Under höstmötet pratade Lotti om den planerade resan till Holland och Belgien.  Tyvärr fick vi inte beviljat pengar från Bothens för att genomföra detta redan under 2018.  Istället föreslår vi att medlemmarna söker var och en för sig - men med en gemensam text. Lotti återkommer så småningom med förslag till ansökan till Bothéns stiftelse.


Resan planeras bli en gemensam studieresa där vi alla reser med buss.
Tänkta besöksmål:
 Holland:

• Paleis Het Loo, Apeldoorn
• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam + magasin i Lelystad
• Textilresearch center, Leiden
• TextielMuseum + lab, Tilburg

   Belgien:

• ModeMuseum, Antwerpen
• Royal Manufactures De Wit, Mechelen
• Museuum vor kostuum en kant (Spetsmuseum), Bryssel

I was looking through old files to find photos from when we were at Göteborgs Universitet Institution för Kulturvård, for the history group preparing a presentation for the jubileums middag (hint - you could be looking too!) and I came across this lovely piece.  Thank you Maria (Franzon) and my classmates that Daniel got to join in too. (He was 5 at the time)

 
Daniel went to school with Mummy today and got to put a Spode plate in a bag and drop it so that it broke
 

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Then Mummy and Daniel taped it back together.

På måndag den 13 februari vär det exakt 50 år sedan som SFT bildades hemma hos Lykke Schartau-Schéle. 

På Järnvägsrestaurangen på Östra station i Stockholm  firades SFTs födelsedag

Hilsen til jubileet:
Hadde jeg bare hatt vinger.
Da skulle jeg gjerne fly
høyt over vinterens frosne enger
og like til Stockholm by.
Der kommet med gratulasjoner
og blitt med og spist fra meny.
Hurra!!!
Men, siden jeg er i Oslo blir det bare kaffe og kake her.
Ha en hyggelig kveld med god mat og godt drikke.
Mvh Sissel.
Sissel Myhrvold​

Dags att boka in nästa års stora händelse i kalendern:
 
SFT Jubileumshelg 2017, 12-13 maj!
 
Jubileumshelgen inleds redan på fredagen med seminarier och workshops på temat monteringar. Vi fortsätter under lördagen med workshops och årsmöte. På kvällen avslutar vi helgen med mingel och festligheter!
Mer information kommer under våren.
 
Så se till att hålla utkik på hemsidan, i SFT-Nytt och i din epost. Senaste informationen från höstmötets jubileumsplanering finns här:
http://www.sft-textilkonservering.se/houmlstmoumlte-2016.html
 
Hälsningar från styrelsen!

In conjunction with a visit to Gothenburg to receive an honoury degree from Gothenburg University Nancy Odegaard gave a lecture on the topic of conservation and degree qualifications, "Conservation as a Discipline and Doctoral Degrees"

Nancy is herself a conservator and conservation scientist, specialising in moveable heritage.

To introduce her topic Nancy compared the AIC and ICOM CC defintions of conservation.  The AIC definition describes a profession supported by research and education.  In looking at what a profession means Nancy recognised that it is based on specialised education and training and is a service that is compensated (i.e payed for).  A Bachelors degree is the result of specialised education that is an entry requirement into the profession.  A Masters degree enhances practical and theoretical skills, and implies that the holder has an ability to judge and think critically.

She further explored whether conservation is defined by the skills required (more in line with the ICOM CC definitions) or is it a discipline - could it be compared to the discipline of engineering?

Engineering itself is a collection of disciplines including materials science, and Heritage conservation materials and technology a catergory within the discipline.   A discipline could be defined as the art and profession of aquiring and applying scientific methods. 
Nancy proposes that conservation is both a skill and a disipline, lying somewhere in the spectrum humanities - social science - natural science, supported by qualitative and quantitative research. 

The goal of research is to produce new knowledge both by collecting data that doesn't already exist (primary research) and synthesising existing data (secondary research).  Doctoral research in conservation could be illustrated using the hourglass model where the researcher starts with a broad spectrum of data, materials and methods - this passes through the narrow neck of the hourglass, defined by the chosen research methodology - to result in a wide application of the results. 

Nancy shared some negative views of conservation PhDs:

• conservation is the application of techniques
• conservation is doing, other disciplines do the thinking
• PhDs are just low paid temporary workers during thier training

and also some positive views:

• PhDs put conservation in parity with other disciplines
• it is an important credential to those in other fields, facilitating cross disciplinary collaboration
• it allows access to analytical equipment and opens doors,

Her personal perspective (and my take away from the lecture):

• you dont need a PhD to do research but it will facilitate collaboration with others who have this degree as an entry requirement for their own field, they will recognise that you have been through the same rigourous academic process as them.
• although your ability to do conservation is not changed, your ability to affect change through conservation is.

More Nancy Odegaard:

Her own PhD thesis : Archaeological and Ethnographic Painted Wood Artifacts from the North American Southwest A case study of a matrix approach for the conservation of cultural materials.

A presentation at AIC conference about the use of CO2 for cleaning to remove pesticides from materials.
youtu.be/P4gOPpNgdWQ

Labelling techniques for museums
http://www.sustainableheritagenetwork.org/creator/nancy-odegaard

Books:

Human Remains: Guide for Museums and Academic Institutions
AvVicki Cassman,Nancy Odegaard,Joseph Frederick Powell, Rowman Altamira, 2007

Old Poisons, New Problems: A Museum Resource for Managing Contaminated Cultural Materials , Nancy Odegaard, Alyce Sadongei, Rowman Altamira, 2005

The story of the curtain and its restauration at Studio Västsvensk konservering (SVK)in a series of links.

The curtain was made for the opening of the cinema in 1956, designed by GE Ström, and painted by hand onto velvet at Bröderna Ljungbergs Textiltryck AB. With the introduction of new technology and a wider screen in the eraly 1960s the width of the curtain was increased by adding material from another cinema curtain dating from the 1900s. The total width is 30m, and the height 7.7m. 

A photo if the curtain before it tore, well known to many visitors to the Gothenburg film festival.

The local newspaper Göteborgs Posten reports the damage.

SVKs facebook page with posts about the restoration.

The restauration has been commisioned by Folkets Hus.

Today I went to the institution för kulturvård and listened to Alissa Andersson's presentation to the textil-papper students (and there are only seven of them, 3 of them in the textile stream). Alissa talked about how RAÄ has translated the Spectrum standard from English, how she has used this standard at Vadsmo Museum, how it is applicable at Nationalmuseet where she is working now and how the standard is built up.

Spectrum is available to download here and was developed in the UK by Collections Trust. It is a branch specific standard for collections management and defines good practice for museums, providing common frames of reference, a means to communicate with colleagues and between museums and countries.  The translation work, and adaptation for Sweden was carried out by RAÄ in cooperation with reference groups including the "små samlingar nätverket for samlingsförvaltning" - of which the Vadsbo museum is a member.  Larger museums consulted included the National Museum.

Spectrum is built up of a wordlist, descriptions of 21 processes each with a definition, minimum requirement, process diagrams and database guidelines.

Alissa was commissioned by Vadsbo museum to write a policy for collections management. The starting point for such is to describe the organisations purpose and goals.  The museum had no defined mission from the kommun and so the first step was to propose a mission to the local politicians.  Once this was accepted they had to explain and convince them of the importance of culture, explore why there should be a museum at all, and what collections management was all about. With the RAÄ endorsed Spectrum standard as background, and by referring to the council's own goals for sustainability they were able to demonstrate that without a conservator not even the minimum levels of good collections management would be met - and so Mariestad kommum agreed to employ a conservator!!

You can read the handlingsplan here, and the collections management policy here.

At the Nationalmuseum procedures and routines have been in place for a while, and in many cases go further than the guidelines in Spectrum, they are used to international relations, have a large staff and the conservator is just one in chain of actors. Routines and policies make communication easier between the different professions within the museum.

Other tips for developing a policy from RAÄ here.

Friday 6th November - celebratory, slightly formal, in an auditorium filled with friends, family, colleagues, peers, conservations students, staff from the Institution for Care of Cultural Heritage (Institution för Kulturvård), it was time for Johanna Nilsson to defend her thesis after 10 years of part time research (equivalent to 4 years full time). This post is based on the notes that I took during the defence.

The thesis is based on 5 papers published between 2005 an 2015. You can access the complete thesis at this link. Starting by investigating the most common types of conservation treatment used on objects in the LSH collection, and elsewhere, to then empirically measuring the effect of those treatments on aged silk, Johanna sought to answer the question what effect is the conservation treatment I am carry out having on the costume that is being conserved?  Evaluating the strength of aged silk after conservation required a way to age silk in such a way that it acquired properties equivalent to those of silk costumes from the 1600s, and methods to measure those properties. Further the aesthetic appearance of the conservation was assessed, the time to carry out the different types of treatment and the reason for carrying out conservation treatments.

Johanna's opponent was Joy Boutrop who started by praising the co-operation with scientists on other disciplines.  It is not always easy to communicate and convince others that what you think is interesting and exciting will be interesting for them, but the co-operation is necessary to get access to specialist testing equipment and specialised knowledge.  Joy also praised Livrustkammaren, Johanna's employer, for the support they have given her during the research.  She also felt it was important that Johanna has managed to publish her articles, in this way the knowledge is shared not just sitting on the shelves in the university.  A limitation in the research was pointed out - the artificially aged textiles are compared to aged silk from 1617 and 1654 - we don't  know if the ageing cycles evaluated would give silks comparable to other periods.  Joy was impressed that Johanna had investigated the strength of samples after removing the conservation treatment in order to measure how the treatment has weakened the sample.  She was not aware of anybody else who has  measured this.

In discussions between the opponent and respondent Joy questioned Johanna's choice of method to achieve accelerated wear.  Washing seemed too harsh, and adds superfluous humidity.  Joy suggested the accelerator test method, which combines stretching, bending and rubbing (see this article for more information about abrasion testing of textiles).  Johanna was able to answer that she had tried this method but it had no effect on the samples.

Joy also asked why Johanna had not compared damaged but not conserved fabric with conserved after wear. Further the use of tensile test results compared to amino acid markers (see Johanna's paper III) as a method to evaluate the level of degradation of the silk fabric linked to available sample size was discussed.  What can you cut from the object to carry out an evaluation?  Where to take the sample?  Is fabric from the seam allowance representative? If you take a thread from the damaged area is it too damaged?  And should you take a sample at all?  How much information will it give?  What implication is there for the authenticity of the object? Being able to communicate a level of damage, between disciplines is enabled but is it justified?

How much does the handling involved in carrying out conservation treatment affect the costume?  Is it better to open the seams or to insert a supporting fabric through the damage?  Does opening the seams remove evidence?

​Which is better remedial or passive conservation?  Does passive conservation give the viewer the feeling that nobody cares about this object?  

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