 All right. Hello, everyone. This is Jess Unger here. Thank you so much for joining us for today's webinar. This is the fifth in your eight-part series to complement the in-person training for the Texas Heritage Responders team. These programs are made possible through the generous grant funding support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. So today, we will continue the discussion of some material-specific salvage tips. A reminder that last week, you learned about photographic and electronic media salvage. Today, you'll learn about textile salvage. And then you'll see that next week, we'll look at how to salvage wooden and upholstered furniture. Please refer to this slide as a reminder of all upcoming program dates. And if you miss any sessions, I will email you after the program with a link to the webinar recording. Simply email me when you have finished reviewing the program, and I'll mark your attendance on your file. Before we begin today's presentation, just a quick refresher of technical notes. On your screen, you'll see several boxes, including one labeled chat on the left-hand side. You can use that chat box to say hello, ask questions, and share any information or links that you'd like. If you post a question in the chat box, you'll receive a response from me. And any questions will be noted, collected, and then I will verbally ask them of our presenter, Meg, during a break in the presentation. At the bottom of your screen, you'll see a new feature called the Files box. This works in a similar way to the WebLinks box that you've seen before. So simply click on the name of a file to highlight it in blue, and then click on the Download File button to save a copy to your computer. Our presenter is very generously put together some excellent resources for today's topic. But a special note, please see the file labeled Do Not Share, Tips and Tricks to Remove the Mud from Textile Collections After a Flood. This is a publication that is typically a member benefit for those AIC members who are part of the Textile specialty group. We receive special permission to share this file with you all as part of your coursework, but please do not distribute this document with those outside of this class. And with that, I'm very pleased to introduce you all to today's presenter, Margaret, or Meg Geismuni. Meg has been providing a full range of services as a conservator, a collections care and collections management consultant since 1979. Meg is available for both short-term and long-term projects on-site and off-site. She's completed undergraduate and graduate coursework at the University of California Davis in Textile Science. During her academic career, Ms. Geismuni took courses that enabled her to fully understand textiles from the molecule up, so as to be able to most successfully preserve and conserve her textile and fiber heritage and legacy. She has worked on staff at the Cloisters Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. She recently completed on-site treatment work at the National Museum of Cutter. Meg is a senior member of the American Association of Textile, Chemist, and Colorist, a professional associate of the American Institute for Conservation, and has been a member of the National Heritage Responders, formerly known as AIC CERT, since 2011. She was appointed to the City of Petaluma Public Art Committee in March of 2015. Meg co-taught the AIC CERT slash Heritage Preservation Emergency Planning and Response Workshop on the West Coast in January of 2012, and the Textile Costume Fiber Salvage Section of the FAIC Disaster Training webinar for the Miami Heritage Responders Group in August of 2017. And with that, I would like to turn things over to Meg for her presentation on textile salvage. Great. Let's see if everybody can hear me, I hope. Thank you so much, Jeff. Yep, you sound good. It's a pleasure to. Good. Excellent. It's my pleasure to speak with you all today. I'm glad you are getting involved in Heritage Response. It's a wonderful, wonderful program. I won't go in. Jess has done a great introduction for me. I've also got what I call my one page blurb is also available in the EM Files box. So if you have a touch of insomnia sometime, take a look at it. I also want to warn you from a sonic standpoint that I'm speaking to you from a room that has several antique clocks in it that chime and ring the hour. So if all of a sudden you hear banging or chiming going on, hopefully it'll be in the background. It won't be too obnoxious. So we have a lot to cover today this morning. So let's get started. One of the things that I mention all the time is, of course, we have ideal versus reality. As I have no need to explain that to you all as you were living that every single day in your work at the museums in historical society, heritage, collection, preservers. Another one of my favorite sayings is an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And so every step that you can take in the ounce of prevention department will save you a load of pound of cure in terms of the headache department. And of course, because of my particular specialties, I always think that there's a fabric or fiber solution. And also with you all in the heritage collections area, if it's not one thing, it's another. All right, so let's get started. So we are preserving in our responsibilities both as heritage preservers and as heritage responders, preserving both the people and the objects and the artifacts. And the objects and the artifacts that I'm speaking about today are made from organics and inorganic media. And my particular areas of expertise are objects and artifacts that are made from organic. So things like textiles and costume and the upholstery part of upholstered furniture and basketry. And I want to point out that the thing that we need really to keep in mind here also is that people always come first. It's hard sometimes in a disaster situation, but people's safety and health has to always come first. If you haven't already got it on your bookshelves, on the reference list that's available down below, there's a fabulous book called Health and Safety for Museum Professionals that is a must-buy, I think, for every historical agency. So when I'm talking about textile and costume and fiber, basically textiles are sort of two-dimensional structurally. Of course they're not. They're actually three, but they're flat. And then costume is mostly three-dimensional. And they're tailored in shape, multiple layers, a front and a back. And in cases of textile and costume, they usually have a function or a use. And this makes them sort of unique in collection types versus paintings or sculpture. They're usually used by and on living creatures. And they range in size. It's just an incredible amount of complexity possible from a single layer to multiple layers of the different media. As conservator, we also have to keep the actual condition in mind. It's very difficult to make hard and fast generalization sometimes. And the weakest link, or links, must be kept in mind. And that's not always the textile and fiber component. The other thing I also want to stress is that there are always improvements and breakthroughs and ongoing upgrading and replacing and learning from our experiences and our research and our mistakes. And so the recommendations that are mentioned today in terms of a particular process or a particular chemical or whatever or procedure or treatment or whatever might change as we learn from our mistakes and or our research. So what are we battling here? As an overall, these are the in short order here, the source of deterioration for objects and artifacts. And we'll touch on these lightly in a moment. And of course, disasters, whether large or small, or have all of these things involved in a short period of time. There's synergy among these sources of deterioration. And they overlap at times as well, especially during a disaster. And our job is we want to slow down the deterioration, realizing, of course, that we can't stop the deterioration. So just briefly, the disasters are the large amounts of the deteriorating factors concentrated in a short period of time. And of course, they can also range in size from literally just one storage box to all the way up to a region or a whole state. And it invariably is a combination of the failure of building systems. You can see those there combined, being overwhelmed by the forces of nature. And in all of this, it's usually dealing with water overwhelming, our building systems coming from forces of nature and the resulting contamination. So here's just some of the things about what inherent vice is, what it's made out of, how it's made, how it's used, how it's previously changed. I won't spend much time on this. You can always come back and really dig into it again after the webinars published. And also, there's a couple of references on the reference list at the bottom that will be helpful to you in terms of talking about the different inherent vice problems with natural fibers and man-made fibers and synthetic fibers. And so it's basically, once again, just a summary of how the textiles in costume or basketry are made and how it was used and how it's been previously changed, both sympathetically and non-sympathetically. So in a disaster situation, here's a nice summary. Basically, the natural fibers, since they absorb and hold water easily, really suck up the water. And this, then, of course, leads to other situations that the mold and mildew can easily digest that. In the case of natural fibers and the man-made fibers, they are physically weaker when they're wet, even when they're new. And of course, once they're aged, it's even more of a problem. The good news about synthetic fibers is that they do not absorb or hold water easily. And the strength is not affected when they're wet. The complication with synthetic fibers is they have a lower tolerance to heat and will melt at lower temperatures than will affect natural and man-made fibers. And then, of course, we have the other things that are involved in making textiles in costume. And they all have their own problems. If you have a cardboard stiffener, if you have a metal, the rust, things like that. Also, when we talk about the technology involved, the dyes made before, about the mid-1950s, were not very dye-fast. That means they bleed very easily. And or because of the environmental and cultural restrictions, they didn't have access to water to rinse out the excess, unfixed dye molecules. And of course, those dye molecules don't really care which fiber molecule they interact with. And so that is an ongoing problem when those dye molecules have been moved by water to a different part of the costume or textile. We also have, as I mentioned, the mixed media with differing responses to heat, water, and then drying. Here's some of the problems in terms of fiber and media foibles when they're used together. Here we have, let's see if I can get this. Yeah, here we go. We have a bast fiber, very coarsely woven, that was used to stiffen this, a very lightweight silk fabric. And then, of course, it was exposed to water. And the tide lines have occurred. And more tide lines here as well. And what's happened is a fragile silk has deteriorated much more quickly and fallen away from the much more durable jute interlining. So it's both a physical condition problem and a visual condition problem. And then the fabric construction foibles, you literally can have something that looks like it's bleeding or shading. But basically, it's the translucency if this white fabric allows the red fabric that's behind it, or another layer of the white fabric, the seam allowance, to be a more denser color. And so that affects the visual condition. On the blue textile, we have a very coarsely woven fabric that is actually made out of rayon. And so it was also very slippery and very easily slipped away from the seam stitching and started unraveling. Of course, in a disaster situation, this is going to happen even faster in the unraveling part. So in physical and mechanical stress in a disaster situation, of course, physical and mechanical stress is due to gravity, flexing and folding, use of bias grain. And so this additional stress is caused by the weight of the water that's absorbed. And water's really heavy. Over eight pounds, just for one gallon. And the natural absorbency of natural and man-made fibers is very easy for them to absorb gallons and gallons of water. So you also have the reaction of these natural and man-made fibers. They physically swell as they absorb the moisture and physically shrink as the moisture, vapor and liquid water evaporates. I've already mentioned that the natural and man-made fibers are physically much weaker when wet and so will tear and come apart much more easily when they're wet. And of course, with costume, we have a situation where we have, or other textiles too, with dangling parts and components that can have additional fabric physicality and mechanical stress to the fabric and to the attachment points if they are not supported when they're being moved. And then we have the mirror flexing and folding, increasing and scrunching and rolled up and flattened and piled on and whether something's folded to fit inside a box or if a dress skirt fabric has been pleated into the waistband. We have fibers that break along the fold lines and the creases. So as the fibers deteriorate, which means the polymer chains are breaking and becoming shorter, the physical and mechanical stress has more effect, especially when they're damp and wet. And here's just an example of a costume on an inadequate hanger and it has physical problems already. Without even being wet, it's literally tearing off the hanger. So you can just imagine if this thing gets soaked at the bottom of it and so it's even heavier, it will even tear away even faster and the dies will probably bleed too. Here we have a waistband. Let's see if I can get this. It seems like my arrow has stopped working. All right. Meg, if you just move your cursor, the arrow should follow it. But if it's not working, then... All right, I'll try that. There we go. All right. You can see the teeny, tiny little stitches here that was used to attach the silk fabric to the waistband. You can also see that the silk fabric is tearing, that there's multiple different kinds of fabric. We have also been pierced by a safety pin and so just the physical mechanical stress of it being worn, including the inherent vice problems of all these tiny little stitches, is causing physical and visual condition problems. Light, once again, here's just a summary of all the different things caused by light. The ultraviolet portion is in the range of 300 to 400 nanometers. The visible range is in the 380 to 700 nanometers. And then the infrared, which is 700 and above nanometers. And then X-rays and microwave. X-rays are below UV and microwave is above IR. And so we can see, and I must point out that people forget that it's all wavelengths of light that cause damage, not just the ultraviolet portion, and that the exposure is a function of both the intensity and the duration. So that ounce of prevention pound of cure is we want the less intensity of light for shorter periods of time equals textiles and fibers and costume lasting in better physical and visual condition. So light in a disaster situation drops in importance compared to the other sources of deterioration. You need enough light for personal safety and to assess the damage. If you're working outside during salvage operations, try to work in the shade, you know, rig up tarps, et cetera, to provide shade, a work in tents and canopies. So I'm sure you all have in your collections situations of light exposure. We have a tassel here that looks like it's white, but upon further examination, you can see that actually that tassel is supposed to be light pink. It's an indication of the usual kind of dye fading that happens with the early aniline dyes. Irreversible, of course, and has obvious physical and visual impact. High temperature and relative humidity, here's just some of the summary of it. And the thing to remember here is, of course, is that it gets back to basic chemistry, where the rate of reaction doubles in speed roughly for every 18 degrees Fahrenheit increase, and that the infrared part of light manifests as heat. So here we're here with some of this overlap I had mentioned previously. Also, in terms of overlapping with other sources of deterioration, is the amount of water vapor in the air. And so this water vapor can then be absorbed by the natural and man-made fibers and physically swell and get heavier, because now they're holding onto water molecules as well. And then, of course, we have the mold and mildew growth occurring more easily. Dyes can bleed and run, metals reacting, and also the fibers can become brittle if they're too cold to lose their flexibility. So here's that overlap with physical and mechanical stress. So in a disaster situation, this is one of the most important ones combined with contamination and physical mechanical stress. If one of the salvage responses is to freeze, you must fully support the textiles and costume because they become extremely brittle. And you cannot unfold or manipulate them while they're still frozen because they're literally crack apart. And the scale of the disaster can really impact this high-temperature relative humidity and whether or not you can do anything about it. So here's just some examples of different mold and mildew, sort of the black one, then we have a white one. And then here we have different effects, different kinds of safety pins that have corroded. And of course, we also have physical and mechanical stress for this one because it's actually not out of the textile and trying to get this corroded safety pin out of the textile without causing further damage is going to be a tricky job and usually involve a wire cutter or some sort to cut it into pieces first. And then we have metal hook corroding. And if this is in a box and you don't realize that this metal hook is here, it can think that everything's all right, but this sort of partially concealed hook in the collar will merely be rusting away under damp circumstances. So contamination, and here we have, oh, it just, you know, the list goes on and on about all the possible sources of contamination. And of course, the extra complication of being around humans and involved in human activity adds a whole another section of contamination, both what's coming off the human body, but also the things that we humans do in terms of cleaning or trying to prevent any kind of moth activity and how we store things. And then here we have the rest of, then we have the contamination that's literally waterborne, where the dirt and the contaminates are coming, you know, floating in, being absorbed. So contamination in a disaster situation, it's activated because we have higher temperature and humidity, so that rate of reaction increases. And then all those external sources also are combining with the internal sources of contamination that the textile or costume or basketry already has. And then as the drying and the water removal occurs, tide lines can occur where the contaminates are being concentrated. And of course, with mold and mildew spore, the population explodes in disaster situations. Here we have the dyes in a, the underarm area of the dress between the perspiration and the deodorant has completely changed the color of the dyes that were made to color this fabric. Here we have an example of a wooden hanger that was stuffed and patted out with cotton batting and then wrapped with cotton fabric. So it's an acidic wood hanger. It now has mold and mildew activity going on because this is like a sponge holding any moisture in the air. Of course, as we all know, mold and mildew spores are everywhere and are just waiting for their opportunistic environment to have their population explode. So this is sort of hidden away because of course this would be inside the costume. Here we have post-disaster, the tide lines. We have the corroding wire. You can just see all the moisture that's been absorbed by this cardboard paper backing that is being transferred to the insides, which is a girl haired embroidery from a damp wall is where most of this moisture came from. It's post-fire fighting. And then here's sort of an example of what I call, you know, seemed a good idea at the time as part of an inexpensive display technique. This decorative, quote-unquote, decorative rocks were used to cover the base of the exhibit case. Well, they got it at the garden store and they didn't rinse the rocks off before they inserted them into the case. So here we have all this dust and dirt and who knows what kind of insect, carcasses, et cetera. Another example of seemed a good idea at the time from the past is the use of blue-colored tissue paper because in a disaster and in water excess water, the blue dye runs and bleeds. So here's some recommendations. It helped. So of course, I've mentioned my favorite ounce of prevention is pound of cure. And so we have to combine the reality of the objects in your care combined with the reality of your building and the reality of your staffing and you can only do as much as you can do. So my suggestion is to prioritize your collection as to importance. And of course, loans are number one. If you have loans of anybody else's, any other institutions in your building, that it's got to be your number one priority. And then do you have what I call pilgrimage objects? What do people come to see in your institution? What's historically important for your mission? And it literally could be something that's going to say, you know, an inkwell, a quilt, a piano. It's just so interesting. The kinds of things that are historically important for your mission. And then we have your high dollar value. And the good news, bad news about textiles and costume is that there aren't a lot of high dollar value appraisals. There are, of course, niches for that. Things like Baltimore album quilts, pile rugs and carpets, American Southwest weavings, hote couture, girlhood embroideries, and contemporary fiber art. Also ethnographic and tribal is also very important. And then, of course, those made from natural and man-mide fibers and mixed media. And you can just sort of see that all of a sudden your prioritization starts, project gets bigger and bigger. You can also prioritize your collection for salvage difficulty. What would be the hardest thing to get out of your building if a tree fell on the roof and damaged that particular area of your storage? Do you have frame textiles? Are they girlhood embroideries in the original frames? Are they oversized? Are they, you know, 10 foot by 12 foot quilts or contemporary fiber, an upholstered furniture set that came around the Cape of Good Hope and is historically important to your mission? And you can see some of the other. You have crowded storage boxes that are paper-based, made out of cardboard, and where tissue has been used inside to pad things out or separate. And the tissue is paper tissue. You also need to look at where and how things are stored in your museum and prioritize the things that are stored below ground and space where utility pipes run, whether it's water, waste, gutters, downspots. I can't even say it, downspouts. There we go. Nothing should be stored flat on the floor. They should be elevated at least six inches off the floor. They'll give you a little bit of space if it's just an overflowing toilet upstairs that won't immediately affect. Also, it gives you access in terms of for pest management and for cleaning. So here are some of my recommendations for dealing with things that have to be stored below ground in a space where utility pipes run. So here's an example of... This is a textile storage box, a 40x18x6 that filled with water at a county museum in my region due to one of the condensation lines for their HVAC system being blocked over a three-day weekend. That always happens over a three-day weekend, right? They're literally pouring the water into a bucket here. It was completely filled to the top. In hindsight, of course, they should have first draped plastic sheeting over their costume rack here, so the water wouldn't splash onto the fabric dust cover here. But hindsight's always 2020, and experience definitely helps. I'm a real fan of having each costume in its own shroud, and here's one way of having a costume shroud for each textile for each costume on a hanger without having to do any kind of sewing if you're not blessed with volunteers who know their way around a sewing or a serging machine. You also, in terms of recommendations, if you could get a barrier between your warring media. And so a good example of this is if you have metal buttons on anything other than on a piece of cardboard stored separately, getting a piece of aluminum foil or Tyvek under the buttons or the insignia. So in high-humidity wet conditions, the corrosion and rusting of those buttons or metal insignia won't stain and interact with the fabric ground. Ideally, each artifact is labeled with a water-resistant hang tag label with an undyed string or thread that is visible with minimal handling. I'm not a fan of having costume pieces labeled inside the center-back neck or inside anything or in a situation of large textiles like tapestries or quills only having one label. My recommendation is that you have a label on a thread that extends beyond the edge of the costume, that the big ones are labeled in more than one place, opposite ends, and also on the outside wrapping, and that you actually have a written labeling policy that is taught and maintained. I recommend that you line first each storage box with a piece of fabric so it can be used as a sling. If this box becomes waterlogged, you're going to need at least two people to lift this sling out just due to the weight of the combined water contamination and the costume piece itself. I also recommend you use fabric as the interlining to separate objects from each other in a storage box. I am not a fan of using paper tags or acid-free or buffered or unbuffered tissue, any kind of paper tissue, because in disaster situations, the tissue turns to paper pulp. The article down below in the references about tips and tricks also reiterates this. She has a couple of really horrifying images of tissue bits that she had to pick off, the costume and textile collection, post-flood and mud. That was a lot of work that had to be done that wouldn't have had to be done if fabric had been used instead. The other foible about cardboard-based boxes and tissues is of course it too becomes contaminated with the inherent vice problems of themselves and the costume and the textiles, and they actually do need to be replaced and thrown away periodically. Here are just some images of some of the means of moving things safely, slings, and how to label things, how to carry things. You can see that in a situation it's been so much faster to be able to identify which costume pieces are being put into that box for freezing because here are the numbers right there. In plain sight, you don't have to be groping around the back of the hanger looking for the number. Here we go. On a piece of flat textile with the label and then the doll. I've already mentioned the use of fabric to separate the layers if folds are needed, but you can also use it for stuffing out the components of shoes, 3D sleeves, bodices. If you have something that's particularly a little weighty, which is three-quarters of the costume just because of... is that you can take aluminum foil and crumple it to the shape and size you need and then wrap it with fabric, and you use that as a core for your 3D components or for padding out seams. The aluminum foil doesn't absorb any moisture. It's very durable. Since you've already crumpled it, it won't compress anymore. I also recommend a fabric wrap, as the outer wrap for rolled textiles and framed textiles, and then covering with polyethylene sheeting or lay-fit flat tubing in that you tape the seams completely. This is really a very good idea when you have to have storage in below ground in the basement. And if you do have rolled textiles, make sure that you have them stored where the opening is facing down and not up, and that way it doesn't attract dust and collect dust and also slows down the amount of water that can get through when you've got it facing up. If you have a custom-made hanger shroud or outside cover, also label it. That way, when you have to rematch things up, you already know which shroud, which cover needs to go with which textile or costume. I've already mentioned that, ideally, that there would be an individual shroud for each hanging costume, even if it was being stored in an appropriate metal storage. And, of course, that shroud should be labeled also. The other nice thing about having individual shrouds is that it also helps you monitor for insect activity in the storage cabinet because any kind of frass or insect parts will be kept inside that shroud and you'll know that it's that particular uniform jacket that's got problems. Also, it's great for capturing the components that are falling off, whether it's sequins or buttons or if it's even just the fracturing silk fiber that's continuing to fall off the wedding dress. I'm a real fan of having water alarms in all spaces that could be flooded or have any impact. The good news is that there is a wide variety of possibilities, including ones that are actually attached to water, the water pipe itself, and it can tell from a flow that the water is going out too fast and it will automatically shut it off. Of course, this is a much more expensive solution because you actually have a plumber put it in. You have systems that with their water systems you can actually program them to call your cell phone at a variety of cell numbers available, depending on how complicated you get. I've actually seen some of the more sophisticated HVAC systems also can have these water sensors added to them and then if they detect water or moisture it will trigger the major facilities manager operations folks attention. Here's another one that is also Wi-Fi sends to cell phone. Then we get to the real simple one here which is literally it blasts a very shrill high dB level shrill sound. Of course you have to have somebody hear that sound for it to be effective but in terms of the kinds of you know this little guy is like less than $20 and then it goes up from there. So some of your homework as if you didn't have enough to do. I recommend that you reach out to your first responders and have them visit your facility all shifts even the midnight shift periodically and to point out where your high priority artifacts and loans are located. Last year at the University of Vermont special collections they had a fire and because the first responders the firemen firefighters knew where the important parts of the collection were they were able to tarp those storage drawers and containers before they actually turned the high pressure water hoses on and so was able to prevent a lot of water damage and physical damage because they knew where it was where they were. And reach out to conservators specific to your collection types and get their 24-7 contact information into your disaster response plan if you don't have any paintings obviously you're not going to need a paintings conservator but do you have books and you should have a book conservator you have textiles you need a textile conservator furniture etc and then you also is to gather your supplies you need to protect and salvage your high priority artifacts and store them where you're needed also determine ahead of time where your oversized textiles could be laid out or brought to if they needed can you buy or borrow tents or canopies is there a large inside open where are those large inside hoses high school gym how would you get things there and then when you're doing your tabletop drills and training to brainstorm using a particular type of textile or in a disaster scenario you have four twelve hours to protect your four tapestries away from the windows and protect against water intrusion how would we do that how do we get artifacts out of our old wooden display case doors are swollen shut with water here's an example the wood doors in the back the wood swells now let's not forget we need to protect you and everybody else so you need at least N95s or N100s these are the disposable ones the better breathing protection was to get fit tested ahead of time for half face respirator and once again with it being stored with its cartridges in a plastic bag you wear nitrile gloves at all times wear them under your work gloves during the initial salvage you do not reuse your nitrile gloves you just throw them away you should have goggles that strap onto your head size to fit over your glasses and goggles are the ones where they have a top and a bottom and sides so they literally are the word in case doesn't sound quite right but basically all your glasses and your eyes need to be in these goggles to protect them also polyethylene knee pads with Velcro straps are available at the paint department and the hardware store so you can protect your knees and then I'm very fond of using battery powered headlamps for light because this will leave your hands free for what you need to do once again some of these things are going to be disposable we're not going to try to save them you've got other better things to do with your time so cotton bar rags are great for wiping off work table surfaces when they're damp and wet and then you just throw them away and then once the table surfaces are dry you can use the disposable static wipes things they're called swifters or what's the other Pledge of Gravits and you throw those away in between and remember that waterlog textiles and boxes are very heavy so using protecting your back having more than one person lifting and carrying use of carts use polyethylene sheeting for dragging don't need to pick something up you can wiggle polyethylene sheeting underneath it and you can literally use it as a sled and then of course there's a slipping possibility slipping hazards in wet and damp situations and you probably need to wear steel toe footwear for the re-entry team in the first round of salvage to protect your feet so actually getting down to some salvage tips here really do read Gail Ninema's article it was just amazing how much work they went through really hands on kind of an experience and I'm sure that you all have also because of your location there in Texas have had experience with some salvage chips and I would love to have you share those if you're willing so I've already mentioned the use of piece of polyethylene sheeting or bags and you can gently wriggle under the whole stack of wet out textiles and then between the stacked wet out textiles to separate them and then you can then use those sheeting in bags as a means to carry them to wherever they need to be carried you can gently wiggle the pieces of polyethylene sheeting or bags into the arms and hats in between front and back to separate for shaping and rinsing and air drying and if you do use bags you can then stuff out stuff them out more to 3D by opening up the bag gently and putting the stuffing materials inside the bag rinsing the outside with clean running water with the nozzle controlled of course or inside a space set up to deal with large quantities of water you literally are using gallons and gallons for a lot of rinsing and so setting up in a space that has carpets or doesn't have good air circulation is going to make your job very difficult because you're just not going to get the air circulation and the drying that you need you can use fabric for the initial blotting flat bled bed sheets and covering while air drying and wicking the contaminates out of the wet fabrics I'm a fan of using P-pads for wicking I've got a picture of a box the next slide you can see inserted into the edges of upholstery and this will help they're very inexpensive and it helps wick away the dampness in between two wedges of upholstered fabric be aware that polyethylene hangers can fail if the costume is waterlogged it's too much weight for the hook so you have to keep an eye out for that if you have framed textiles you need to unframe them if they're damp or wet so you can air dry the different components and air circulation is critical in slowing down the mold and mildew growth we want to drop those high humidity levels and so fans should be directed around but not pointed directly at the textiles unfortunately once the mold and mildew population is visible to your naked eye it probably won't be possible to remove the staining that this is this mildew and mildew activity it's a combination of literally the number of mold and mildew fruiting bodies which are colored and the mold and mildew are digesting and doing their thing eating the surface they're on and then of course what goes in also has to come out so they're also being excreted on and then learn some of the safe turning over techniques when you're handling textiles and costume so here's a this is what I'm talking about in terms of the P-pads and as you can see they're very inexpensive and once again once you use them you can cut them down into smaller sizes and then once you use them you can then just throw them away so here's an example of a hook failure under weight either due to time or in being waterlogged you just see it's just a soft creep of the plastic will literally cause that hook to fail and they'll come off the rod so here's some other ideas for archival non-absorbent hangers so this one's really easy to do here's some techniques for turning things over and literally this one down here at the bottom number two works so fantastically obviously if the scale is this is a 10 foot tube you're obviously going to need two or three people but the same basic technique works beautifully so some salvage tips if their suit is present you really do need to consult a conservator immediately for possible removal methods it's not possible to do the same with odors the complications of what was involved in terms of the types of materials that burn to create the suit or to create the odors is literally a particular question that you need to present to a conservator so in terms of supplies I've got in the files underneath two lists of supplies I'm a real fan obviously of using fabric and you can actually use fabric that's up to 50% polyester and the rest of it cotton flat sheets of all sizes if you are storing your costume collection your textile collection in a space that does not have the relative humidity well contained use 50% polyester fiber content flat sheets as you're interleaving as you're slaying as you're stuffer because they will not absorb as much moisture as 100% cotton fabric the other thing that's wonderful about using fabric is that you can reuse it all you need to do is rinse it in the washing machine no soap or water soap in the water no soap or detergent in the water just hot hot water and then air dry it if you happen to use the anti-static sheets in your dryer if you don't use anti-static sheets then you can use your dryer so other supplies I recommend you get are the polyethylene top folding tables and they now make them with adjustable heights so you don't have to hunch over a table that's set up for sitting and actually raise it up so for standing height in here just two brand names two mil, four mil polyethylene sheeting or lay flat tubing a wet dry HEPA vacuum cleaner I have a picture of the Festool brand is one of my favorites and then a retracting tape measure battery operated LED task lights is also color balanced replacement batteries for that right in rain products for your waterproof papers and notebooks this is especially very helpful where you're doing the initial assessment and inventorying of this as you're doing the first run and then the Tyvek paper like and fabric like materials so here's what here's my current favorite vacuum cleaner or the Festool they actually call them dust extractors they're specifically the market is specifically for contractors, general contractors the last time I checked the price I have a mini and it was about $400 and then of course it's not just the vacuum cleaner but you also have to get the replacement bags and filters and when you're dealing with disaster response and salvage I suggest you also get another hose as well and this is very lightweight fabulous little vacuum cleaner and they also get very very large as well Mealy is another one that's it's a market is more the consumer household kind of things it's one of these things where you have to make sure that you look like you look for one that is you know actual HEPA filtered they get sort of sneaky in their semantics that HEPA like et cetera but make sure you get a true HEPA Mealy and then here is a source for the 120 inch retractable tape measure I buy these like by the dozens they're just so handy to have especially because they have both inches and metric and they tend to disappear even though you write register only curatorial conservator only they just tend to walk away because they're so handy being able to have it retractable and so you don't have a 10 inch a 10 foot tape measure crawling its way out of your cart it's just neat and tidy in this way so that is my presentation for today and if you need any clarifications if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact me and so do we have any questions just have a couple questions come in and I would encourage anyone who had other questions that came up over the course of the presentation to go ahead and post to the chat window first of all thank you so much Meg that's a great presentation so we had a couple of questions come in several slides back when you were going over the hang tags so Christina wanted to know or Katrina sorry wanted to know how the hang tag labels are physically attached to the fabric ah yes they are literally attached with a needle so my favorite string to attach a Tyvek tag is a piece of embroidery floss and it comes with six strands and I always get white and you just make a little thread tack or thread loop and use take a stitch in the appropriate place and just then knot it and so if it's you can strand the six strands to a single strand or two strands and you can then just judge cut off how much you need for that loop to have the hang tag on it great yeah and then a follow up that just came in about that from Fran was how do you number them oh with the accession number or are they talking about the pen or pencil basically I use Tyvek either a Pigma Pigma brand Micron and yeah it's Pigma brand I'm trying to think of yes it is with the issues I can't accession number and oh and do write the number on both sides because it's one of those Murphy laws that when you're looking at the tag the side that naturally presents itself to you will be the side you didn't write the number on so that ounce of prevention is go ahead and write the number on both sides of the tag and it's I believe it Pigma Micron pens and they come in a variety of thicknesses and I always test them as well because they do change the formulations great yeah and then we had another question come in earlier but Elizabeth noted that you had addressed it so okay I see Steve Pine has a question that he's typing in likewise I would encourage anyone else who had questions go ahead and add this in the chat window and another reminder to if you haven't done so already please go ahead and take a moment to download the files from the file box again just highlight them in blue and then click download file box button there and I'll make sure you have those saved to your computer before we wrap today's session what I can do also Jess is look at my notes and come up with a specific manufacturer for the pen oh great I can share that with the participants as well I see Steve is still typing so while we're waiting for any other final questions to come in I will just go ahead and pull the survey link over so I don't forget this week like I did last week so just a reminder if you can click on the browse to button here to go to the survey for today's session we really helpful to just take a minute or two to say what you found useful about the program today okay so Steve wrote when so it is deposited on fabrics and then the fabric is wet by sprinklers or a fire hose how do you suggest we triage and stabilize the fabric so it alone is one thing but we can't vacuum it from a wet fabric so what do you suggest great question Steve oh boy Steve I'm going to nail you with the usual conservators response it all depends ideally if we're talking about a physically strong intact surface usually what you can do is wrap it carefully with fabric to help absorb the the wetness of it while also hopefully absorbing some of the soot and then this wrapping would be blotting but it's not like blotting it's just I want it's just laid on very gently you don't actually pushing on it because of course if you add any physical pressure at this state the soot just gets ground into the fabric and it's impossible to get out so the basically it has to be the water has to be removed first so to triage it basically what you need to do is wrap it and absorb it fabric first flat sheets being my favorite and ideally you would be removing and replacing those sheets maybe you should if it's small enough you could use the pea pads also to keep absorbing the water with new dry fabric or pea pads until it is dry and then dealing with the soot now that's sad if it's a physically strong table ideally it would be washed clean immediately with fresh clean running water warm the appropriate detergent for what it is without going through that drying process first the complication of course is that having a situation set up that you can do this kind of cleaning and then rinsing and then allowing it to air dry is usually not physically possible in the first stages of a disaster response great question Steve thank you and great answer Meg as you said often it really is dependent on the specific situation but something that well I talk about ideal versus reality the ideal would be to have a wash station set up waiting for those tapestries to arrive the reality of it oh my gosh you're still listening to the first responders and they're telling you another storm is coming you have to get out of the building now so Jennifer just had a question come in curious about the water source for what you'd be using for cleaning and rinsing in a large scale disaster they had no water for some time in the Beaumont area so could you bring in a tanker with water what do you suggest absolutely in fact if you actually go talk to the folks that are carrying food products and tankers or things like I'm here in Sonoma County in Northern California and we have a large dairy industry and a lot of the milk trucks that they move milk around in has to literally be cleaned out with potable water that they then just dump and so if you can make arrangements ahead of time with somebody outside the region absolutely bringing in a tanker potable water will definitely be fabulous for rinsing in large scale disasters of course you'd have to also make the arrangements to using what a two or three inch diameter hose and so you'd have to figure out how you were going to safely get that water out of the tanker and a neck down to a drinking water hose to get it to the so you're not blasting the textiles or costume across the parking lot by the force of the water great thank you did anyone have any other questions I wasn't seeing anyone typing anything we've given us a lot to think about Meg thank you so much for this very thorough look at how we should be preparing for dealing with textiles affected by disasters and I'll move the survey links so we can collect information there again but thank you for providing that it's really appreciated if you want to follow up questions once again I encourage you all to please go ahead and fill out the survey link Jennifer noted that it wasn't showing up as a link of the original so I put the URL in the box there and hopefully that helps I'm grateful to you all for taking the time again to join us for a webinar and next week we'll have yet another session and that will be our sort of marathon here but thanks thanks again for setting aside some time on a Wednesday and of course a big thank you to our presenter Meg for putting together this excellent program and thank you all for helping with Heritage Response