Things I'm Thankful For

Dispite the occasional outburst of rage directed at decade-old NYT articles, I'm a pretty happy person. In the spirit of the season, I thought I would do a post about things I am thankful for. But I quickly realized I would have to limit it, because there is too much to pack in. All my friends are awesome, my parents and extended family are cool, and I have a super-sweet job. Gushing about all that would be boring for everyone but me. So here is a short list of highly specific things that have been giving me the happy feels recently.


Museum Volunteers Who Love Things That I Love

Despite the title of this blog, I actually haven't been doing a lot of vacuuming lately. I do a lot of delegating. So, much like a pop star who has a team of people to make her look fabulous, I am a museum diva who has a team of people who help me get my work done.

In this metaphor: Great hair = A perfect padded hanger

I have volunteers who make padded hangers, dress mannequins, sew garment covers, and help vacuum the acres of clothes that we brought from the old storage space.

Besides the fact that they help me do what it would take 20 years to do alone, what I love about  my volunteers is that they are super into into. When I take people back into storage or pick out a rack for them to clean, I never tire of getting the grown-up approximation of this face:

Everyday is like a birthday when vintage clothing is involved

The vacuuming volunteers have a particularly infectious brand of enthusiasm. Initially I was worried I would have trouble recruiting people for this mostly tedious task. They have to carefully check the garment (every seam, every pocket, every crevice) for dust, lint, and signs of bug activity, make notes about the condition, and then vacuum out any particulate matter. But the schedule filled up right away and the people who do it are really dedicated. They like it because they get to see the garments up close.  Many of my volunteers have sewing experience or have a particular interest in historical dress. They will often call me over just to show me how a seam is finished or wax rhapsodic the construction of some pleating.


Evensong. Realness.

I am in a tiny church choir. We wear giant polyester blue robes and usually sing for a congregation of about 8. And it is the best.  Rehearsals usually involve irreverent religious jokes, sight-reading meltdowns, our director singing "Born Free" every time we have trouble with a downward fourth, and of course-- beautiful sacred music.

Last Sunday we sang a set of music by Nico Muhly and I am obsessed with it. You can hear a recording of it here. I don't really have a follow-up joke here. I just really love my choir.

The Deep, Cosmic, Pop-Culture Connection That I Share With My Roommate 

A few weeks ago, Olivia went out of town and left to my own devices. What started with a simple search for gifs to use on this blog, ended with me getting lost down a deep internet rabbit hole. You might not realize it, but searching for the perfect gif can be an arduous and confusing process. As one searches, one finds lots of things from unfamiliar shows and movies. And one thinks-- Who is this "Loki" character? What is this strange power enticing me to watch a movie that has fights and explosions in it?

By the time Olivia returned from the trip, I felt like I had to make an embarrassing confession. Barely able to look her in the eye, I started, "So...I somehow spent an entire evening watching TWO action movies on Netflix..."

"Wait. Stop," she said, "Does this in some way involve Tom Hiddleston? Because I feel like that is a thing we should be into."

And all was right with the world.

...Undies

It has been a while since I actually did a post about vacuuming. Ready for this?

UNDERWEAR

Ok, so technically it is part of a costume and probably worn over actual underwear. Remember the Can-Can dancing Barclay Girls? I am finally getting around to cleaning and accessioning those costumes. These pink satin things were layered under lacy see-through black underpants. The flesh-tone underneath the black lace gave the illusion that the girls were more bare than they were, while still passing the censors. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was a thing I vacuumed today.  

Operation Deep Freeze

Early on in the process of moving textiles out of our old warehouse we found this scarf in a bright, neon color of pink. I mean this thing was like eye-searing pink. It actually kind of hurt to look at it. It said it had been worn for "Operation Deep Freeze" which apparently is the code name for U.S. missions/operations in Antarctica. In other words: dudes in Antarctica were issued clothing so pink that it just might save their lives if they got lost. One can only assume that their official motto is "Safer Living Through Fabulousness."

"Come find me in the snooooooowwwww!"

Soon after that discovery, "Operation Deep Freeze" became a fitting name for a mission I embarked on myself. While we were packing things at the old warehouse we started discovering various kinds of bug evidence. Just this week I sent these pictures to a couple of my coworkers. The response came back "Maybe you should change your blog title to 'Ways I grossed out my colleagues today'."

This is what the floor looked like when we moved some hanging garments. 

Lots of spider bits and what looks like moth cocoons

A horror on par with Snakes on a Plane: Bugs on a Collar

(luckily these were dead)

This is bad news for a textile collection. So we decided to send batches of stuff to get frozen. Just as vacuuming is a minimally invasive way to clean, freezing is the preferred pest-stoppage method over harmful chemicals. Fortunately, we have a friendly relationship with a cold storage facility so we are able to freeze entire rolling racks and pieces of furniture at once. 

Now that the first big batch is back from the freezer, the next step is to check and vacuum everything before putting it away. It is taking a long time, but if we skip this step, we might find a dead bug or a moth hole in the future and have no way of knowing if it was leftover from the old warehouse or is something new. So we are going through each item, vacuuming out any dust or bug carcasses, and making notes of any existing holes.

The fun part is that sometimes we discover other weird or exciting stuff in the garments. Last week we found documents and photographs in the pocket of a coat that belonged to a politician. This week we cleaned a hunting jacket that had feathers all over the inside one of the interior pockets (it was not a down coat). Is that a thing? When you hunt birds do you just jam the dead ones into your pocket?

One thing that I love about my job is the variety of tasks. When people ask what I did today I can say things like, "Well, I answered emails and then spent some time plucking feathers out of a hunting coat."

Sweet Success

Last weekend my John Doyle Bishop lecture at MOHAI was a big success. I'm still glowing and I feel truly lucky to have the job I have.

If you don't know me personally and have therefore escaped having me gleefully shove this in your face and require you to read it, please take a moment and read this fantastic article that was published on the Seattle-PI website: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/John-Doyle-Bishop-Irishman-put-Seattle-fashion-4381050.php

Now that the lecture is over, this week I felt very clear-headed and actually had some time to catch up on some important tasks. Here is a rundown of what I have been up to:

-Cleaned my work desk for the first time since moving to the new office space. Discovered a surprising number of while artifact gloves buried among the papers.

-Took Wednesday off to make up for working all day Sunday. I bleached the bathroom ceiling (that room is like a mold incubator) and listened to some Beyonce.

-Checked in with a woman who I am house/cat-sitting for in a few days. The tutorial started with the basics--"here is where we keep the cat food"-- and ended with "here is how you turn off the gas if that giant earthquake they've been warning us about happens while you are here." You know, I think it is impossible not to sound a little bit crazy and paranoid when talking about disaster preparedness. But it wasn't like she was telling me about sounds waves that the aliens are sending to destroy our happiness. A big earthquake is a legit thing and I'll be dang happy to know where the gas turn-off is if it happens. Now I can't stop thinking about earthquake preparedness. Today when I finished a gallon of milk I filled it back up with water and put it in the pantry as an emergency supply. I'm trying to think of a not-crazy way to explain it to the roommate when she notices.

-Got back to vacuuming. Spent most of Friday on a small mat made by Native man named Hwechlchtid, also known as Salmon Bay Charlie. It is a small but intricate piece and previously had some bug damage so I turned down the suction and took it slow. Listening to Bach made it a particularly calming and meditative process.

-Started plotting my next Seattle fashion project. Public Programs already suggested that maybe I make a fashion/textile lecture an annual thing. I picked this year and month because it was Bishop's 100th birthday. I have a few ideas of who to feature, but someone does have a 100th birthday in 2014. I'll give you a hint: It is my other dead gay boyfriend named John.

Advanced Vacuuming

This week I vacuumed one of MOHAI's most significant, and most fragile artifacts: The Petticoat Flag.

No, the image isn't flipped. I'll get to that in a sec.

The story of the petticoat flag is that it was made during the "Battle of Seattle" in 1856 -- a conflict between U.S. troops and Native people. During the fighting, settlers fled to a nearby blockhouse for shelter. A group of women decided to spend the time sewing this flag, using strips of red wool and white linen from their petticoats. The blue may have been a petticoat or a blanket, and the hang loops on the top are made of printed cotton. (About the orientation: It doesn't look nice on both sides so we can't just flip it over. It was originally meant to hang vertically which would have put the stars in the upper left corner).

Textiles weren't cheap or easy to come by in those days--certainly not for women in a small pioneer town. Add to that the fact that they were probably giving up clothes off their bodies for this task, and I find the story very touching. 

Stirring historical context aside, this thing is super old and in not great condition. The linen has yellowed, the blue fabric is thin and shredding to bits, and the red wool has survived multiple assaults by hungry bugs. That picture above is old, and just looking at it makes me shudder. Since then it underwent serious conservation work and that sucker is now stitched down flat on a padded board. None of this casual, wrinkled "I unfurled this with a swish of my wrists" look. That isn't even the scariest picture we have of it: 

Horrifying. I can hear the fibers weakening from here. 

Now we avoid touching it or moving it whenever possible. Instead of taking it out of its display at the old museum and packing it, the entire display was rolled onto the moving truck. Once inside the new museum, the old case was opened and the flag was carefully whisked into its new home. The new case is tightly sealed and has this special glass that is opaque until you trip a sensor and then a dim light makes the flag fleetingly visible. 

As I was gazing at it in its new home, I started noticing all this dusty crap on it. At first I panicked because I thought it was frass (aka bug poop), the telltale sign of insect activity. But I had checked it very carefully before it left the old place. How could it have exploded in bugs during one moving-van ride? My next theory was that it was dust from the old plexiglass cover that slid onto the flag as the cover was removed. That made more sense considering some of the "stuff" appeared to be glitter, and we all know that no bug is magical enough to poop glitter. 

Problem was, the only artifact vacuum we had on site didn't have the knob where you could control the amount of suction. And seriously, if any artifact in the collection needed to be vacuumed on low, it was this one. So basically "vacuum the petticoat flag" was on my to-do list for about two months before I finally found an opportunity to have someone schlep the variable speed vacuum to and from the new museum for me. But this week I did it and it was actually a little less terrifying than I expected. I also gave the white edge of the padded board a good clean, so if it does turn out to be bug activity, the frass will be visible immediately. 

Although if that happens, you'll probably see me fleeing to the nearest blockhouse.

Happy New Year, Happy New MOHAI!

In one week it will be Grand Opening Weekend at MOHAI. In two weeks I'll be in New Orleans for a history conference. I'm gonna be busy, so chances are the blog will be quiet for a while. But before I send you off into the new year, here are some tidbits to tide you over:

-The Miss Universe pageant happened, which means its annual parade of bizarre national costumes also happened. I would put together a commentary for you, but it would be hard to top the one available on Tom and Lorenzo. You can read the three parts here, here, and here.

-On Thursday we had an all-staff training for grand opening (aka: "Grand Opening" as it is written in all our internal emails, or "GRAND OPENING" when it is spoken). I found out that I am a "lead" in my section and will be issued a headset for which have to memorize a list of rules and information about what channel to be on for different kinds of conversations. I'm kind of stressed about it, so a few of my co-workers have offered to radio me constantly with fake code words and crises to fix.

-During Grand Opening training I found out that one of my volunteers will be the fabulous older model from the New Day Northwest segment. She was the one bringing a little white-haired fierceness next to the poor girl wearing the bow/veil "fascinator."

-For Grand Opening we are supposed to be "dressy" but should also factor in comfy shoes for standing a long time, pants or skirts with pockets, and the fact that we will all be wearing "aprons" which will be holding a kiosk's worth of MOHAI brochures and publications. I fear that is not a clothing brief that my wardrobe supports.

-On Friday we unpacked a large box of textiles, all of which have to be frozen and vacuumed before being put away. As I checked off their accession numbers I turned to one of my co-workers and said "is it weird that I'm kind of excited to vacuum all this stuff?" She said, "For you? No."

-And to conclude 2012, here is my favorite photo of myself from the artifact install process at the new MOHAI. I am in the middle of the Grand Atrium, half way up a ladder, sewing Black Bart into his shirt, and proving that skirts are no hindrance to bizarre manual tasks.

See you in 2013!

Calm down and put it in a bag

This week, as I expectantly searched through a photo album for insect carcasses, it occurred to me that you couldn't really be a good museum collections person if you had a crippling fear of bugs.

Artifact collections shouldn't have bugs or vermin of any kind, but part of the process of keeping that way requires an obsessive interest in bugs and evidence of bugs. We put down sticky traps, check exhibit cases for frass (bug poop), and if we actually find a bug our first instinct is to put it in a bag. I once looked down to see a small bug crawling on my hand, and my response was to walk calmly over to the collections manager's desk, show her, and ask for an insect bag. Once bagged, we looked through her chart of harmful artifact-eating insects and tried to identify it.

Bugs are also a big reason I've been doing so much vacuuming. As a precaution, we've decided every textile-based object coming off exhibit will get vacuumed, deep frozen, and vacuumed again. The freezing kills insects, and the vacuuming removes dead bugs, eggs, and dust that might be tasty to insects in the future. I haven't found any bug evidence on objects for a while, and so sometimes I wonder if all this extra vacuuming is really necessary. But last week I found some bug bits on a fabric-covered photo album, and it was actually sort of exciting and validating. With relish I paged through the album looking for carcasses, and with each one I removed, I felt like I was creating order in a chaotic world. I may not be able to fix global poverty, but I can fix this.

This one is for the baseball fans

Things I vacuumed today:

A Mariners jersey worn by Edgar Martinez.

From the 1995 season.

Boom.

Bachelorette Life

I feel like I don't have much to report from work this week. The main thing I've been doing is re-vacuuming things I vacuumed before. Some bug evidence was found on garments that were on display, and so as a precautionary measure we decided to deep freeze every textile-based object that was de-installed from exhibit (the freezing kills bugs without using chemicals). To be thorough, each object had to be vacuumed before and after freezing. The boxes just came back, so I've been having vacuuming deja vu.

As thrilling as that is, I turn now to my home life. Today I had a delightful, relaxing Saturday with my roommate. But now that I reflect back on it, I realize that it was sort of an amusing portrait of bachelorette life. My day included:

-Watching the Project Runway: All Stars finale

-Venting about how boring, predicable, and not-fun the show has become

-Deciding that the only thing that will make us feel better is one episode of Say Yes to the Dress

-And by "one" we mean two

-Just one more

-"I think something in our apartment smells bad"

-Launching into vigorous cleaning mode, including a complete clean-out and smell-check of all items in the fridge, bathroom and kitchen scrub-down, and a removal of all garbage, recycling, and compost.

-Deciding to reward selves with gummy candy in shape of penguins

-A journey outside with a vague list of errands

-More Say Yes to the Dress while eating cottage cheese

-"We need to find this bride a dress, SHE DOESN'T HAVE A KIDNEY"

-Dinner

-Deciding we've had enough SYTTD and the time has come for RuPaul's Drag Race

-Discussion of how to incorporate more drag queen sayings into our lives. Like this:

"Do I look fine? If I look fine I'll keep going"

Vacuuming roundup and other things you should know

Today I worked on some items used during the Klondike Gold Rush. Including:

-Gold poke (small, narrow leather pouch...that I guess you poke your gold into)

-Leather money belt

-Pair of ratty mittens with flowers embroidered on them. (Some miner's mom probably made them for him and he was totally embarrassed but then realized that in Alaska his fingers would fall off if he didn't wear them)

When I wasn't thinking about Klondike miners, I was thinking about New York. Today I got an email from my old boss in Special Collections telling me that the grant project I had been working on has been completed. The thousands of sketches we digitized are now available on this cool portal: http://andrestudios.nypl.org/. I am proud that I got to be a part of it.

I was also reminded that tonight is the opening of the graduate exhibit at the Museum at FIT. My class did an exhibition on Vivienne Westwood, and this year the topic is the 1960s. I am really sorry to be missing it. If you live in New York, make sure to check out Youthquake! The 1960s Fashion Revolution which will be on view at FIT until April 7. If you are one of my Seattle readers, you should know that you can get a slice of the experience right now at the Henry. Their mini-exhibition Flashback looks at art and fashion of the 1960s, and includes some truly fab outfits from the Henry's costume collection.

Vacuuming Roundup

So what have I been vacuuming recently?

• Female clown costume from 1950s children's TV program (jacket and hat only- harem pants still in storage and not in need of cleaning)
• WWII flight suit. Apparently fighter pilots had to have the courage of men and the bodies of boys. It seemed to be about the right size for an Olsen twin.
• Homegrocer.com polar fleece. (Yes, the dot.com bust is a part of history now!)

I also recently took a hydroplane racing jumpsuit home to wash. The thing is 100% nylon and super durable, but a dry cleaner told us that the chemicals they use could destroy the elastic on the wrists and ankles. So without a basin large enough at work, I decided to wash it in my bathtub.

The act of immersing a museum object in water is always a little scary. No matter how recently made it is, what it is made of, or how many tests for colorfastness I've done, there is always that little fear that all the dyes will bleed out and the whole thing will just disintegrate in my hands. As irrational as that fear is, I still had to take a deep breath before dunking it under water. In this case, I could at least remind myself that hydroplane racing is a sport that happens on water, and that it would be pretty bad design to make the uniform water-soluble.

Welcome to the Blog!

Hello all, and welcome to my new blog! I’m glad you are here. As of now, I expect this blog to be mostly about my job and my work as a professional fashion history nerd, but it won’t be exclusively about that. If I do something of note outside of work or want to comment on Miss Universe national costumes, I will feel free to do so. Hopefully that is ok with you.

So, you might be thinking- what is the deal with vacuuming? Why does Clara do so much of it?

Well, basically museum artifacts periodically need to be cleaned. In the real world clothing gets thrown in the washer or sent to the dry cleaner, but both of those processes could cause serious harm to a historical object. When working with museum artifacts, you try not to do anything that can’t be reversed. Well, cleaning is not reversible. The benefits of a good cleaning can outweigh the drawbacks, but before you clean something you have to be really, really, sure that you are doing the right thing. So since full immersion in water could be risky, the safest and least-invasive cleaning technique is vacuuming.

The problem with vacuuming is that you have to do it with a special artifact-only vacuum, use a tiny attachment, and are supposed to pick up and put down the nozzle spot by spot (no dragging!). So vacuuming a T-shirt could easily take 1-2 hours. When I was in grad school, it was the tedium of a small vacuuming project that made me decide I could never be a conservator (I took the curatorial track in my program instead). But lo, here I am at my dream job in Seattle, vacuuming everything.

At first, I really hated it, and at one point nearly went insane while vacuuming a gigantic kimono. But now I find it sort of relaxing and meditative. I bring my iPod and all is good.

I also get a huge kick out of the things I vacuum. In school we studied 18^th century silks and meticulously crafted Chanel suits. It makes sense that you would handle those things with white cotton gloves and clean with only the gentlest amount of suction. But now I work at a regional history museum with a quirky collection. I clean weird stuff.

This is my story.