Georgina Sheward, Museum Placement Award 2012

I was fortunate enough to be granted the Museum Placement Award by the Costume Society. I spent my summer working with the staff at the Burrell collection.

One half of my placement was spent working with Rebecca Quinton, curator of the European Costume collection, helping to re-pack and catalogue numerous dresses. With over 300 dresses in just one storage room, there was no lack of amazing objects to uncover. The work that I was required to do helped me to understand the effort that is put in to ensure that these dresses are stored correctly for future study. Cataloguing the objects has helped me learn the intricate details that separate the changing fashions in 19^th century clothing and has given me a better understanding of the work involved.

The other half of my placement was spent with the conservators. This work involved mounting objects on specially made mannequins, creating underclothing to support the dresses and taking patterns to better understand how the dresses fitted together or to assess if they had undergone some remodelling in their past. I then went on to help mount mannequins that were to go on display in the Kelvingrove museum, seeing the processes which they have to go through to ensure they will be in as good a condition as they went in, coming out.

This placement has been an ongoing education that has added to the course at Glasgow University and has helped me to focus on a career in dress and textiles.

Curator's Report: Rebecca Quinton, Curator, European Costume and Textiles, Burrell Collection

Georgina Sheward’s museum placement has been extremely successful. It was split into two projects: conservation mounting of eighteenth-century costume for display in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, and enhancing the collections management of late nineteenth-century dress in the European Costume collection. Georgina worked with Maggie Dobbie, Textile Conservator, who was treating and mounting a small group of eighteenth century men’s and women’s wear. The main aim for this part of the placement was for Georgina to develop costume mounting skills. In this she exceeded expectations, and demonstrated a strong natural ability. She produced a series of modular underpinnings that could be used in conjunction with each other to create either the pannier silhouette of the 1760s or the rounded, bum-roll shape of the 1780s. Working alongside Maggie, Georgina was also able to see and occasionally assist with treatments, such as the wet cleaning of a 1780s’ cotton gown.

Georgina returned in November after her placement to assist with putting these garments on display. The other half of Georgina’s placement was focused on curatorial work with Rebecca Quinton, Curator, European Costume and Textiles. Glasgow Museums is slowly upgrading the storage and catalogue records of its collections to enable them to be accessed more easily by staff and the public. Georgina repacked and wrote new descriptions with consistent terminology for transference to Mimsy XG, our collections management system. In several cases, Georgina’s analytical eye was able to spot alterations previously uncatalogued, which will help the museum to understand more about the biographies of the dresses. The original scope of the placement was to work on a group of approximately 100 dresses from the 1880s-1890s. However, Georgina was so efficient she was able to assist Rebecca with her work on mid Victorian women’s wear by processing an additional twenty 1870s’ gowns during the course of her placement, as well as re-cataloguing a small group of nineteenth-century corsets.

Throughout the placement Georgina demonstrated and developed a range of skills. She was highly motivated, working well both independently and as part of a team. Glasgow Museums is grateful to the Costume Society for providing assistance to enable Georgina to undertake this placement with us.