I'm Monique and I'm one of the conservators in the organic artefacts conservation studio.
So we've been working on this Ndebele beaded wedding blanket,
it's a new acquisition for The British Museum
but we think it probably dates from the 1940s.
So at its base there's a stripy wool blanket which has been folded in half
and then sewn onto that have been networks of glass beads.
It would of been worn like a cloak over the shoulders of married women
and the women would be given such a blanket on the occasion of their marriage
and then they would add separate bands of bead work over the course of their life.
So this particular blanket, we're thinking that the earlier sections were probably as
I said the 1940s
but the outer boarders were probably added as late as the 1970s.
So the motifs on the blanket depict the colourful Ndebele houses,
they were very renowned for the way in which they painted their houses
and that mural art is very much reflected in the design on the blanket.
So you can see the outlines of the buildings with their roofs and their doorways
and elements of the windows, steps and other features of the buildings.
One of the buildings looks like a church because you can see the crosses on the roof.
They like to incorporate modern technologies, so here you can see electric lights,
that might have been to mark the occasion when this lady's village got lighting
or it might have just been an aspirational wish.
Lettering is also quite commonly found on these blankets,
we're seeing the letters TP used quite frequently in a pair
and those letters are the car license plate number for the Pretoria region,
which is the area in South Africa where the Ndebele are now living.
By wearing such a blanket the women were making a strong assertion of their own cultural identity
which was particularly important because many of the Ndebele people were moved from
their traditional homelands during apartheid
so now in their new areas it's very important to keep these traditions
such as the bead work and the mural painting.
My name is Aisling Macken, I am a student intern here at the museum
from the Centre for Textile Conservation at the University of Glasgow.
So the bead work panels here have been sewn together with a cotton thread in three different
techniques,
the cotton thread has become very degraded over time
and is really prone to breakage,
a fact which is exacerbated by the sheer weight of the beaded blanket
so what we're seeing are many splits and breaks in the surfaces
which are distorting the pattern of the bead work and also making the beads very prone
to falling off and being lost.
When the blanket actually came to the studio there were very many loose beads on the surface
which we are now working to incorporate back into the design.
The splits on the surface are clearly not a new issue
as there's evidence of repairs on the surface
that have probably been carried out throughout the active life of the blanket,
you can see them in a white cotton thread and much newer repairs in a blue synthetic
thread.
So part of the conservation process for this object is to restitch the slits and pull them
back together
but it's also to incorporate the loose beads back into the surface.
So the thread that we're using to conserve this blanket
is a very thin cotton thread in a very similar colour to the original thread
we're using a very fine beading needles to do the work,
just passing through the hole of the bead and pulling the slits back together.
So here you can see a number of splits on the surface of the beaded panel
where the original thread here has broken and the beading is starting to come apart,
the area here is one in which we have removed one of the old blue repairs
and you can see the repair here, an example of the repair here
which we are leaving as evidence of their existence,
because of the weight of the blanket and the vulnerability of the threads and the beaded
panels,
unfortunately the blanket cannot be displayed as it would have been worn,
we are displaying it on a flat board which will help to evenly support and distribute
the weight of the blanket.
In order to add further support what we have done is added extra rows of horizontal stitching
through the bead work and the backing blanket,
we've added two strips of velcro which we're attaching to a firmer board
and the board will be displayed just off vertical.