One of our regular volunteers, Liz Whitehouse has written a blog about her time volunteering at Experience Barnsley Museum along with her sister and over the last twelve months or so have been researching various garments in our textile collections.
My sister, Susan, and I got to know Louise Wright, who looks after the museum collections at Experience Barnsley Museum through donating a number of items from our family’s past to the Museum. Both Susan and I had worked with museums and historical collections during our working lives and are now retired. We offered to help Louise, as volunteers, with the endless task of cataloguing and keeping the collections in order. This is not a task that volunteers are usually involved in, and Louise said that she would discuss our offer with the collections team and volunteer coordinator.
It took about a year before a suitable project could be devised and, knowing our knowledge and interest in textiles and costume, we were asked if we would look through a large collection of uncatalogued textiles that had accumulated at Cannon Hall Museum over time many years ago. Of course we said ‘yes’ and began volunteering for one day a week in October 2022.
We have had such fun! We arrive to a stack of boxes and every time it is just like Christmas! Usually there is a list of the items in the boxes, but often this has been written by someone who had little knowledge of textiles and costume. We open the boxes and find such a variety of things.
An early discovery was described on the list as ‘nightshirt’. We spread it out and looked at it. It is made of beautifully fine white linen, the side seams joined at the selvedges with tiny, neat hand stitching – the entire thing is hand-stitched. This was not a nightshirt, but a beautiful shirt for a man from the late Regency / early Victorian period: 1830-60.
On the other hand, in a later box, we took out two items listed as ‘table covers’. The tatty brown wool items were lined with Turkey Red cotton and roughly cut along one side … these were the remnants from a pair of curtains which had been shortened! How did they come to be in a box at the museum?
It is interesting what people choose to save: we have examined dozens of Victorian and Edwardian women’s nightdresses and drawers – from the early split-leg variety to elegant black silk ‘directoire knickers’ of the early 1900’s – but not a single man’s nightshirt or pair of long-johns. There have been any number of beautiful, long, lacy baby gowns and pretty lace caps, but few items for older children.
Most things are in surprisingly good condition but in need of laundering and pressing to bring them to a state in which they could be exhibited. This is a job for a professional, so it may be some time before these items can be put on display. It is sad to find the occasional item with historic damage from moths and is fit for nothing but disposal, like this elegant 1880s/90’s woman’s wool skirt, with the maker’s name “’Isaac Wadsworth, Costumier and Mantle Maker, No. 1 Market Place, Bradford” in the waistband – and a huge hole chomped by the moths at the front.
Sadly, the skirt has been badly damaged by moths.
We will continue opening our boxes and hope to write more about what we find there in another post.
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