I have been busy but there was to much depressing stuff to go around to write anything. But, I'll give it a go again.
I started a new project at the Patterson House at Ardenwood Historical Park in Fremont, CA. I took on the Costume Closet. No one has paid atte
ntion to it for about 15 years and it was really in bad shape. First of all furniture had even been pushed into this small room, so once the furniture was out and a person could actually walk in was quite a change. Once in, there were soooo many clothes hanging and on the shelves there was no way to find a particular outfit without several coming out at the same time.
So far, all the costumes have been wash and pressed whether they needed or not. Some of the clothes were given away because they were not appropriate for costumes of our time period, 1850-1915. Since the Master bedroom dressing room is not on tours, a clothes rack was put in there. Almost all the costumes were put in there and then moved back to the costume closet as they were mended as needed and sized.
Size rings were put on the clothes rod in the closet so people can easily find something their size. Also, the rods were divided up for aprons, blouses, petticoats, skirts, dresses, shawls, etc.
Hats were another problem area. A photo was taken of each hat and it was pasted onto the outside of its hat box.
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The guy's costume closet/dressing area was even worse that the gal's. They had about 2' of hanging space and they to could hardly get anything off the rod without 2 other thing coming off too. That dressing room was and actually still is storing a lot of stuff that needs to be archived. The 3' side of the closet were shelves with all kinds of stuff.
The shelves were removed and now the guys have the whole closet, room for their costumes and their hats and suspenders, etc.
The rest of the dressing room still has a bunch of boxes in need of archiving.
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Then there is the old hall closet. This is a small closet but tall with shelves and no hanging rods.
There were lots of maps, posters, architectural drawings, big flat things and lots of big rolled documents basically on the floor.
This picture is looking down at the floor.
So after straightening this closet, it looks like:
I even had some space on the shelves to put some textiles that need to be archived. They are the ones with tissue paper on them. Now to archive it all.
The large boxes at the top have texiles in them, including several wedding dresses. Once we get to go through them we are hoping they will be in good enough condition to exhibit.
