37196
Accession Number
38891
Title Of Article Chaper
What Lies Beneath – The Safe Display of Textiles and Garments
Title Of Journal Book
On Conservation
Issue
3
Pages
47-52, 70
Collation
7 p. : ills.
Reference Bibliography
Includes bibliographic references
Language Of Text
English
Literature Type
Serial
Literature Level
Analytic
Abstract
National Heritage Board (NHB) museums have been using mounts for textile artefacts for more than a decade. Earlier on, mounts were fabricated by the Heritage Conservation Centre (HCC) textiles conservators, as the constituted part of conservation treatment. The demand for them was still manageable then. However, with the reopening of the National Museum of Singapore (NMS) in 2006 and the inauguration of the Peranakan Museum in 2008, the use of mounts increased significantly. Eventually, due to the greater demand for mounts and time constraints, it became challenging for the textiles conservators to work on both conservation treatment and fabrication of mounts. To cope with the challenge, HCC launched a programme in 2009 to train non-conservators in the production of mounts. The trained mounters proved to be an asset to the textiles conservation team, especially for later exhibitions such as the Peranakan Museum’s Sarong Kebaya: Peranaken Fashion and Its International Sources exhibition in April 2011 and the NMS’s In the Mood for Cheongsam: Modernity and Singapore Women exhibition in March 2012. These two major exhibitions featured mainly textile and garment artefacts. The former showcased 131 kebayas (traditional blouses) and batik cloths worn by Peranakan women; the latter, 150 cheongsams (one-piece dresses with mandarin collars). Various types of mounts are used for the display of textile and garment artefacts. Mounts help to contextualize visual presentations in exhibitions and make displays more interesting and relatable to museum visitors. But there are other important reasons why mounts are specially made for textile and garment artefacts. This paper gives insights into HCC’s use and fabrication of mounts as part of textiles conservation.
Keywords
textile;display;mount;artifact
pub_id
37196