In the World Conservation and Exhibition Centre conservators, curators and collection managers
are working to ready objects for the latest exhibition; Peru: a journey in time.
The exhibition includes a large number of organic objects dating back as far as 100 BC.
Organic objects are made of natural materials such as wood,
leather, bone and textiles and because of the fragile nature of many of these objects
careful consideration is given to the way they will be displayed in the exhibition.
For me a mount is really an extension of the conservation treatment because you're making
something that's going to give full support to an object and it can actually reduce the amount of
interventive treatment an object needs if you know it's going to have a really good supportive mount
at the end of it. So when I'm thinking about making a mount I’m designing my mount based
on the condition of the object so if an object is quite robust it obviously needs less support
and so my mount can give minimal support to the object but if I’m trying to mount something that
is weaker in certain areas or is taking too much weight in certain areas I’ll design my amount
to specifically support those areas. They're a really important part of the conservation process.
Beside me is this beautiful feather head dress from the Andes from what is now Peru.
It's been dated to the Chimú-Inca period, so somewhere from between the 1470s to the 1530s.
And one of the things I find so interesting about this object is the combination of materials.
You've got a fabric base, it's a woven fabric made from cotton, cotton being very much a fibre you
would have found in the coastal regions. And onto it you've got a whole bunch of different feathers
that would have most likely come from the Amazon. So you've got two different materials
separated by hundreds of kilometres across really difficult terrain which just shows how
important the choice of materials were. The other thing I love about this feather headdress is the
way they've used the feathers to get different visual effects. So on the hanging panels here
they've bundled the feathers together and cut them quite short so they all lie flat
and in that way get these really crisp colourful geometric designs,
whereas on the top they've obviously kept the long shaft and not only that they've extended the shaft
by tying on another feather shaft to it. So this extension was very much intentional and
I think it must have been to exaggerate sort of soft bobbing or flapping when the wearer
moved around. So I like to think it was quite bird-like during a ceremonial performance.
So the headdress itself has been treated by my colleague Sophie Rowe. She's stabilized
all the feathers and supported any splits in the shafts and ensured that the cotton base itself
doesn't have large areas of loss or weaker areas that would have needed support.
I've been tasked with making the display mount and we're trying to go for the most discrete display
mount possible showing the feather headdress as worn, so as you'd see it now. The first thing
I’m going to think about when I’m looking at the headdress is I’m also going to look at condition,
so I’m going to look at the cotton and I’m gonna again make sure there's no splits or
tears or areas of loss. But I’m also going to look for signs of how the headdress may have
been worn. Whenever I’m thinking about a garment, I’m thinking about how it would have sat on the
body. So in this case, how it would have sat on the head. Would it have been cocked back against
the back of the head? How far does the rim come down the forehead? Those kind of questions. I
think in this case, there's a lot of clues. First off, there are actually ties and it's lovely that
the ties are actually padded all the way down to where they would have touched your
chin bone and then they haven't padded the rest where you actually would have tied
under your chin. You've also got the clues that you've got hanging panels, and so I think this is
a fairly straightforward case that the headdress would have sat fairly square on the head because
that would have been the best shape to show off all the geometric shapes on the panels. I think
one of the questions is just whether these panels are secure enough to withstand their own weight
during the length of the exhibition? So that's something I’ll assess whether they need more
support and obviously because we have a flexible hat that whole hat will need support so I’ll be
looking, I’ll be thinking about how to make an internal shape for that hat. When the headdress
came into the studio it was on its storage mount, which was supporting not only the hat but it also
supported the vertical panels, but because that storage mount was going to be a great
former for me to build my buckram mount on, I've removed the headdress onto this temporary mount.
But doing that is also giving me an opportunity to see how the hanging panels actually sit
without any support and whether I need to change the shape of my mount through padding
to possibly change how they hang. Maybe kick out the back panel a little bit more or bring in the
side panels, and also whether they do need a bit of support and whether I need to adjust my mount
to have something discreet come down and actually provide a little bit of map
for those panels to sit on. Okay. So now I’m going to build the base of my mount
and this is going to be made out of quite an open weave linen.
And I’m using wheat starch as well and these materials are obviously conservation grade;
we know how they age and they won't damage the object, even if it is just a display mount.
So this is essentially papier-mâché for grown-ups and this is one of my most favourite processes to
do because you don't need to be really precise you can be fun and messy and
you can go back in and change things so there's lots of room for play and error.
So this is going to harden into quite a firm mount so the next stage of my mount
is to be able to get the final shape so I need to get the feather headdress onto this mount
which is one I made earlier and is completely dry and is actually hardened into a really nice
supportive mount. However, it's too rough to get that headdress on here so I’m gonna
just temporarily pad it out and put a really slippery fabric on the top like silk or Tyvek,
and I’ll transfer the headdress onto this mount and literally be able to draw or stitch a line
where the rim of the hat comes to and that way cut away the excess so you can't see it on display.
To see the headdress and the mount that it sits on check out our latest exhibition;
Peru: a journey in time.