 Just before we get started and just want to draw your attention or welcome you to the Zoom platform. If at any point in time you encounter any challenges with Zoom, please feel free to reach out to me. You can get ahold of me via the chat window at the bottom of your screen. And also you'll note that there's both a chat and a Q&A button at the bottom. So what we're going to do is we're going to ask you to use the Q&A to communicate with our presenter in order to ask questions. And if you have any comments for the general audience or questions of tech to support nature, feel free to communicate with us using the chat. So without further delay, we'll go ahead and pass things off to Robyn. Go ahead Robyn. Hi everyone and welcome back to another year of C2C care. Before I start, I would like to acknowledge this webinar is being moderated on the traditional lands of the Miccosukean Seminole people and their ancestors. And I pay my respect to elders, those past and present. Well, again, welcome. This is the new year. We're excited to have this presentation today. I'm going to run through just a couple quick intro slides and we're going to hand off the presentation to our speaker today. As we said today's presentation is all going to be about care of baskets and basketry. Again, my name is Robyn Bauer-Kilgo. I'm the C2C care coordinator and you just met Mike, who is our producer over at Learning Times. Really quick. I think most people of this group especially know about this, but I always like to plug our website connecting to collections.org. There you can find an entire fabulous archives resources and everything else related to our program, which is supported by IMLS and FAIC. Again, our archives for both our courses and our webinars. There is a plethora of information on this website. It is all free. Anyone can access it. We have recordings of webinars and all sorts of fun things. So if you want to go on there, use the search button, type in the subject that maybe you're interested in, and there's most likely a webinar on it. We also have an online community, which is available for anyone to post questions when it comes to care questions. What's nice about our community is that it is moderated by conservation professionals or conservators. So if you have a question related to the care of any objects in your collections, post a question. One of our fabulous volunteer monitors will take a look at it and get you some great information on how to deal with it. So I do encourage everyone to go check out that online area. We also have two homes online over on Facebook.com and our Twitter account where we do announcements for our upcoming webinars and anything else you might be interested in. A couple of quick future programming notes before we get into today's topics on February 16, we will have a free webinar called the labeling lightning round. We are working on putting it together now. But basically it's going to be a chance for you to learn methodologies on how to put numbers on your collection items from presenters from all around the world. Actually, we're going to have a combination of recorded videos and live Q&A. So we're looking forward to it. It'll be February 16 at 1pm Eastern. We also have a course starting in March. The course is going to be a five webinar series. The courses do have a small fee attached to them. It'll be some great information. It's all about planning and managing magnetic media preservation projects. So essentially if you look into your collection storage area and you see a lot of VHS tapes and other items kept on magnetic media, this course will help you organize it, get an inventory of it, be able to actually start looking at preservation long term projects to get the data over to more stable formats, all sorts of fun things. So I would encourage you to take a look at our website. Both of those items are going to be on there by the end of the week and you will be able to start registering for them at that time. As Mike said, there are two boxes. I think most of us are pretty used to zoom by now, but I always like to point out there are two separate boxes when it comes to chat and Q&A. If you want to speak to the panelists on just a comment or you're having a technical issue, use the chat. If you have a question during the Q&A period, which will happen after the presentation, please put it in the Q&A box. Just helps us track the questions a little bit easier. And now I'm going to go ahead and introduce our speaker today. Her name is Maury Tootloff. She is an objects conservator at the Museum of Anthropology UBC in Vancouver, Canada. We're really excited to have her speak today. So I'm going to go ahead and give control of the presentation open to her. And we will see you all at the end during the Q&A period. See you soon. Hi Robin. Thank you for that introduction. Sorry, can you see my screen? Not yet, but go ahead and try to share it real quick and we'll see if you can pop it up. How's that? Looks perfect. Go for it. Great. Thank you very much. Good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you are. I'm Maury Tootloff. I'm a conservator at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. And today I'm going to be talking about the care of basketry in museum collections. So, sorry. First of all, I would like to say that I am speaking to you from the Museum of Anthropology, which is on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. I would like to give a brief introduction to the Museum of Anthropology and the work that we do here to frame how we care for our collections and in particular baskets. So one of the things about the museum, one of the first places that you walk into at the Museum of Anthropology, which I will probably refer to from now on as Moa, is the Great Hall. So in the area at the entrance of the museum, we have all of our monumental totem poles and house posts, and the architecture of the building is meant to mimic the post and beam architecture of the northwest coast. From there, you can visit our multi-versity galleries, which I will likely refer to as the MVG. The diversity galleries are 14,000 square foot space, and we exhibit about 10,000 objects from all over the world. And the concept is visible storage, which allows us to exhibit or have a lot more objects on exhibits than than usual. So here on the left of the screen is our Kwakwaki walk platform, and you can see all those beautiful dance masks, and on the right is our Cantonese opera case. So we do have a very large Asian collection, and in particular Cantonese opera. We also have about 3,000 baskets in our collection. So this part of the MVG on the left is showing all of our northwest coast baskets on exhibit. And on the right, this is showing Javanese wicker motorcycle, which although not a typical basket, it's definitely made of from basketry materials. So you can see some Indonesian wicker hats also in the same image. So we do have the traditional baskets, but we also have a lot of contemporary pieces that are made from traditional materials using traditional methods. On the very left, we have this, this woven cedar bark panel, which is so new we don't even have a proper photo of it but I wanted to show you just so you could see how those traditional methods are used in contemporary pieces and you may have some things in your museums under your care. In the middle slide is a cedar bark and wool dance tunic. And then on the right is contemporary new new Hulk mask with cedar bark fringe. So we definitely we have a lot of cedar bark in our collection. Another thing that's important to know about the Museum of Anthropology is we are one of the largest teaching museums in Canada. So we do teach courses in conservation. So here you see my colleague Heidi swearinga introducing the students of the care or the conservation of organic objects. She's introducing them to Japanese tissue, which they're going to be using in subsequent lab on the repair of basketry. We also have a number of interns in conservation. We usually host one or two a year. And you can see here this was our intern in 2019 Sally Kim, who's working on a Cantonese opera headdress. Another important work that we do at the Museum of Anthropology involves collection access. So being affiliated with the university. We do have a lot of researchers and classes and artists that want to come and get up close to our collection so we definitely have a program where people can we will pull objects and people can come in and get a closer look at them. But we also have a special program for collections access for family and community members originating community members. So here we have on the left, this woman who is who's come to visit her familial objects so her father was a carver, and he carved all the objects on the table that she she wanted to see. And she's also wearing her mother's dance robe, which is part of our collection. So when we do have families coming to visit their objects. We do not impose any sorts of handling restrictions on them they're allowed to touch things with their bare hands. If they wish. If for some reason, we feel that there is a danger because of pesticide residues or something inherently toxic in the object we will mention it to them but we don't restrict any access to family or community members. And then something else we also have an outreach program where we will actually people can have or communities can request to have their objects come to their community because it's not always easy for people to come to the museum. We also have a funding program to either bring people into the museum to see their objects, or we can take museums out to the community. So people can visit their objects in person, and the knowledge that's gained from these types of interactions is really invaluable. There's not much about parts of the collection from people who actually know these, these objects who who have, you know, maybe a relatives have made them. But also there's just a lot of joy that comes when people can see their community objects up close and personal. So we do take this is an important part of the preservation process and we've referred to it is preserving the intangible aspects of the object. Another thing that we do at the museum is we share, well we share a building space with the UBC laboratory of archaeology, Loa, and Loa acts as a repository for a lot of wet site materials in the province. So these are materials that come out of the grounds that maybe can't be treated right away. Loa will hold on to them. We act as an overflow for in our cold storage for keeping those objects safe. But we do also have the equipment to treat these objects cleaning or preservation treatments which I will probably talk about a little bit later. So that was just the background and I hope that gives some context to why we care for the things that we do the way we do. So when we think about caring for basketry. There's three things that we consider first and foremost, first, the materials, what's the basket made of the materials are definitely going to affect how your basket is going to interact with the environments. That's that's really an important first step. Second is the construction. So by looking at the construction of the basket, you should be able to pinpoint areas of weakness or strength. So looking at the construction is important. And then the history of use. So the history of use also can lead you to conclusions about weaknesses or what areas may need support, but also it can also give you clues to things like dirt that are on your basket. So is it was it dirt that was gained through use. And if so, that's something that's very important and that you want to retain that information. So anyway, yes, you would look at, say a very basket differently than a Northwest Coast hat. And I should point out that these baskets here that you see in this photo. This is part of our teaching collection. So these are the baskets that we let our students practice their repairs and documentations on. So, further on materials as conservators we look at, you know, just sort of broad definitions of the organic and the inorganic materials. So, usually materials are usually organic so usually plant materials, things like roots bark stems leaves and grasses. There, there may well be animal materials on baskets that's, that's definitely something that we see so things like quills or feather, skin, bailean, even hair. Sometimes they are decorative elements. And then lastly resins and plastics so resins I'm thinking about some Southwest baskets that have pine pitch as waterproofing agents. But there's also contemporary baskets made of resins and of course made of plastics. So they're, they may be synthetic they behave more like organic materials. So we do consider them organic. And that's versus the inorganic materials things like metals ceramics glass stone. Those can be found definitely on baskets metals I'm thinking with enclosures glass if there's any beads, things like that. So if we are thinking about traditional traditionally made baskets. We should consider how the basket is made the basket reconstruction. And it is important to remember that those natural materials are harvested at some point. Here, I'm, I can't go through all the harvesting methods but this is just an example. This is harvesting cedar bark. So you make a small slit at the base of the tree and then you pull these long strips off the tree, and then take off the outer bark, and you're left with the smooth inner cedar bark. And usually, there are some traditions that go along with these practices. I know for cedar bark, there's only one strip per tree taken, because the tree doesn't really grow that bark. So for cedar bark, there's usually a curing time, could be up to a year. And then there is some sort of processing. So for cedar bark, usually after the curing time, the cedar bark soaked some of the soaking process can remove the natural products and just make the bark more pliable and more suitable for weaving. So for the construction techniques, there are three main ones, and there's all sorts of variations, but these are the three main techniques that we see in Northwest Coast basketry, but they're also techniques that are used all over the world for making baskets. So the first one is plating, which you see here. So it's a checker weave and the weft crosses over and under one warp at a time. And you get that nice checker boards. Look, the next is coiling. So here in coiling you have this found it. Whoops. It went ahead too early. Anyways, here you have the foundation material, which is usually quite strong. And it's wrapped with a more supple material and then the coils are sewn together, either with sinew or another type of root or woven together. Those baskets made with coiling are considered very strong and can even hold water and on the coast sometimes used for cooking. And then lastly, we have the twining. And this is where two wefts cross over each other, two or more wefts cross over each other between each warp. And here is, you can see an example of this type of weaving for this really finely woven new Chalnet baskets. And I'd like to point out the colored elements. So those are usually natural dyed or aniline dyes grasses or roots that are incorporated into the weaving. So further on the decorative elements. I think it's, it's good to talk about them because often they can be the areas that do are to start falling apart faster than the rest of the basket and I can go into why but here we have a little birch bark basket. I didn't talk about the construction of birch bark baskets I mean we definitely have a lot of them and I'm sure that you also have birch bark baskets in your collection, and those are just made by sewing the sheets of the harvest and bark together. But often these baskets are decorated with quill work, or sometimes in sizing. And the basket on the left is a little Brazilian baskets decorated with dyed horsehair. Also, we see a lot of implication on our basket as a design choice. So implication involves taking another strip of different colored material, and you're weaving it back and forth. In the wefts and folding it back on itself and a variation of this is called beating where you're just going over and under the weft of the basket and you can get this this kind of checkerboards appearance. So, one thing about the colored elements of these baskets, usually the red color is cherry bark. But often the darker colored strips are made by soaking the material in an iron rich solution so either iron, rich from iron from the soil sometimes soaking things like iron nails or metals. And you get that really dark black brown or even green color. So the iron acts as a mordant for any dyes that are used. But unfortunately it also acts. It does speed up the deterioration process. And we do find that a lot of this implication is very fragile. So, let's talk about damage and how damage can happen in your collection. Usually, there are sort of several things happening at once there's, there's not just one cause for damage. It's usually sort of a process or an accumulation. Because I'm in Canada. I'm using the CCI or the Canadian Conservation Institute model for talking about deterioration. And so CCI, I think this is a pretty general way of looking at it though CCI has defined 10 agents of deterioration physical issues, fire, pests, light, incorrect relative humidity, thieves and vandals, water pollutants, incorrect temperature and disassociation. So I'm not going to go into depth into all of those but I really want to pick out the important ones, and talk about how we, how we handle those at our museum. So, first, let's talk about physical deterioration. So with that, I mean, with everything right it can be a gradual process that happens over time with organic materials. Definitely they will, you know, take up water and release water humidity in their environment. So there's sort of a constant swelling and shrinking, swelling and shrinking and after a while, it just gets harder to organic materials to retain that moisture. So a lot of, I hear from a lot of people who have very dry brittle baskets and are looking for a solution. What should I do. And one thing that we have seen are people have been recommended to apply some sort of dressing or on their baskets or washing their baskets. And these in the long run proved to be very, very detrimental. So these two images on the bottom, we have a group of baskets are from a group of baskets in our collection. So at one point, the collector, wanting to revive the look of their basket had washed it in ivory soap, and then had applied some sort of dressing some sort of, I don't know exactly what it was but it's quite oily. So we have the basket in our collection. I mean you can see that it's a bit dark and dirt has darkened a bit. But it also attracts. I mean any dust just gets stuck to the surface. And it just kind of keeps, you know, keeps incorporating this grime, and it's impossible to get rid of it also weeps. You can see at the bottom right underneath that we have to put a piece of mylar underneath of all of them because they just kind of leak that oil all over the place. So first of all, physical forces, which is a really a common way for objects to get damaged, especially utilitarian objects where people tend to handle them as they would. And would have been handled in their lifetime. So you can see both of these baskets were their areas of weakness were where they were handled right so along the handles on the side of the first basket and then the tip of the lid the little knob at the lid on the second basket. So those are definitely handling happen during handling and this is where most damage occurs is during handling. So at Moa. What we do is we have these their storage display handling mounts we have these black train mounts that we use for all of the objects that are appropriate so it doesn't work for things that are too heavy or too large, but for things like baskets it is really ideal. These materials all the materials use the it's plasters out matte boards and metal edge. There's no adhesives, which is what you'd want to avoid if you have baskets in cases. And it's just a really great way you can see the objects really well you can move the object you can turn it around and look at different angles, but you don't ever actually have to handle the object. So, I really think that these these handling trades have really saved a lot of wear and tear, especially like I said in a museum where we are pulling things out of storage out of exhibit often for artists researchers and classes to look at. So I did include on the handouts are black tray handling months. I also want to say that when we were developing these mounts. We did have a lot of community consultation, because definitely there are other archival phones out there. But the plasters out is archival. We did get a lot of feedback from communities who didn't really like the clinical look of the white at the phone or Tyvek so they much preferred the black and in our galleries it does kind of just make the objects pop a bit more. And it also just gives that little extra protection against any vibrations, since we are in an earthquake zone. I also wanted to mention packing for storage or travel. So, like I said, our objects do travel whether they're going into communities, or whether they are going on loan to other institutions. And I just wanted to show you some of these images and it's all archival materials so we've got at the phone cutouts lined with Tyvek in a core class box. Tyvek stabilized with a bit of twill tape. And here's another image. So these just ensure that those objects do not move around in the box while they're in transit. And something like this might also be appropriate for storage if you have a particularly vulnerable object. The white at the phone and the Tyvek really does. You can notice if there's any flaking or any insect activity or anything like that you can notice it right away against the white foam. And we also take our black tray, the concept and the materials and the supports over to some exhibition mounts. So, here we have this little Northwest Coast hat, and the interior support is made of the plastic and mat board, but now it's just secured to a brass mount, which we can fit. It fits into the hardware of our cases. And it's just carrying the black tray concept into a different mount but it's still stable and keeps the object safe. So the next thing I wanted to talk about were pests. And when I did approach some smaller museums and cultural centers about things that did worry them or their main concerns around their collection. Pest really was a number one concern. So, when I say pests I mean we can include molds fungus microorganisms but really it's insects and rodents so insects will eat some basketry materials as you can see on the slide on the right. There's burrowing insects that has made holes in this basket, but they can also be attracted to any dirt that is on your object, whether it's dirt from use or just dusty buildup. And then rodents are always, rodents are always a concern if they are in your building. And if you do have a big rodent problem. I think that you do need the advice of a professional exterminator. So for insect pests, we do have a very rigorous IPM program which is an integrated pest management program. And it's rigorous we have there's three main steps. And the first is anything that comes into the museum is frozen. If it can't be frozen, then we put it in an oxia and an oxia is just an oxygen deprived environments. So using we freeze for two weeks at minus 20 degrees Celsius. And for an oxia. This is an example of just a small chamber. And that that's that we built that we built for our objects going through an oxia. It's made of the silver is Marvis seal, which is a vapor barrier and then the top clear coat is a scowl which is like Marvis seal. And the advantages you can see through it the disadvantages it's a little bit more expensive. So there are times when you absolutely want to see what's going on in your an oxia environment so a scale is a really good choice for that. If not, you can make a whole enclosure out of Marvis seal. And so, if you can see right on the right of the screen there's a little basket at the edge. That is that's a new child with woven basket and it's woven around a bottle. So the glass not so great for freezer. That's why it was put in an oxia. The first step of the IPM the second step is monitoring. So we use sticky traps. We don't use any, any poisons or pest controls we just use sticky traps, and it just helps us keep track of what types of insects are entering the building. So we monitor those every week. We can see patterns at certain times of the year, but it's just, it's just kind of the first line of defense, and then housekeeping is also extremely important that, of course, no food or drink in collections areas in galleries in storage areas, even in our works spaces adjacent to those areas we have no food or drink and just keeping things free of clutter. So next, let's talk about light damage. So, for baskets, especially those, those natural dyes or those aniline dyes, which a lot of some of the traditional grasses were, were died with are extremely sensitive to light. So you can see this is the same basket. The photo on the right is the interior of the lid, which has not been exposed to light, and the photo on the left is the, the part that is facing the light so you can see that light damage is, is definitely worse for organic materials and it's, it's cumulative. So it just keeps happening. At the museum, I mean, we have in our multiversity galleries, we have very, very low light levels. So standard light levels are about 150 lux, but for organic materials, it's 50 lux. So that's all organic so textiles, paper, basketry, everything. And then we also do a rotation once a year. So for things like textiles, or even baskets, you can turn things right so they can be on exhibit for a year, and a year you can turn it. The back is facing out being exposed to the light. And then after two years it's taken off exhibit works on paper a bit different. But that is just one, one way that we stop that cumulative effect of light damage. Plus it allows us to exhibit more of our collection. Now I'd like to talk about pollutants. So pollutants are things that are in the atmosphere. And we talk about sort of gases that are in the atmosphere or VOCs. That's volatile organic compounds and a lot of those that we are very wary of come from things that have been used to build casework or exhibit shell or storage shelves. So things like woods will release VOCs over time, things like particle board is particularly nasty. There's lots of formaldehydes. So you get these gaseous formic formic acids in the air, but also dust is considered a pollutant. So it's dust is everywhere. It's omnipresent, but you really can't consider it innocuous, because there's just so many things in dust it's millions of different particles pollens and abrasive materials and skin cells, everything so that should not be considered innocuous. So a buildup of dust will definitely create micro environments on your object, which can just further make acidic environments and cause deterioration. Now this example here this is a hat. There's a, I mean, this is a lot of dust. So this is accumulated dust over a long period of time and definitely it, you know, it's kind of sooty sooty dust so it's very, very sticky. And so just the you can tell it's changed the color and the overall look of this hat, and it did require quite a bit of intervention to take it off. But at the same time that dust layer did it tend to preserve those those the colors in the in the pattern a little bit so that's one thing, but that generally we try to get rid of dust. So now I have a cautionary tale for you concerning pollutants. So the photo on the right that is our old visible storage gallery which was built in 1976. So you can see it does look quite dated and it has that kind of nasty particle board in the back and those sliding glass doors it's not airtight so the dust would really really accumulate in those in those visible storage areas. So then on the left, there's our beautiful new multiversity galleries with the cases that are airtight and are not letting in any dust. But what we didn't anticipate were some reactions that some reactions in the cases. So although those cases are made of inert materials like glass and powder coated steel. There was a particular adhesive that was used on the metal to the glass and a silicone gasket and lo and behold those two things reacted together and now we have these crystal deposits that are on our objects. So this is of course it is really a terrible situation. And I think what I might take away from this is I mean first of all this is the perfect example of pollutants in your cases, and why they're not good. Air exchange in cases it's good. So airtight if you have airtight cases are not good, because you're just trapping everything in the case, even even sort of the objects will off gas themselves. So there are VOCs just coming from the objects. So airtight is not necessarily good. Having some air exchange is good, barring that I don't know if I would ever recommend having a completely airtight case. So live and learn. But now I wanted to show you our storage area and how we are kind of dealing with the pollutants in the area so this is just an example of this is our basket tree area and the storage area you can see the black trays. The trays are just a little bit bigger than the objects so there's no chance of them bumping into each other. So they're safe they're at a safe distance. You can see those bars up towards the top of the photo. Those are earthquake bars so we, as I said before we do live in an earthquake zone. So earthquakes are something that we're always thinking of, and it just adds a little bit extra stabilization. We do think about dust a lot in our area in our storage areas so one of the things that we've done is we've made these dust covers for our outer facing units. This is just pieces of muslin that have been pieced together. And we have some velcro just along the edges so you can just peel them back and access the the objects as you need. And also for certain items we have these little dust covers that are made of either holly tex or remake, and they are custom made for each each item. And if they are covered up we usually have a photo with the accession number and just the objects so you so you know what you're you don't have to take off the cover to find out what it is. Before in the entrance of all our storage areas we have these sticky mats, which just take the dirt off your shoes, and you can peel them away once they're once they're dirty, revealing the next sticky mats underneath. So now, a word about incorrect humidity and temperature. Often those things go hand in hand. So, on the left is an example, and that's an extreme example, but that's just some remnants that's not the whole basket that's just sort of things that have flaked off a very dried out basket you can see the implication there and some coiling elements. Definitely not the whole basket I just wanted a dramatic photo. So that's if, if things get too dry. That's what you're looking at, and then high humidity and high heat. The worst worst case scenario is mold growth. So this again is a very extreme example, but we really want to keep those the humidity and the temperature is stable as possible. In the museum, we have three levels of monitoring or three different ways that we monitor the temperature and humidity, because we are a part of a very large university we have the university plant operations who has building sensors. But we also like to keep an eye on it ourselves we used to use these hobo data loggers up in the left hand corner. We recently switched to a local product in development. These, they're called buns, and you can, everything's online so you can look and you can figure out the, the environmental parameters at any time. So, you know, you want to stay as even as possible, usually between 45 and 55% relative humidity and between 20 and 21 degrees Celsius. So, I think the important takeaway is about humidity is fluctuations are really detrimental. So you want to avoid fluctuations as much as possible. Because when you get the fluctuating that's when you get the expansion and the contraction. And that's when the damage starts to occur. So even if your humidity is a little bit on the low sides. As long, you know, say it's at 40%. As long as it stays at 40% and doesn't do fluctuate dramatically over, say a 24 hour period, you should be okay it's really the fluctuations that are bad. So for controlling humidity. We can use things like silica gel. There's also the desi packs or art sword which I believe is available from from talus and those if you have a if you have something that needs to be really stable. We can use these things to keep the, the humidity stable. So here I just wanted to show you. So we use the same little black boxes, and we can tuck them into either exhibit cases or in our dry cabinets. To maintain the the relative humidity. So, I know when we were talking about our agents of deterioration. We did have fire and water on there. And for us that's more of those things if you're dealing with lots of water and lots of lots of water, like in a flood situation or a fire. It's really it falls into emergency for us. So, we've always had these big red salvage kits that are on wheels. And we've had a couple of them and they are, they were specifically made in case there was an earthquake, but then just a couple of years ago, we had a flood, because a water main broke just outside our front door. And we're actually a little bit below street level. So the water came rushing down the stairs through the entrance and then just at the edge it just stopped right before it entered the great hall. And we were able to use a salvage kit, but now we have just a kit that's dedicated dedicated to floods and to seeping up a lot of water very quickly. So, I think, talking about emergency planning and salvage that sort of a whole other topic. But it's, it's something that I believe every museum should should be planning for. I did want to talk about treatments basket treatment and how we would treat a basket. Because so you could recognize those baskets if they came into your collection. And just to just to show you how we do deal with things like that and why, why we do treatments. So generally, a treatment conservation treatment is considered an intervention. So it's, it's a bit beyond just the preventive stuff if you have your prevented stuff it really stops the need for intervention. So if you do say have a new basket coming into your collection, and you find that it is just degrading and its current condition is causing further deterioration then it is time to maybe look at treating that basket. Also, the danger of disassociation, I think is is a concern and it is one of the main agents of deterioration. And I think that bringing two things together in a cohesive way is worth the intervention and doing a treatment. And for us, I mean, you know, we will do treatments before something goes on exhibit. And so that's usually a discussion with a curator, and but we do we consider all the things before we even. The history of use and construction, and what really is best for the basket if the basket is going to be harmed by any treatment we wouldn't do it. It really has to be stabilized or just contribute to the integrity of the overall piece. Now cleaning is considered a treatment in some cases I think dry cleaning or dusting is not it not necessarily a treatment. It's just good housekeeping and good maintenance. So dry cleaning is just we use a soft natural fiber brush. And here we have vacuum attachments, just a screen over the hose and you just gently. The hose never touches the basket that's what you're using the brush for just to vacuum any dust or debris into the hose, and then the mesh just stops if, if you know by any chance something does come off the basket. It stops it from going into the vacuum so you can take it off and save, save that piece. And then also, so this is, this is a spot cleaning treatment that was done. And I mean I think every museum has these kind of old school accession or catalog numbers applied to them so you know the white out with the black marker. So this was reduced, because we just didn't want that on the surface of the basket anymore. So the way to approach something like this would be to remove it as much as you could gently and mechanically, either with toothpicks or something that will chip away at that white out. And then maybe using a very damp solvent or a very damp swab with a little bit of either acetone and water or water, but just very damp and you, you have to make sure that you just stay on that, that accretion that's there, because you don't, especially if your baskets dry, you don't want any of that moisture coming in contact with your basket because it will stain. And there at the last image is our new accession number very discreet, very tiny. We use just acid free paper applied with lasco. And then just a note about wet cleaning. So if you have a wet basket basket from a wet site it is completely feasible to create it or to clean it. While it's wet, but you have to use water. What we use is a cabotron, which is the same thing that the dentist uses on your teeth, and it's just ultrasonic vibration. And you have to use it with running water so there should always be water running as you're using your cabotron, and it does that the cabotron doesn't touch the surface but it just kind of shakes that dirt away. And reshaping. Also there's there's a case to be made for reshaping especially if, if a basket is going on exhibit. So, I mean this is a, this is not a common look but it does happen to baskets they just kind of fallen on themselves or they've been stored really poorly. So they get kind of warped looking. And when we do reshaping. We usually either do them in a humidification chamber, like this small little basket on the left. So what that is, is there's Gore Tex a sheet of Gore Tex, and then some wet it out blotter on top of the Gore Tex and then the whole thing is in a polyethylene bag and it just gives sure to to make the basket a little bit more malleable. And then, if you don't want to put the whole basket into a chamber, you can do spot humidification humidification as well. So there you're just making a sandwich so you've got the Gore Tex layer, and then the what it out blotter on top of that, and then between some mylar so you're just humidifying that one point. And then once your basket is humidified. You can do a bit of reshaping. So definitely need some support. So these are two different examples of just support while reshaping. The first one on the left is using rare earth magnets, and just pieces of white matte boards on the inside and the outside so there's that's a tiny, tiny basket so it would not be able to withstand a clamp. And these are just kind of very, very small clamps that we were able to use on this basket. It's a bit bigger. It just holds the basket and the and the materials in place so it can dry in the right shape. Oh, and then this is also, this is just a support during for exhibition or storage right so this is just the cut matte boards, just a little bit up the size of these, these tall cylindrical baskets tend to slump. So this is just scored matte boards, giving it some support. Again, there's no adhesive it's just the matte board is on the tray with metal edge. A bit about the materials that we use for repairing baskets. So there's really, there's only a few adhesives to consider. So there's the Japanese wheat starch paste. There's carboxymethyl cellulose. There's pva, which is polyvinyl acetate which is your white glue and j 403 is one of those archival white glues and then last cow. Really, only, I would only consider the top to the wheat start pace, which starch paste and the carboxymethyl cellulose. And certainly the wheat start space because they're strong enough to make the bond but they're also completely irreversible in water. And they assist a really nice material to work with the, the, the pva and the last cow tend to leave your repairs glossy and doesn't fit well with the basket. As in supports, generally we use the Japanese tissue, tinted Japanese tissue, or embroidery threads, sometimes imitation sinew, if it's more of a connection point, or I mean a lot of baskets do have sinew ties. So it can be used to to reinforce those. So this is a pretty old school Japanese tissue repair. So and I'm, you know, it's not really a repair that we would do right now but we do have a lot of these in our collection. So it's just these tinted Japanese tissue bandages. And you can see this particular hat had lots of losses. So, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't hurt it in the long run and it's stable. So we wouldn't necessarily remove that but it's just something to recognize if you see something like that in your collection it's not doing any damage and it's pretty old school type of repair for basketry. But now we go more for the twisted strands, which is the tinted Japanese tissue, usually water cuts, and then twisted, and used as as support, or a bandage between two pieces that are coming apart so they're they're hard to see. So I hope you can see them there with the red arrows are pointing to each one. And then this is a different type of repair and it's not really that common, but it is a good example of how you can use Japanese tissue. So, base, this was an intern project and she basically reconstructed part of the bottom of this basket in the tinted Japanese tissue. And it, you know, it looks good it's not obtrusive it doesn't, it's not distracting. And it's also because it's she used wheat starch paste it's always, it's completely reversible. And this is, I know this slide is kind of hard to see but I've circled the repairs and read and this is. These are really tiny baskets and embroidery thread and wheat starch paste were used to just bridge that that tear along the, or just underneath the rim. And so finally, there are also traditional repairs. So something that was repaired while the basket is still in use like this repair here at the bottom of the basket. So this was done, either by the maker or by the owner. And definitely it's not something that we would ever remove. It's actually pretty special so that's something that we would want to hold on to. I'm going to stop there that's all I have for now. Is it. Did we have some questions or did we want to. Oh, we have questions everyone's been doing great in the q amp a box so that's perfect timing actually start doing that. Okay. So you're more than welcome to keep sharing your screen or you can turn it off and we can start going through the questions as they appeared here. So that presentation that was great I am in a prior life, I worked for a tribal museum and we had a lot of basket so it's been quite fun to kind of be looking at all the different basket styles and everything else you've been having on there for sure. Oh good good. So let me start with I'll just start at the top for now and I'll jump around a little bit with the q amp a box just if I see questions that are alike, I will try to get to them but we'll be doing some jumping around as well. So, one of the first questions that got put in was interested in knowing if you asked your family visitors to wash their hands before handling collections also do your staff handle the same objects with gloves. Yes, we do. So in our research room, which is actually I'm speaking to you right now from our research room, and we have a sink. I'm just kind of going to pan over in that cabinet. And we always give family members. We asked them to wash their hands. And we asked them to wash their hands when they're finished, just because we do have. We do have pesticides in our collection. We have an XRF and we have done those studies and we found them. And we're always concerned about transfer. So we do, we do talk about that, and encourage them to wash their hands. Yes, I'm sorry. What was the second part of the. Oh, do we. Yes, we handle with gloves. Always. Yeah, that was my experience to when we had tribal members come in we would and you'd say hey would you mind washing your hands and most of them are like, of course, especially like nowadays, especially I think everyone's much more conscious of hand washing but that's no big deal. And the question that came in a little later which actually you and I had talked a little bit offline was someone, let me see if I can find it real quick but they were basically asking about the difference between what a collections manager or registrar could possibly do and then what a conservator could do kind of and I didn't know if you wanted to talk about that a little bit and just kind of, you know, what you're what, what should be appropriate, basically. Well, I mean, all the registrars and collections managers that I've ever met are pretty impressive, careful people. And I think that I mean just the cleaning that you know any sort of vacuuming things like that. Dry cleaning is definitely acceptable. We have, you know, when we have students come to us we they go through all parts of our collections area like we're in the same department as collections. We are the collections department so we share a lot of the same tasks in terms of melt making or packing things like that right so if you're not making, or packing you are handling objects so, you know, we are we're all on the same page, we do have you know for new employees, we have like this kind of the MOA training that we do. And part of that is Karen handling. Just to make sure that I said their question correctly the original question was I'm curious as to how much these solutions can be performed by regular collections management staff versus when a conservator should be consulted. And I know for me because like I said I'm a registrar collections person. I feel like I can do certain tasks like either I've learned or I can read through and be like okay if if something would go horribly wrong, it's not going to hurt the object right. But if I, looking at it and go like if something could go wrong, I could hurt the object and I'm not comfortable doing this that's when I kind of stop and go with one of my conservator colleagues for sure. Yeah, if you can consult and and that's why I think this form is great right because you can consult. And because I mean sometimes, like, especially with water and baskets right. The water can stain baskets really really quickly so I would just be extremely wary of that. And then it's just a it's just a little thing right it's just, but it's something that as a conservator I always have at the forefront so I think consulting is good. And then you said early on for the black invocation fibers are the black fibers usually also cherry bark or they usually cedar. I think it can depend I think you can have black cherry bark. But there's other materials as well so just because it's black it doesn't mean that it's not cherry bark I think that's something that's that's used a lot I mean willow and other things are used. It's just kind of a range of thing depending on, you know where it's where you are what environment you're in. Someone asked can you repeat the materials you use for your handling trays was that included in some of the resources you put together for us. I did give you a link. I think yeah I gave you a link to the Moa website and on the website. We have that the whole instruction manual on how to make those black trays. And so it's it's polyethylene plastic out is the black foam and then the acid free matte boards. So we did we did test those in house years ago. So, you know, if that was from a certain supplier. So it's just, if you can find acid free matte board that's good. And the metal edge is also something that's used. I mean there's also various cutting tools that you that you require. But please have a look through that manual. It's out there and I'd be happy to answer any questions further down the line. I really put the link to our page in the chat and in the Q&A box and that leads directly to the handout that you should be able to access it that way as well. There were a couple questions of just like where do you get your supplies like someone says hello where can one find the metal edges. Someone else was talking about the sticky mats which I'll find in here somewhere and I love the sticky mats because it shows how gross everyone's shoes are as they go in. But where do you find and obviously you're up in Canada but what kind of people do you go to when it comes to supplies. So for this the sticky mats we get them at Fisher Scientific. So I think that's a North American company as far yeah it's not just Canada so Fisher Scientific has those. There's another very large company that has them. And which are pretty easy to find. But they're out there. I think they're made for labs so any lab supply place would have it and the metal edge. We do get that from a local company and it is in our in that in the black train manual there's a whole list of supplies and where we get those supplies. And that's sort of local to Vancouver so I'm not sure. Oh Hollinger. I think we got it from maybe Hollinger. Someone just said in the chat to that sticky mats come from the computer clean room industry so they're a lot easier to find. Yeah, and also someone worked with a sports supplier, they're common for basketball courts as well so that's one thing I love about stuff is sometimes we just find stuff in weird spots and we're like that'll work. So applications right. Exactly. There were also a lot of questions just related to IPM which I know CDC care has done a whole webinar on IPM there's lots of resources out there for IPM IPM. They asked can you say more about when you would freeze and when would you you would use an oxia treatment. Okay right sorry. And also I did I think I did give you some handouts on the anoxia and the freezing. So anoxia is appropriate when you're worried about the materials so there's certain materials that you don't necessarily want to put in the freezer. So glass, you don't really want to put through the freezer ceramics you don't want to really put through the freezer. They're inorganic anyway so they wouldn't benefit from being frozen. So metals, some things like that some really layered things bone, we don't like to put through the freezer. So those those materials are better for an oxia. The example that I used in the in the slides. That was a bottle of basketry covered bottle. So that's why we chose to put it in an oxia rather than the freezer we didn't want to put the glass through the freezer. And then yeah there's the handout to list all the things to paintings you you wouldn't want to put a painting through the freezer or something heavily painted. Right, right. Someone did ask for the anoxia treatment, do you only rely on oxygen scavengers to reduce the level of oxygen in the enclosure or is fleshing with nitrogen or carbon dioxide use in addition. I know that some people do that. So we don't do that we we rely on the oxygen scavengers I'm not saying I'm opposed to that I'd be interested in doing that but it's just, it's, it's not our common practice. I'm reading really quickly through these are some really good questions so I'm kind of going through them as quickly as I can. There was a talk about just like supply kits for emergency information and kind of where do you, like what do you have in them which is to be honest CDC care worth talking about setting up a webinar pretty soon about emergency supply kits and stuff but do you have any advice for our listeners today. I do. So, there's a fairly new group that's been started in British Columbia. It's called the BC her and that stands for British Columbia heritage emergency response network. There's a website, and it also has lots of links to how to build an emergency kit what kind of supplies you want. So I think when you're putting together an emergency kits. So you want to think like so okay I showed you now that we have the flood kit. So the flood kit is really to just stop water right so have some absorbent super absorbent materials, and then our salvage kits are more for salvage. So things like alphanives and tarps and you know string and close pins right so if you wanted to say you had a bunch of works on paper and you wanted to hang them up to dry just everything that you might need to do salvage. So, you know there are some more resources out there I'd be happy to answer, or send along some more materials but I do suggest to check out that BC her and websites, and Robin do you want me to send you a link to that or. Thanks, and we'll update on that on the website as well just as more references and we can probably even add that to the CDC, CDC care website resources list which is a whole other kind of little section, I'd be happy to do that. Someone that's asking just kind of like how do you clean a very dusty dirty basket like if you just came across one what would be like your first steps when dealing with that kind of a thing. Well, I guess the first thing that I would do would be use the soft brush and the mesh covered nozzle, just to take off all that surface dirt right and try to get as much off as you can. So I think the next step, I might try some either cosmetic sponges, I mean not wet just the, just the sponges to see if you can get off any more ingrained dirt, or there's the groomstick do you have groomstick right. So it's just a natural rubbery thing that you, you don't rub it on the object you just kind of go pass over the object to get any more ingrained dirt. It's kind of a process right you start with the least interventions, and then you carry on from there. There were also people asking about suppliers for the sinew and Gore Tex the imitation sinew. Oh, top of your head, they're also look in Israel which might. Oh, so I guess they might not have Michaels in Israel. So crafts, you know the sinew is craft supply stop shops, but you can you can make your own right with colored wax, and you know you could add pigment to any, any wax and then coat a piece of fabric or some threads. So yeah, I know that we get ours from like just art supply craft supply places. We had two questions released rain to the and I'm going to not do good at naming this the plastic zone. Basically they're saying, what is it like chemical type of plastic where can I buy it and then someone is also asking about the density and how are you adhering the pieces. So the plastic oats, it's polyethylene plastic out. So it's cross linked so it doesn't. It doesn't off gas. There is different densities of it. And there's the higher density is definitely easier to cut I'm sorry I don't have that off the top of my head the density but it is in the supply list on the, on the handout. So I ended up from a place called Norseman all foam, and that is located on the lower mainland in British Columbia. But I'm sure I'm sure I'm certain that you can get that phone through other suppliers like the yeah it's polyethylene plastic or plastic zone it comes in gray and black. And it does actually it comes in white as well. But the we've chosen the density in the handout because it's easy because of its, it's easy to work with. And there was one more part of that question that I'm looking for that there's someone did ask why you guys chose the black foam as compared to the white foam. I'm sorry okay I'll answer that I just remember the other part of that question was if we use adhesive or what kind of adhesive. The reason why we do those black trays and why they're made the way they are is so we don't have to use adhesive, we really really wanted to avoid that because as you know there's lots of things in adhesive that off gas and you don't want that off exhibit spaces so we use metal edge so it's just basically scoring the bottom of your plasters out and hammering out your metal edge and then you hammer the metal edge to your matte boards it works really really well it's very secure. And then the other question was why you guys chose black foam for the artifact storage rather than white. So, when we were in the planning process of the multi diversity galleries. It was part of a larger project called the partnership with the peoples. And so we had a lot of community consultation. We brought community members in and we had we had all sorts of different variations of of different mounts in different materials, you know do you like this we had we had just the plain white at the phone, which was deemed to be too clinical looking, which, you know, I, I totally agree. We had lots of advice on like sort of model pole mounts and where they were fastened to their secure to their to their mount right so you avoid things being secured around the neck. You want things secured at the base. So the color really was it was a material that we were working with and it was there was a preference for the black. So we connected along with that someone asked you conduct consultations with tribal members before performing some, or all treatments are kind of what's that process when you can always always definitely we do consult. So, yeah, especially, you know, if we know that we can find family members current family members or community members, we will, we will consult either, you know, either directly or we'll go through a curator that maybe has a relationship already established. So it's incredibly important, especially when you're dealing with those types of objects is to talk, especially because a lot of those, at least my experience was since they had the knowledge to actually build the baskets from ground up, like just learning that process and understanding it helps when you come up with your storage plans and all that other kind of stuff it gives you some insider knowledge on how that will work. So, most of those people love to teach that's fun to learn from them. Yeah, we can learn so much. This is interesting. Can you please define disassociation. So how would you define that. So, I guess it's something with an object with a clear break, or that's in several pieces. Right. I think if something is in several pieces, you know, not connected at all. There is a danger of losing part of that object. There's also, you know, a danger of it getting disassociated from its information record or its catalog record right so, you know, if you lose a catalog number, you're not I mean if you I mean we have probably over 50,000 objects. If we lose a catalog number it is it is pretty serious and we, we don't have that information. So we need the provenance and and also we just don't want to lose pieces of the object so whether it's put in an enclosure or stable mount, keeping everything together. That's one of the prime things is trying to keep all that information together until you know it can either get stored properly or scanned or maybe a digitized version if it's paperwork that comes along with it any of that kind of stuff. Someone did ask a question about just kind of your budget for collection management materials, they said you did not have to talk about like exact amount but just what percentage of it is it for your overall budget. When you're doing your planning. Well, in 2021 or in 2018. Well, I think we initially had a very large budget to get because we had a we had several grants from the Canadian Foundation innovation. It would be like a million dollar grant millions of dollars of grants to make all of those black trades right to hire all those people because it is very labor intensive. And I can't tell you I can't give you an exact dollar amount. But I can say that we are supported by the university. And because we are a teaching institution and we do want to, you know, really show best practices. You know, we do have there is always the budget for materials and archival materials and if we can't. If we have if we, we won't envision a project and cut corners, either will use the right materials with the right staffing or we won't do it. Yeah, I think I'll go ahead. So it felt like a politician there when I answer that. I mean, because you know I know like when I work full time at museum sometimes we'd be like okay we're going to tackle that big project that deals with storage and then your budget would explode for a year and you're trying to figure out you know, all the fun stuff and then other years you'd be like, okay we're going to be working on a digitization project so then you're not as much money on storage materials so it just kind of depends. Someone asked generically if you'd be willing to share your emergency plan and your IPM plans. So I don't know if we could contact you offline for that one. So I did share. There was a couple of IPM documents that I did pass along those word documents. One's on freezing and one is on an oxia. But yes I would be I would be happy to share or share information or answer any questions that you have. I might get start doing some rapid fire questions to you so be prepared and if you don't know it's fine but like I said there's still quite a few questions so I'll get through as many as I can. Someone says freezing cycle two weeks completely in freezer or is there a period of resting at room temperature in between. Yes, so two weeks, that's our protocol and then day rest. Like we take it out of the freezer it sits for a day and or 24 hours and then we do the unwrapping and I always it's always important to have tissue around your, your object we wrap everything right so we wrap it in tissue and then we wrap it in polyethylene and seal it. When dry cleaning is there any detriment to the object if one uses a synthetic fiberbush over a natural fiber brush. No, I don't think so as long as it's soft and not you know some of those bristles can be quite rigid. I think it's more about being soft. Can you provide well this is a reference for a published vocabulary dictionary for describing parts of a basket is there a guide that you would recommend or any other kind of publication. So there is in I think in the bibliography there's that one resource antique. Native American baskets, something like that they have a really, really good comprehensive descriptions they go through it and talk about all the different parts so I would yeah look in the in the bibliography it should be there. Perfect. How often do you perform preventative treatments like dusting and cleaning. Well, so often when things are first accession so we definitely, or when they when they're first acquired so when they come into the museum that's when they get the most hands on processing right so cleaning. And the freezing and the mounting all that stuff. And then, I mean our storage areas are pretty good. They're so they should go in there clean. And they should, they should, you know if something if something comes across and it is obviously dirty we will. We will do that work, but it's we don't really have anything on a rotation schedule, because we things are pretty dust free in storage areas in the cases, I mean we have that crystal problem so that is that is something that we are going to be addressing full on soon. Someone was asking, they really like seeing all the materials that you're using so there's a lot of questions about that but they were asking about the dust covers do you guys use Tyvek for the desk covers or what do you. Well, you could use Tyvek, but most of them are Holly texts, or remain. So I think you could do you have remay in the states it's also called. Pemlin, I think. Oh, I think I've heard of that. Yeah, it's just like it's like it's a polyester quest polyester. Have you considered using Velix blanket fabric rather than bug screen for covering the vacuum nozzle and dry cleaning. Yes, we have some. What was the name of the adhesive to attach paper labels. That's last cow so we use two different versions of last cow so there's usually one coat of the last cow 303. And then we add the paper label and then there's a coding of the last cow 498. It says I missed what material. Oh wait, did we just say that when I missed what material used to a fixed paper number to the baskets, can you repeat it in the q amp a answer that one. Sorry y'all I'm also repasting the survey link in the handouts and presentations link in the chat which is why I was doing it was multitasking there for a second. Can you discuss a little bit about how to clean mold from baskets. So definitely if you are dealing with something like that. You really need to protect yourself. So either with respirator or if you have access to a fume hood, I think that's really really important. I would go through the same processes as I would do with with just sort of a dusting right have a soft brush, have your, your covered vacuum nozzle. But then once you're finished with that task then throw those things away or just keep them contained and just use them for dealing with moldy baskets. Yeah mold is is is not a fun thing to deal with and you really have to be really really careful. I live in Florida so where we experienced bold way too much in my day to day stay within my house, sometimes this is like oh that's fun. This is an interesting question so you were talking about the starch paste earlier. Do you need to be concerned about it being an attractive for pests when you're using that kind of material. Well I guess it is edible. But we are using it in very small quantities and we have that's a really rigorous IPM program. So it's not the first thing that comes to mind. So and usually we just mix it straight with water or distilled water but I have heard. And maybe you should talk to a paper conservator about that but sometimes they make it with a tiny bit of ethanol, which I think is more of a deterrent, but I can't really speak to that we use water. And we are we use it in such minute qualities, and we have that IPM program so. So I'm not overly concerned about that. Okay, so I'm going to try to grab two more. So this is are there any cons to storing baskets in archival boxes, how would you prefer would you rather them having supports or within a box itself. I think boxes are fine I mean it's their protect protective and I mean it's useful because if they're in a box you could feasibly stack them right and so you might be able to maximize your storage space. Yeah, I think I think boxes are fine I would, if I was, if I were storing things in boxes I'd always like to have a picture of the object or either a clear window so you could see what was inside the box. Yeah. I'm a big proponent of if you have a large bulky items within boxes like if they're safer within the box that's great but having that little picture on the outside. It's so much so nice it doesn't have to be huge little picture just helps a million times. And this last question I think this is interesting so are you setting up any new policies for new ethnographic baskets, made of plastics and other materials. So have you seen anything come into your collection that's maybe made in the traditional manner but different materials and are you guys kind of preparing to store those things. You know we haven't. We haven't really seen any baskets, per se. But I mean, and we don't have a huge amount of plastics in our collection we have some, but not a lot, but it's definitely I mean we're, we, we don't have a plan in place, but definitely if if we start seeing a lot of those things coming in. We definitely take the precautions to make sure that they're, that they're okay, like, yeah. I mean we don't have a lot of cellulose nitrate or anything like that in our collection. Yeah, I think that's that to me is the most one of the most fun things and working with tribal collections though is that you'll see things made from newer materials that it's really cool to kind of see how the artwork has evolved. That's the variations that's a that's a super fun thing about working in those collections for sure. Well it is 230 and there are still like 19 questions. Thank you so I want to apologize everyone I would like to keep going but at the same time I'm mindful of people's time and what they can do. So I will see if I can try to capture these somehow and maybe get into more so you can take a look at them. So those I did put the links again for the survey for this webinar and also for the handout and presentations on the page. Someone also mentioned that one of the links within the handout was acting a little wonky so I'll take a look at that and make sure. Thanks that might be me when I was converting things so I will double check and make sure we will probably try to get this webinar up by the end of the week. So I will be sure to do that. Morey do you have any other last minute things you'd like to say to the crowd. So just thank you. Thanks for thanks for having me. It's really fun. We really appreciate you taking some time today and I want to do a huge shout out and thanks to IMLS to morey of course to Mike our producer of our learning times, and stay tuned to all of our social media and everything else to get an idea of upcoming programming that we're doing for CDC care. So thanks all be safe, and we will see you next month. Bye.