This is Unhelpful

If there was a hippocratic oath for museum collections staff it would definitely contain something about leaving behind information in a form which will be helpful to my successors.  We've all suffered through enough collections mysteries to know that an attitude of "I'm going to make up my own weird system to do this!" and "I'm sure I won't forget to finish that project" is a recipe for disaster.

Worst of all are those projects that someone clearly spent tons of time on which resulted in something completely useless. When one of my coworkers started in the department and asked if the collection had ever been inventoried she was told "yes! lots of times!" and shown a drawer full of lists of artifacts. No location information, no images, no condition details. Just a list of artifacts by type.

Anyway, so while working on our collection of fans, I found a note so astonishingly unhelpful I had to laugh. Apparently, some sort of fan expert had been through the box and wrote a summary of what was found inside. Here it is verbatim, IN IT'S ENTIRETY:

1983

Some inexpensive 20th century fans. 

Most fans in this box are last half 19th century. 

A few 18th century fans. 

Three fantastic (no pun intended) fans I’ve never seen before in 35 years of fan research! No other museum has them, including New York Met., Smithsonian, DeYoung, etc. 

Congratulations!!!

There was no included list indicating which fans were which. NONE. Nothing in the box seemed that amazing to me, but I could identify one or two that seemed to be a little different or of somewhat better quality. I spent some time looking at the Met's database and saw a bunch of SPECTACULAR fans which were way more impressive than anything in this box. 

Theirs:

Ours:

Theirs:

Ours:

Which made me think...who even knows what was in this box when the note was written? Or if the note was even placed with the right box!?! I later came across a few fans that, while not any more exceptional than anything I saw on the Met website, were potentially in the same league. But wait...there's more! A couple boxes later I found ANOTHER note, with the same handwriting, full of more juicy information: 

Most of the fans are last quarter 19th century. Some oriental. Some very good fans. A lot of not so good fans. A few should definitely be mended!

Without any hint of the object numbers or even a vague description or list there was nothing I can do with this information other than throw it away. 

JK I put both notes up on my bulletin board and am going to laugh at them every day. 

Horrors In The Hat Collection

Ok, just a regular day doing inventory on the hat collection. Just pick up the next one in the box...

Ok, looks like we've got a child's faux fur cap with some brown decorations.

Wait...

What the?

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

WHY?? Why would you put this on a hat?? Why is it upside down? Why is the rest faux fur and this little bit real?? Why is it furry if it is supposed to be a bird?!?!

OH CRAP IT IS LOOKING INTO MY SOUL

Summer Updates

It is back to being mind-meltingly hot in Seattle (88 degrees) so I'll keep this one quick. Here are some updates from some recent posts:

Inventory Quagmire

Remember the endless box of little white caps? And I estimated that there were at least sixty in the box? Well, after more than a month of chipping away at it, we finally finished the box.

Wanna guess what the final count was?

70.

70!

SEVENTY LITTLE WHITE CAPS.

But in better news...an update from last week...

The 70s Are Coming 

THE 70s CASE WAS INSTALLED THIS WEEK AND IT LOOKS SO GOOD

Inventory Quagmire

I've found that I use the word "quagmire" I lot in my work. Like, "I can't even think about the flag quagmire right now," or "no one wants to vacuum that rack because it is just a quagmire of ruffles."

Oooh! QUAGMIRE OF RUFFLES.

The existence of any quagmires in the collection is basically due to having an overwhelming amount of stuff. As I've mentioned before, museums are like icebergs. What you see on display is just a visible nugget of a hidden behemoth. MOHAI went through a long period where we took everything offered to us, and the sheer volume of stuff often makes my head spin.

It is most common to wander unknowingly into a quagmire during inventory. Most of the time inventory is pretty fun because you get to discover things in the collection that no one has looked at in years. Sometimes you can get a good pace going and maybe get through a couple boxes or even a couple shelves in one day. But then you open a nightmare box and BOOM you are stuck working on it for weeks.

BOTTOMLESS BOX OF LACE BITS

What makes a box a quagmire is one or more of the following issues:
-Items are small and the box is packed full
-Box is disorganized, items are in poor condition, and it is difficult to locate numbers
-The box is full of FICs and items that aren't already listed in the database, so you are creating completely new records as you go.

Right now I am in a quagmire of baby caps.

The thing is, individually most of these are quite delightful. Most are handmade and are beautiful examples of home crochet, knitting, tatting, lacemaking, and sewing. They are each different and I can see why someone thought they were worth saving, and why a museum might be an appropriate place.

But I think this box I'm working on right now must have 60 little caps in it. Opening it for the first time felt like:

When you look at the box as a whole, there are just stacks and stacks of flat little white caps. And it is box 1 of 3 in the baby hat section. That is TOO MANY CAPS!!!!!!!

Hat Inventory: Second Verse, Same As The First

A few weeks ago I posted about the completion of the shoe inventory and the emotional roller coaster it put me through. Well now that is officially DONE and so it's on to the hats!

But basically, the hat inventory is the same agony and ecstasy of the shoes. There is lots of: "Oh wow, I just touched it and all the feathers started falling off, well hopefully it won't have a local label...aw crap...MacDougall-Southwick, Seattle" and "Geez Frederick & Nelson seemed to make a lot of hats with black netting." But there are some additional complicating factors that the shoes didn't have.

Two years ago, the hats were the focus of a frantic moth-related bag-and-contain project. Since then, they have basically just been chillin' in their archival plastic prisons, waiting to be checked for bugs and stored more appropriately. So while it is exciting to finally begin working on them, it means lots of additional steps above and beyond the basic inventory procedure.

Regular inventory is instant gratification--you pull a box off the shelf, discover a bunch of cool stuff you've never seen before, put the box back, and start on the next shelf. But now it's like-- oh hey, before you put those back on the shelf and move on to the next exciting discoveries, you need to check them for bug evidence, decide which ones to freeze, pack the ones for freezing, do some vacuuming, build boxes or pack them in existing boxes, make labels...

Plus I'm moving a bunch of hats off shelves that should be for shoes, and discovering boxes of hats in odd places, and since the official hat shelves are already packed full I'm not sure where everything is going to go...

Big projects always start like this though-- at the beginning you haven't figured out a system and you also haven't done enough to see any satisfying results. Right now it just feels like I am making an even bigger mess. But I have faith that we'll figure out a system and soon I'll be encouraged by the sight of happy hats in boxes on completed shelves.

Dance In The Textile Room Like No One's Watching

Bonus feature: I was previously convinced that I had identified the ugliest hat in the collection. I've already found several which may be strong contenders for the title. Stay tuned.

The Many Faces of the Shoe Inventory

The inventory of the shoe collection is almost done! It has been interesting and exciting, and I've gotten emotionally invested in some of the discoveries. My volunteers and interns have become familiar with my shoe-related mood swings.

Here are the four most common emotional states of the shoe inventory:

When a gorgeous pair of shoes in perfect condition turns out to have no Seattle story whatsoever:

We can keep them for "study" purposes...or something...

When a pair of shoes that are stained and falling apart turn out to have a rare Seattle label:

Can we not pay the light bill for a month and put some more money in the conservation fund?

When a pair of shoes that are in poor condition have a non-local label and the database says explicitly that they were worn on the other side of the country. 

DEACCESSION CANDIDATE

When a gorgeous pair of shoes are in excellent condition and have clear Seattle provenance:

I may have screamed "WALLIN & NORDSTROM!!!" while peering into a pair of boots on Friday. 

Could It Be...?

One of the projects I'm working on right now is an inventory of the shoe collection. It has been very exciting to come across items from Seattle businesses and pieces that are just downright fabulous. But this week we were presented with a little bit of a mystery.

On Friday this relatively benign pair of shoes was up next to be photoed, measured, and condition checked:

My intern, faithfully updating the record in the database stopped and commented, "So...in the description it says 'Shoes said to have been made for Julie Andrews in the 20th Century Fox Movie The Star'...what does that mean?? Did Julie Andrews wear those shoes???"

Instinctively skeptical, I brushed it off. (MOHAI also has a bloody scarf that Mrs. Lincoln apparently was wearing on the night of the assassination. I looked into it and there is a 98% chance of that claim being totally hooey).

The only thing that gave me pause was the fact that there were marks on the soles that looked like they had once been taped with masking tape. That is a short-term solution for giving shoes some traction on a smooth floor--often seen on shoes worn for fashion shows or in the theater.

Then there was a second pair with a similar claim in the description:

These also had tape marks, including on the inside. AND they looked like they may have been painted to go from red to gray. All touches consistent with quick-fixes for costuming purposes.

Then there was something else nagging me. Guess who donated the shoes?

Who else?

John Doyle Bishop, connoisseur of the fabulous and friend to the rich and famous, seems to be JUST the kind of person who would enjoy owing a pair of shoes worn by an icon.

Seems about right

The more I thought about it the more I thought it COULD BE. I mean, it's not like the record was claiming that these were Dorothy's ruby slippers. As fabulous and amazing as Julie Andrews is, Star! was not a big hit and Hollywood churns out hundreds of movies each year. Clothing pieces worn by stars in lesser-known pictures must end up somewhere. 

In total, there were actually four pairs of shoes and one hat in this donation, all claiming to be from this movie, all worn by Julie Andrews, all donated by JDB. I did some research and the costumes for Star! were done by Donald Brooks, the New York-based fashion designer who also did costumes for movies and the stage. And GUESS what Seattle store sold Donald Brooks??

This is a sketch from the Seattle Times advertising a special showing of Donald Brooks clothing at John Doyle Bishop's store in 1968- the year that Star! was released. 

I don't think that this evidence is conclusive but I think it makes the claim plausible. What do you think? Obviously the next step is to find a copy of the movie and scrutinize the footwear!

Found in Collections

On Friday I resolved FOUR FICs!!!!

Oh wait, not everyone knows what that means.

FIC stands for "Found in Collections" and it is yet another concept that can be baffling to non-museum folks. I mean, as a phrase it makes sense: an item is an FIC when it is discovered among the collections items, but has no identifying marks and we haven't been able to connect it with a known accession.

The baffling part is that this term exists. How can things just show up in the collection without anyone knowing where they came from? And that it happens enough to have a term for it? Are the artifacts breeding?!?!

No, collections work is not that sexy. Like most museum problems, the root of the issue is staff time. MOHAI went through long stretches when there was only one paid collections person, and frequently they were also expected to work on exhibits and programming and probably cleaning toilets too. Correctly processing a collection and numbering everything takes time. Maybe you skip labeling that one piece of lace because you think it will be obvious it goes with this other piece, but then when it becomes jumbled up in a giant box of lace it becomes much less obvious. Or maybe new accessions just pile up and you set them aside to work on "later" but then it sits there long enough that no one remembers what that pile was all about.

Then there is also the fact that we deal with all kinds of man-made objects from 1850 to the present, and it is shockingly easy to get non-artifacts mixed in with actual artifacts. When we moved into our new storage space, someone was using a mallet to adjust the shelf heights. They walked away for a moment and set the mallet down on shelf across the aisle. When they came back, they realized they had set the mallet down ON A SHELF OF MALLETS. They had to go through item by item, checking for numbers to make sure they picked up the right one. If they had forgotten, left it there and just found another mallet, that one would be an FIC. It is also why some of our office furniture looks like this:

So nowadays we do our best to avoid creating new FICs, but as we do inventory and delve into unexplored corners of the collection, we still turn up mysterious stuff.  Every item we come across has to be accounted for, so if something does't have a clear number we give it a temporary FIC number just so we can track it.

The scary thing about FICs is that you can't really get rid of them unless you figure out what their deal is. If you just tossed everything you couldn't identify you would run into real trouble. That bit of lace that had no number and that you thought you could safely discard could turn out to be made by some important pioneer grandmother and it was actually on loan and the family wants it back and now YOU have to tell them that it got used for a kids craft activity and was thrown out after it was covered in macaroni.

So we hang on to FICs, hoping that one day the can be "resolved" meaning that they connect with some known accession, or you find information clarifying that yes that is a prop or reproduction or something someone accidentally set down in the wrong place.

ANYWAY so on Friday I was searching through the database for something else and came across a record for a hat with an unknown location that sounded SUSPICIOUSLY like a hat I had just put away. The one I had just boxed had an FIC number. So I pulled the hat and it matched the description exactly.

Artifacts reuniting with numbers (Dramatization)

I was ELATED. But then I thought to look up the other items in that accession. There were three other hats that came in with it and all had unknown locations. And what do you know, their descriptions matched three FICs hats that had been found at the same time as the first hat. I was like...

Ok, actually my victory dance looked more like...

Major Life Milestone

Once again I let a week lapse without blogging. Sorry about that. For those yearning for more fashion history kernels of knowledge from yours truly, I should also suggest the MOHAI tumblr page. I've been making an effort to to send more content to the social media manager and most of it has been ending up there. Check it out: http://mohai.tumblr.com

My two favorite things up right now are a pair of shoes we found during the inventory and a picture comparison I made between a dress in the collection and a famous red carpet look.

First up: Who Wore It Best?

mohai.tumblr.com

On the left is a late 1880s bustle dress that was recently dressed on a mannequin and put on display. On the right is a very pregnant Kimberly Kardashian at the Met Costume Gala last year, in a dress that famously made her look like a couch. I am no big fan of Miss K's, but I did feel sorry for her as a woman in the public eye during her pregnancy. You know how they say some women "glow" and become even more beautiful while pregnant? Well that was not the case for Kim. She looked sweaty and exhausted and gigantic and the tabloids were vicious about it. But while I would like to give her the sympathy vote in this case, the mannequin is clearly winning this round.

Up next: "Barbie" heels we found in the collection

mohai.tumblr.com

On tumblr I wrote an interesting tidbit about the donor, but what really made me chuckle about these shoes was the way they were described in the database. When I pulled up the record they were described as "light red." Oh honey no. The word you are looking for is PINK. Those are, in fact, the pinkest shoes that ever pinked.

And speaking of couches and the color pink, roommate Olivia and I just went through a major life milestone. MAJOR. The kind of life step that puts weddings and pregnancies to shame. 

WE BOUGHT A COUCH. 

You probably assume that Olivia and I live in a glamorous, magazine-worthy domicile, but actually neither of us are very interior decoration oriented. Our style is still a little college-y. Pictures taped to the mirrors and free furniture we cobbled together from various sources. 

One day we woke up and realized, despite being made of a fabulous pink nylon, our couch was actually saggy and old. 

So we decided to be grown ups and buy a couch. But then the weight of that decision pressed on us and for months we couldn't be decisive enough to go through with it. How much should we spend? What kind of fabric? What shape? Then, last Saturday we were going out for dinner and walked past a furniture store that was having a liquidation sale. Thirty minutes later we were high-fiving our purchase over whiskey gingers and a plate of fried pickles.

BOOM

Wait. It seems like something is missing. 

Much better. One recent critique I got is that this blog doesn't feature enough Olivia. For those Olivia fans out there, I'm giving her her own tag so you can jump right to any posts about her and our single girl adventures. 

We broke the couch in by watching the last three episodes of Pride and Prejudice while eating cottage cheese and cold pizza. Obviously it was fantastic. 

The Age of Discovery

There is a great article on the New York Times this week about the thrill and challenge of museum storage facilities. Click here: "Golden Age of Discovery…Down in the Basements" 

For me, right now, it does feel like a golden age of discovery, because I am researching stories that no one has ever researched before, and finding things in the MOHAI collection that have been neglected for decades. At the moment, most of it is centered around an upcoming lecture I'm giving titled From Paris to Seattle: The Fashion Careers of Helen Igoe and Madame Thiry.

After the success of the John Doyle Bishop lecture last year, Public Programs was happy to let Fashion Nerd Afternoon with Clara become a yearly offering (official called the Annual MOHAI Fashion Lecture). I was super excited about this until I realized that when I picked JDB as a subject, all the research was already in the can. I had done my master's thesis on him and so it just required putting together a few slides and condensing the story into 40 minutes. But this year, and every year after, I will need to hit the research shelves and learn new things. Which is difficult, time consuming, and awesome.

As far as I know, no one has researched either of these women before, and neither of them have archives or personal papers that I can access. So I'm grasping at every little newspaper mention, magazine advertisement, and city directory listing I can find. On the one hand, it means that I'm weaving a tale out of pretty scant information, but on the other it makes every little morsel that much more exciting. For example, just by looking at address listings in the city directories, I was able to piece together the story of a failed marriage and exactly when the gentleman in question was booted out.

HUSBANDS TO THE LEFT: THE HELEN IGOE STORY

And as luck would have it, I found a fantastic Madame Thiry dress this week during inventory. It was crammed into a tiny box with another 1920s dress, yet was in remarkably good shape. It was so chic and modern that I was almost fooled into thinking it was from the 1960s. Which is cool because her son ended up being a raging architectural modernist whose heyday was the 1950s and 60s. Coincidence? I'd like to think not. 

As I've been doing this research and looking at dresses in the collection, I'm also coming across lots of labels, names, and ads for Seattle stores and companies that I've never heard of. It was hard not to get immediately sidetracked, but it is thrilling to know that there are so many stories still waiting to be uncovered.