covers 88

Detail of canvas tiebacks showing method of closure to be

a button 89

Magnets holding Tyvek dust covers to the metal

storage container 90

Kimono envelope for storing folded kimono 91

Hanging huipiles 92

Hanging storage 93

Example of a rolled 1920s dress 94

Rolled handkerchiefs 95

Flat storage (drawer) for 1920s dress 96

Examples of polypropylene boxes for collar storage 97

Former work space in a closed-off stairwell 98

Easy access to the collection at the Fashion Resource

Center, School of the Art Institute of Chicago 99

1920s Jean Patou gown showing a water-damage mark

at thigh level 100

Slide-out trays for specimens on type of crenellated

rolling rack 105

Emergency supplies on rolling cart 106

Webbing clothes moth (Tineola bisselliella) 108

Furniture carpet beetle (Anthrenus flavipes) 109

Pull-out tray storage for quilts suspended on stretched muslin 124

Open storage 124

Box for eighteenth-century gown with accessories 129

Custom wooden shipping crate showing grid attachment

to securely space hangers 130

Wooden shipping tray with posts to support mannequin wigs 131

Early-twentieth-century cotton blouse showing lignin

stain from wooden hanger 154

Foreword

In keeping with the Costume Society of America’s mission to stimulate scholarship in the rich and diverse field of costume and to disseminate information on dress and appearance, in 1999 we partnered with Texas Tech University Press (TTUP) to establish the CSA publication series. Since then, the CSA Series has published outstanding work on various aspects of dress and culture. This book by Louise Coffey-Webb represents a major step in a direction that the CSA Series has hoped to take since TTUP brought forth Margaret Ordoñez’s Your Vintage Keepsake: A CSA Guide to Costume Storage and Display. Focusing on the care and management of garments found in a wide variety of collections—some intended for preservation, others for active use—this work represents the sort of outreach that CSA has long considered a pillar of its mission.

I had the privilege of reading several early drafts of this work as a manuscript and am delighted that it is now making its way into the wider world and into the hands of a ready audience among the numerous museums, historical societies, and rental companies. So many organizations coping with costume collections or holdings have little or no in-house expertise to manage or care for them.

The Costume Society of America has long endorsed the proper care and handling of garments and related articles of clothing. Each year in conjunction with the annual symposium, volunteers donate their time in support of the CSA Angels Project. This one-day event provides conservation, storage, collections management, and curatorial assistance

to a costume collection at a small institution, precisely the type of

organization that can benefit from this book. Drawing on her vast experience working with both museum and film costume collections, Louise

Coffey-Webb takes the time to explain not only what must be done to manage a costume collection but more importantly why.

In a voice as engaging as her passion for costume collections, she offers readers advice in an accessible, easy-to-follow format. This is especially vital for smaller, possibly volunteer-run, historical organizations whose members want to provide the very best care they can for their collections but have no professional museum training. Searching for guidance can be prohibitively time-consuming, not to mention frustrating, but now Managing Costume Collections is indeed an essential primer for any nonspecialist wanting a short course in implementing the best practices circumstances might allow. Rental companies and others responsible for costume collections in the performing arts have plenty to rejoice about as well. Indeed, it is not just smaller organizations that will find this book useful. Large organizations with well-trained staff frequently look for new and cost-effective ways of doing business, and the information in this book can be adapted to suit any situation.

Priceless in its practical and cost-considerate solutions, this guide should also become required reading in numerous museum studies programs across the country and beyond. It will prove invaluable to students, many of whom will be confronted with clothing and textile holdings when they accept their first jobs in organizations with limited budgets. I wish that it had been available when I worked as curator for the New York State Bureau of Historic Sites. At least two or three times a year I’d receive phone calls from emerging professionals looking for a book that they could show to their board and say, See, this is the industry standard. We need to do this. Now they have it.

I am delighted to welcome this book to the CSA Series.

Robin D. Campbell, Ph.D.

President, Costume Society of America (2012–2014)

Acknowledgments and Photography Credits

Many thanks to the institutions and private and commercial collections with whom I have consulted, or who have allowed me to observe their storage and even take photographs. Many have been most understanding of the points I tried to make in the text and allowed me to use technique examples that may have since been replaced, so I heartily salute their homage to education rather than being overly concerned purely with their institutional representation. I particularly thank the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library; American Textile History Museum, Massachusetts; Angels The Costumiers, London; Bata Shoe Museum, Toronto; Gabriella and Leo Beranek Textile Conservation Laboratory, Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Charles E. Young Research Library Special Collections, UCLA; Chicago History Museum; Cirque du Soleil, Montréal; the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Virginia; T. B. Walker Foundation Textile Education Gallery at the De Young Museum, San Francisco; FIDM Museum at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, Los Angeles; Hartford Stage Costume Collection, Connecticut; Fashion Resource Center, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Costume and Textiles Department, Kent State University Museum, Ohio; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Mathers Museum of World Cultures, Indiana University; Costume Museum & Research Library, Stephens College, Missouri; Western Costume Company; and Woodbury University Fashion Study Collection, California.

Special thanks to individuals with whom I have consulted on specific topics: Linda Baumgarten, Shannon Bell-Price, Gillion Carrara, Anne Coco, Linda Eaton, Michelle Webb Fandrich, Sylvie François, Esther Ginsberg, Dale Gluckman, Sara Hume, Deborah Kraak, Edward Maeder, Catherine McLean, Margaret Messick, Wayne Phillips, Sally Queen, Nancy Rexford, Sandra Rosenbaum, Susanna Sandke, Sharon Shore, and of course, Phyllis Specht, the Costume Society of America Series editor, who first approached me with the idea.

Thanks also go to former editor Judith Keeling, who believed in this project from the start, Joanna Conrad, who replaced Judith upon her retirement, and managing