 Okay, hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for today's webinar, the fifth in this eight-part series to complement your in-person training for the Seattle Heritage Responders Team. These programs have been made possible through the generous grant-funding support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Today, we will continue the discussion of some material-specific salvage tips. So, two weeks ago now, you learned about painting salvage. Today, you'll learn about textile salvage, and then next week we'll look at photos and electronic media. If you miss any of these sessions, I will email you after the program with the link to the webinar recording. Simply email me back when you finish reviewing the program and I'll mark it on your file. Before we begin the presentation, just a quick refresher of technical notes. On your screen, you'll see several boxes including one label chat on the left-hand side. You can use that box to say hello, ask questions, and share any information or links that you'd like. And a reminder, if you post a question in the chat box, you'll receive a response directly from me. Any questions will be noted, collected, and then I will verbally ask them of our presenter at the conclusion of our presentation. At the bottom of your screen, you'll see a files box. 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 has very generously put together some excellent resources for today's topic. Please do take special care to note the file label 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 textiles specialty group. We did 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 the class. And with that, I'm very pleased to introduce you all to our presenter, Margaret or Meg Geismuni. Meg has been providing a full range of services as a conservator, collections care, and a collections management consultant since 1979. Meg is available for both short term and long term projects on and off site. She completed undergraduate and graduate coursework at the University of California Davis of Textile Science. During her academic career, Ms. Geismuni took courses that enabled her to fully understand textiles from the molecule up and so be able to most successfully preserve and conserve our textile and fiber heritage and legacy. She has worked on staff at the Cloisters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. She recently completed installation work for the exhibit failed meanings, fashioning Jewish dress for the contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Meg belongs to the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists as a senior member. The American Institute for Conservation is a professional associate and has been a member of the National Heritage Responders, formerly AIC CERT since 2011. She was appointed to the City of Paloma Public Art Committee in March of 2015. She co-taught the AIC CERT Heritage Preservation Emergency Planning and Response Workshop on the West Coast in January of 2012 and the textile costume fiber salvage section for the FAIC disaster training webinars held with the Miami Heritage Responders in August of 2017 and for the Texas Heritage Responders in April of 2018. And with that I'd like to turn things over to Meg for her presentation on textile salvage. Good morning everyone. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. Let's see if I can get this. So basically as just mentioned I've been a textile conservator for over 30 years now and have taught a lot of workshops and given lectures on the subject. And I've basically broken down what I call magazines that should be on a t-shirt. Ideal versus reality. Pounce of prevention, pound of cure. I have to admit I stole from my grandmother. There's always a fabric or fiber solution and in the case of working with collection stewards I'm sure you would agree with me that this last one if it's not one thing it's another is very applicable in all of our work. I want to give you some audio warnings. I'm giving the webinar here in my living room that has a collection of antique clocks that bong on the quarter hour and the half hour and the full hour. I'm hoping that my microphone won't let all that bonging come through but I don't want to startle you all in terms of all of a sudden when the bonging starts going because there's no way I can stop these clocks because of the the possibility of them not starting again. It's my pleasure to speak with you all today. It's a lot of information we're going to go over today and it's a lot to cover but the good news about these webinars is that you can come back and watch the webinar to catch anything that you might have missed or didn't quite understand the first time after Jess posts it to the YouTube channel and also in terms of my feel free also to connect with me via email or a phone call we're in the same time zone for heaven's sakes if there's something that's you need a quick answer to. I'd be happy to help in that regard. More information about my background is in my bio in the files below if you're interested in further information. So let's go ahead and get started because as I mentioned there's a lot to get through. As has already been mentioned by the health and safety webinar you've already had and also by the paintings conservator we are of course tasked with preserving both people and objects and artifacts and the objects and artifacts are made from organic and inorganic media. Now as has already been mentioned people always come first so we need to stress that it's really hard to keep track of sometimes in the midst of minor disasters to major disasters but people and their safety and health must come first. I refer you to my reference list because there's a really fabulous volume that I recommend that should be on everybody's bookshelf called health and safety for museum professionals and it was published by the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections and it is just a wonderful source of information on all sorts of health and safety issues for us collection stewards. My particular area of expertise is object and artifacts made from organics such as textile, costume, costume accessories, the upholstery part of upholstered furniture and basketry such as basketry. So giving you some background first so you can customize the solutions for your own collections in your own locations and with your own staffing situation. Let me talk a bit about textiles and their problems without a disaster and then their problems in a disaster. So my definition of textile is basically an object made out of fiber fabric that is sort of two-dimensional structurally. It's sort of flat. Of course it isn't actually everything's three-dimensional but it's in terms of generally speaking it's a flat thing. Costume is usually three dimensional structurally especially here in the West. It's tailored and shaped you know multiple layers of front to back, side seams, that kind of thing. And then fibers, things like basketry, contemporary fiber works, things like that. Most textiles and costumes usually have or had a function or use and this is sort of unique in the collection types. They were used by and on living creatures you know humans and animals of all sorts over the ages. They also range in size from teeny tiny little archaeological fragments up to building size and actually I can almost say mountain size because I recently saw an image from Tibet of a Tonka that literally was displayed on the side of a mountain and it was mountainous in size to say the least. Just absolutely huge. They also range in complexity from literally a single layer of fabric with no added coloring or pigment or dye up to multiple layers that include different media that are not made out of fiber or fabric at all. We also have to let the actual condition of the individual object guide us because it's different and difficult to make hard and fast generalization sometimes. You literally could have a stack of 12 allegedly identical table napkins. However one was bleached or three or four were bleached and the other were not. One got dragged through the cranberry relish and the others were not. One got ironed with an iron that was too hot and the others were not and this has all changed the physical and visual condition of each individual piece. In general you have to keep the weakest link in mind and or if it's really bad more than one weakest link and this is not always the textile or fiber component. We also have to remember that nothing is forever. We are making improvements and breakthroughs in our research. We're doing ongoing upgrading and replacing and we're learning from our experiences our mistakes and the resources going on. So the source of deterioration that our objects and artifacts are assailed by are I sum up in these five categories inherent vice physical and mechanical stress light high temperature and relative humidity and contamination and basic disasters are most or all of these sources in a short period of time whether the disaster is large or small or in between and of course there's a synergy among the sources that overlap at times and especially during disasters and the basic chemistry and physics of our work unfortunately is we can't stop the deterioration. We can speed it up or we can slow it down and obviously in our professions and with our collections we want to slow down this deterioration. So as I mentioned disasters are basically large amounts of all these deteriorating factors concentrated in a short period of time and of course they can range in size. It can literally be one storage box in one corner of one room or it could be the whole corner of that storage unit or it could be the whole room is involved all the way up to a whole region or state and it's basically a failure of the building systems whether it's and you can just sort of see a brief list of different kinds of building systems going on here. Losing the battle to generally usually forces of nature and occasionally forces of man are also in here and it's a resulting contamination that is usually the thing that we are left behind trying to deal with and that contamination usually involves quantities of water. So let's briefly go over all those deteriorating factors so we can be thoroughly depressed this morning. So inherent advice I define as what something is made out of, how it was made, how it was used and how it was previously changed. So in the case of textiles and costume we have these three types of different fibers chemistry wise that have been created used to make objects and artifacts and so we have the natural fibers such as silk, wool, cotton, the other best fibers, jute and hemp along with linen. We have the man-made fibers acetate, rayon, lyosil, bamboo and then the synthetic fibers like nylon and acrylic and spandex and polyester and polypropylene. And here's just for your information the Federal Trade Commission's naming convention for fibers because this is something that is not well understood by most people and get their the trade name mixed up with the generic fiber name. And by law here in the US if you read a label it needs to have both the trade name but at least they are definitely required to have the generic fiber name. And then as I mentioned before costumes and textiles are usually not just made up of just fabric media or fiber media they have all sorts of other media involved and here's just some of the other things that you see especially with costume. And the sad thing about inherent vice as a deteriorating factor is this is something that we can't do anything about because the object and artifact has already been made and created. So here's just a brief summary of other parts of inherent vice and the technology of actually taking that fiber and creating the thread, creating the fabric, adding the colors and different possibilities. Then there's the actual creating a costume or a textile and you actually have to cut into it. You have to create raw edges and are you felting the fibers and are you using the bias grain instead. And then we have problems of when you start mixing your medias what's good for one is bad for another. And in the case of costume and textiles of course they were used. They had a function and we used in sickness and in health. They wore them. We cleaned them. We washed them. We used some kind of pest control on them both before and after an object and artifact was accessioned into the collection. And then we also have the changes that are made after the object in the artifact was created. And this can be done sympathetically and unsympathetically. In terms of there we go. Also take a look at the resource list because I've given a quick little information about more of the curatorial part of it including fashion pedia, the visual dictionary of fashion design. And then the fashion institute of technology has created a fashion history timeline which is available online that will help you give information about what a particular costume or textile is and what time period it's from. Also another bookshelf recommendation if you have textiles and costume in your collection is to go ahead and buy a textbook for a textile science undergraduate program and that's something you can find online via you know Amazon or if you need any recommendations for a textile science textbooks feel free to contact me and I'll give you a couple of recommendations for that. So in a disaster the natural fiber foibles of these have are listed here. They absorb and hold water easily. They are physically weaker when wet even when new and they're even more weak if they are aged or more than you know 10 or 15 years old. Mold and mildew love them easily easily digest the molecules that make them up and they char burn when exposed to high heat. When it comes to the foibles for man-made fibers they too also absorb and hold water easily. They're much more physically weak when wet even when new and even worse when they're aged and once again mold and mildew have no problem using them as a food source. They too also char and burn when exposed to high heat. Synthetic fibers do not absorb or hold water easily. I don't know if anyone remembers when they came out with a polyester double nits or the polyester fabric clothing 20 or 30 years ago and how uncomfortable they were to wear because they could not absorb the vapor water vapor that our bodies gave off and so you were literally stewing in your own water vapor because the synthetic fibers could not absorb that moisture and let it evaporate to the environment. Their strength is not affected when they're wet continue to be very strong and mold and mildew are not able to digest the synthetic fiber molecules however if there's contamination present whether it's foodstuffs or body oils or salts the mold and mildew can digest that and so will thrive in that in that situation. When exposed to heat they will melt and not necessarily char or burn and they will actually melt when exposed to heat that's lower than in temperature then that would affect natural or man-made fibers. The conservogram service series by the National Park Service has much more information also about the different characteristics of the different fiber types and then of course we have the other medias the organics if will hold and absorb water easily if they're synthetic they'll melt if exposed to heat. The other complication when it comes to the technology used to create color is that the dyes are probably not fast in water no matter the pH of the water due to the early dye technology they just hadn't got dye fastness in water down yet in terms of chemistry and or depending on the environmental or cultural situation they might not have had the extra water that was needed to adequately rinse out yarns or fabrics that were dyed or mordanted in their creation process and so just have excess unfixed dye lurking on the surface and in the fibers waiting for excess of water to bleed or move in that situation and the mixed media will have differing responses to heat water and drying and if they're of course been made together in close intimate contact that's going to cause a conflict. Just as an example here we have an ecclesiastical garment that was made with an absolutely beautiful silk brocade fabric but was lined with a jute fabric it's very acidic as it ages and in a damaging situation where there was too much moisture in the storage box for this ecclesiastical you can see the tide lines and let's see if I can figure out how to use this arrow. There we go it looks like it's well maybe it's not going to work today Jess let's see here nope I can click on it but it's not working well we'll just have to let me try this way. Sorry about that Meg it seems like it has the same problem as it did before. Yeah it's just the pointer stuck up in the in the margin there and it's just not going to move no matter what I do so we just have to use our imaginations and it was not hard to see the yellowish tide lines and also at the lower level the more brownish tide lines from the water contamination and that the mixed media has not helped that the acidic has made the water even more acidic of the the acidic jute. Okay and then we have that you know here's some demonstrations of the fabric construction foibles the one on the right the blue we have a very loosely woven fabric and it has literally just slipped loose from the seam allowance causing a gap in a hole and now of course that loose ground fabric is now also unraveling and there's because there's a difference in the texture there's also a visual condition issue because there's a different in perception of the gloss. The costume on the left you can see that the seam allowance through it's its translucency problem and it's so the visual impact is there just because of the fabric. Alright so moving on to physical and mechanical stress in a disaster situation basically physical and mechanical stress is the effects of gravity of the flexing and folding and movement for example use of bias when the textile or costume was created and so this physical and mechanical stress is really because of that functional aspect that textiles and costume usually have in their lives before coming into your collection of being worn and walked on or draped over the edge of the bed or the edge of a table or the dog chewing off a corner there talk about the ultimate in physical and mechanical stress having the dog chew off a piece it just you know gets worse in a disaster situation a lot of people don't realize exactly how heavy just a one gallon of water weighs over eight pounds so if you have something like a wool coverlet that absorbs 10 gallons of water that's another 80 pounds that that coverlet now weighs just on the water content natural and man-made fibers physically swell as they absorb this moisture vapor and liquid water and they physically shrink as the water vapor and liquid water evaporates so there's literally a physical reaction to holding and absorbing water and if you have something that's already weak from age or contamination this physical swelling and shrinking can actually cause it to blow apart natural and man-made fibers are also much physically weaker when wet and so we'll tear much more easily also if you're moving something in a disaster that has dangling parts of components and they're not supported while you're being moved you literally can have them just tear loose and whether it's a trim or a train or belt or yards and yards of a voluminous train in a wedding skirt a wedding dress and then we have the usual you know things that are done to costume and textiles you know they're folded increased whether they're accidentally folded increased when they're in a storage box or intentionally by increase being pleaded or other textile techniques the fibers will break along those fold lines increases and in summary basically the fibers are deteriorating which means the polymer chains making them up are breaking and becoming shorter which makes them weaker and this physical and mechanical stress has much more of an effect if the fabric or fibers involved is also damp or wet so here's just something that is going to be a real major problem if it ever gets to water the ends of this robe are literally in shreds and if the sleeve is getting ready to fall off the hanger even if it's dry in storage in a disaster if it would be subjected to any kind of moisture and it absorbed that moisture the sleeve would just tear loose completely because of that weight and I bet the red dyes would die bleed as well and here we have a damaged waistband on a skirt and so we have the combination of the very fragile silk that's brittle going to be had poor aging characteristics anyway combined with that function as a waistband and somebody looks like it looks like there's somebody tried to do a repair there trying to keep those little broken pieces together they didn't do the job very sympathetically and this in a situation exposed to lots of water would also just blow apart physically light of course we have to worry about not just the ultraviolet portion of light but all lot wavelengths of light because all wavelengths of light are absorbed by the substrate and then in the case of color what's a readmitted is what the color we see with our eyes now the ultraviolet part in summary is the most energetic and we don't need as humans we don't need the ultraviolet part of the light to see colors we're not hummingbirds or butterflies things like that so we don't need that ultraviolet portion and so it's most easily filtered out of our on our windows and our our light fixtures and the bulbs and our light fixtures so exposure is both a function of the intensity of the light and the duration how long the light is on so if you can decrease both of those you will get much better durability in terms of color and physical strength for things that are made out of natural fibers the recommended levels for display is five-foot candles or 50 lux which usually makes most exhibition designers grown but it can be done exhibitions can be designed where the objects that are made for natural and man-made fibers need to be at this light level so here's some of the things that this energy that's absorbed by the molecular chains causes the problems in the case of silk made out of a oh five or six different amino acid the tyrosine amino acid literally will just rupture its change it's enough gets enough energy and it just breaks its molecular change there the dyes and pigments change or cult or fade and what's happening is of course is that that energy is changing the color chemistry on the molecular level and then undyed white fibers read mytholite into the well yellow wavelengths as the model a molecule chain gets broken and becomes change shorter and of course it's not just the ultraviolet end of the spectrum we have to worry about we also have to worry about the other end of the spectrum where the infrared spectrum is because that's absorbed as heat energy and in summary in terms of light basically it's we just have to remember that it's both cumulative and irreversible there's no such thing as having something rest in stark storage that will somehow restore its color or restore its molecular strength that is a myth so in a disaster situation it tends to drop an importance we need enough light for personal safety and so we can see what kind of damage we're looking at however if you are having to work outside during salvage operations you know try to work in the shade both it's both healthier for you and also healthier for the objects themselves you can rig up tarps and things like that to provide shade or work in tents and canopies so here's just a quick example of light fading in a in an embroidery the front and the back the the back is on the right and the front is on the left high temperature and relative humidity and here's we get into definitely much more of the the chemistry of it all and it's the the chemical reaction speed up as the temperature increases and then slow down when the temperature decreases and the chemical rule reaction rule is is that chemical reactions basically double in speed for every 18 degrees Fahrenheit increase so you can see it will not take much of a temperature increase going from 60 to 80 degrees or 80 degrees to 100 degrees to really get those chemical reactions of breaking molecular chains going in a big way and that infrared part of the light is manifesting as heat as temperature so that's the you know the complication there relative humidity of course is tied to the temperature itself and relative humidity is defined as the amount of water vapor in the air per particular temperature and as the temperature gets warmer the environment is able to hold more water vapor and then what happens is when the temperature drops the liquid water has to condense out because it cannot hold that much water vapor at that lower temperature and this is the definition of dew point so as these natural and man-made fibers absorb the water vapor and physically swell and they get heavier and as the relative humidity drops they lose their water vapor contact and physically contract and has already been mentioned mold and mildew can also occur at higher relative humidity and cooler temperatures specifically to textiles and costume dyes can bleed and run at higher relative humidities we start getting metals reacting we get iron rusting we get copper blooming we get corrosion of different mixtures of metals and in the case of costumes and textiles these metals might not be in plain sight fibers also become brittle if they get too cold they lose their flexibility and so here's some of the overlap with physical and mechanical stress you literally can crack a textile if it's not supported while it's being moved and it's frozen or really cold so in a disaster situation this is one of the most important deteriorating factors that we have to deal with I've already mentioned the part of it the textile or costume is not fully supported when it's being frozen or moved it becomes extremely brittle and you cannot unfold or manipulate it while it's still frozen because it would just break off and dealing with this high temperature and relative humidity is also a problem depending on the scale of the disaster and as if you haven't seen enough pictures of of mold or mildew here's a couple more I do want to point out that mold in mildew comes in every color of the rainbow I think it was Dave who mentioned being able to check to see whether or not something is actual mold or if it's blanching and it's it's basically if it's easily moved or smeared it's mold or mildew and then here we have different corrosion on different kinds of safety pins and you there's also it's not just the contamination from the corrosion but it's also the physical stress of removing these corroded safety pins you can already see the size of the hole on the the textile on the right and here's a metal hook in a collar that is corroding and rusting and that's not always easily seen because it's on the interior of the of the collar so contamination boy do we have contamination as you can see here this contamination just it's a very long list and some of these are easily seen and some of them are not so easily seen they're unseen we have that mixed and warring media sort of part of inherent vice the sulfur wolves the the chemical molecules that make up wool there's a sulfur molecule in wolves furs and feathers leathers and hide and as the those deteriorate that sulfur model molecule is released causing problems we've seen the image of the aged bass fibers used as inner linings or linings and they are stored and they've been created together intimate contact we have dirt and dust left over from previous use and function or and or after it was donated we have air pollution sources of contamination I'm happy to say that most natural gas appliances don't have pilot lights anymore although there's some still that exist in historic houses where the the old gas range is still there and the pilot light is still on and then we have the off gassing of paints finishes and he's adhesives that are used in the environment of the of the collection we have different cleaning going on use of aerosols or air fresheners that are get into the the environment and can land on costume and textiles that are displayed out in the open and or stored out in the open then we have the the the wonderful things that happen when you are used on a human body and involved in human activity and here's the full range of things that can can happen including that that puppy dog that ate that corner off of that rug or that coverlet and then threw it up on to the quilt that was next door to it you have all that kind of stuff and then I've already mentioned cleaning solutions the standard operating procedures for households ever since the the detergent industry came on the scene as there is incredible amount of detergent residue and perfume residue and bluing residue and softening residue that's all left behind intentionally engineered to do that we also have past mothball and pesticide use and it's usually undocumented in the in historical collections and then we have the wood assets and here's a list of the three that are most involved as well as formaldehyde transferring from wood shelves drawers chests particle board cardboard tissue paper and then of course biological good old mold and mildew bring up their little fruiting body heads and we're not even done here's some more contamination we have our pests you know both two-legged and four-legged and multi-legged fly specs from flies and other insects flying around and landing and doing their thing on costume and textiles that are displayed or stored out in the open vandalism whether intentional or not touching spit wads gum spray paint the whole thing and then sort of it's also the waterborne stuff you know and this is in a disaster where we really do see a lot of it and has already been previously mentioned this is not clean water this is water that's been contaminated from damaged industries from sewage and septic systems from rotting dead animals and cars that are floating in the in the flood waters and then I also there's contamination from what I called seemed a good idea at the time and it's sort of unintentional and we'll talk about that in a sec and so in it in a disaster situation this contamination is activated by the high temperature and relative humidity the rate of reaction is increasing so they're increasingly interacting those molecules and those all those external sources including the smoke and the soot in the firefighting foam and then as the drying and the water removal occurs the tide lines occur where these contaminates become concentrated and of course our mold and mildews spore population is just exploding because now they're in in heaven because they've got all sorts of good stuff to eat the relative humidity and temperature is supporting their environment and they're just happy little mold and mildew in terms of some of the contamination we see from human body contamination we have underarm so we have the perspiration stains interacting with any kind of deodorant interacting with the dyes and the fibers of the silk and so when that would then interact with any contamination in disaster it's irreversible damage here we have a hanger that was having problems all by itself in a damp environment the mold and mildew was getting started on the muslin that's been wrapped around this wooden hanger the fabric served in the damp environment as a sponge and the mold and mildew be since mold and mildew spores are everywhere except for in perhaps a computer clean room and everybody's walking around in Tyvek's bunny suits mold and mildew is just waiting for the right environment to go through their life cycle here we have the back of a framed girlhood embroidery and you can just see all the tide lines from being in an environment where the moisture in the next room over went through the roof during the firefighting efforts and so we get tide lines and we also get mold and mildew blooming and growing here's an example of good I thought it was a good idea at the time it's a landscaping rocks used in an exhibition case they didn't even rinse off the landscaping rocks so here we have this gritty dirt sandy kind of stuff and it is just even in a normal situation of moving things around this is going to spread to the artifacts and you can see we have a wide variety of artifacts and objects in this case that would not appreciate having grit dirt sand around their surfaces and in a disaster situation this would then be spread all over those objects as well to ill effect another old kind of tiny one that I'm glad to see it seems to have fallen out of favor is for quite a long time the only kind of tissue paper that was being touted as safe for collections management was happened to be something that was tinted blue and of course in a disaster situation that blue coloring was not fast or water so it was actually causing a lot more problems than it should have but it seems that the blue color tissue paper has has fallen by the wayside I'm happy to say so here's some recommendations this is particularly poignant in my case because of the October 2017 wildfires that took place in my region and also are still going on different fires but in similar locations and causing similar problems with air quality basically turn off if you have approaching wildfire or if there's poor air quality in your area turn off the makeup air component of your HVAC system you do not want to be dragging in this poor air quality that's full of all sorts of smoke particles and other contaminants from these fires into your collections so for the short term go ahead and turn off the makeup air component of your HVAC system if you don't have an HVAC system make sure you keep all the windows and doors shut tightly this might be a good time to make sure that all your weather stripping is up to snuff so the this contaminated air is not sneaking into your building if the power outage is likely this to something that is now going to be done here in northern California post the October wildfires is that the power company is literally going to turn off the power in a region the power grid in a region or an area to prevent further fires from happening when the power lines go down and if you know this is going to happen turn off the HVAC system ahead of time and then change the settings so the HVAC system has to be turned on manually you don't want it to be turning back on if they turn the power back on and you're not there to change the makeup air component and then it will start sucking in all this contaminated air into the system this is something that happened in the northern California area where the power went off they were told to evacuate were not allowed to come back into the building and when the power came back on it the HVAC system merely said oh I'm turning back on and sucked in a whole week's worth of contaminated air into the collection space and the storage spaces of the museums if you are evacuating your area you know go ahead and the building turn off that HVAC system completely before you leave the building making sure all the windows and doors are closed tightly and then after you're returning to the building replace all those filters before you turn the system back on so you are have nice clean filters to do the job of keeping all those pollutants and contaminants out of your air so other recommendations this ounce of prevention pound of cure you've got to combine the reality of the object combined with the reality of your building and the reality of your staffing so you have to prioritize your collection as to importance and has already been mentioned loans that are in house have to be your top number one priority also prioritize your pilgrimage objects what do people come to see in your institution what's historically important for your mission what has a high dollar value per appraisal in terms of I'm sad to say most textiles and costume in terms of dollar value they generally do not have very high dollar value there of course some niches and here is a couple that tend to have high dollar value your ethnographic and first nations collection should be a priority those made from natural and man-made fibers and mixed media should be a high priority obviously your props and decor should be a very very low priority you should also within that prioritization process prioritize your collection for salvage difficulty and so here's a bunch of them you know framed textiles are those ghoul heard embroideries in your collection in their original frames or they not that if they're not in their original frames that's a little lower priority but if they're in their original frames are considered more valuable both in a dollars and cents manner but also as a curatorial manner you have leather and hide that's very difficult to salvage leather and hide polstered furniture costume accessories are mixed media nightmare oversized textiles those if you have a tapestry collection or quilt collection a contemporary fiber collection anything over about four foot by five foot starts getting really difficult if it's filled with 20 gallons of water is the collection stored in boxes in that are paper-based and where tissue has been used extensively where the collection is displayed or stored where building features are a problem or a danger windows is it the basement if it displayed or stored where it's difficult to physically move do you have tapestries up on the fourth floor storage and would you be able to get those rolled tapestries down the stairs and out the back door can you get your boxes through the doorways do you need two people to carry your boxes under normal circumstances so I had mentioned briefly where and how something is stored if you have to use below ground storage and where utilities pipes run and almost all spaces are like that unfortunately you know nothing is stored on the floor directly is elevated at least six inches though after listening to Dave's webinar it's maybe no basement storage at all for collections maybe it's just where the tables and chairs of staff offices are I don't know it's it's a conundrum I highly recommended the use of corrugated polyethylene polypropylene boxes otherwise known as coreplexed or corex and you can tape over those core those corrugated edges so the insects don't crawl in and label the contents on the outside of the box if you have paperboard boxes you can wrap the whole box with polyethylene sheeting or get lay flat polyethylene tubing and tape all those clothes all those seams closed have your costumes hanging on non-absorbent padded hangers you saw the previous image of one that had it was a wood hanger where they had just used muslin to pad it out and it was just a molded mildew feast in high humidity so using resin-free polyester batting using pool noodles which is just polyethylene foam or polyethylene foam sheet instead if your costumes are currently hanging on an open rack or rod you know shroud that whole rock rack or rod with fabric and then a complete shroud of polyethylene sheeting or Tyvek and you can tailor all those eventually ideally each costume would have its own shroud I refer you once again to the reference list and actually the file that we've got below and I think AIC for giving us permission to use the textile specialty group article by Gail Ninema on tips and tricks to remove the mud and one of the difficult projects that she ran into was trying to pick off all the paper pulp that resulted from all the acid-free tissue that in flood waters just became reverted to its original form which is paper pulp so there's you know more information about why I'm not particularly fond of use of acid-free tissue as in close proximity to objects and object artifacts so here's a storage box and unfortunately the arrow is still not working so that's just the way it is but you can see between the two sets of hands here is water this box is literally filled up to the top edge and it was the condensation line for an HVAC system got blocked and it filled up the storage box and here they are emptying the water into a water bucket and you can just see the waterfall coming through into the bucket so other recommendations dealing with where and how something is stored water alarms get those water alarms they're both inexpensive and inexpensive ones you put barriers between warren media either aluminum foil or Tyvek circles under buttons and an insignia to separate them from those that wool ground fabric that's making up that uniform jacket each artifact object labeled with a water-resistant hang tag label with an undyed stringer threat that is visible with minimum handling this is another situation I run into in salvaging is that the only identifying number is inside the center back neck or inside the waistband or inside inside inside or there's only one on one edge of a very large tapestry and of course Murphy's law is rule and rule is that label is in the end the edge that's rolled on to the tube first so in terms of object and artifact labeling please get a label with a thread that extends beyond the edge a big one a big object is labeled in more than one place on opposite ends and that you have a written labeling policy that everybody adheres to so everybody knows how they're supposed to label things I recommend that each storage box is first lined with a piece of fabric that's large enough to be used as a spring a sling so you can remove the artifacts from the storage box easily whether it's a disaster situation or not and remember that you may need at least two people to lift the sling out if the box is water soaked or if it's a large box also use fabric you know the ideal here is that of course each object would have its own individual box well that of course is not possible 99% of the time and so if you're going to have more than one set of objects in a box use fabric as an interlining to separate objects from each other within that storage box so here are some of the different kinds of water alarms and systems that are available and I have to say every single year in this this era of smartphones it's possible now to get water alarms that will phone you on your cell phone and if your cell phone is busy on to the next line to say that something to alert you of a water problem the nice thing about the ones on the lower right-hand side is that they're usually run about $20 and they have a six-foot lead and basically if any moisture connects between the two little contacts on each little foot in incredibly loud alarm sounds well if the building is closed and nobody's inside the building and nobody can hear it outside the building then that alarm is only worthwhile if there's somebody in the building to actually hear it so keep that in mind there's even systems on the upper left that can detect when all of a sudden there's a large quantity of water moving in the pipes and it can literally cut the water off this is like when you have a major water line break inside the building much more expensive to say to install because you actually have a plumber put in it but it's something that's very worthwhile in terms of if you have major plumbing going on in your near your storage area in the basement to have one of these installed in case something breaks and then it will automatically turn that water off and then here's just some images of using those slings getting things in and out means of a lifting board on the upper right-hand side to safely move something that's fragile or brittle to begin with and then in a disaster here's a image at the lower left-hand corner about the tags that are outside so each of these objects are very easily recognized to their and identified by their accession number and same with the rolled textile on the on the right it's on the outside of the roll you can also use fabric as an interline to separate the layers of folds are needed say a bodice or you know a sleeve or something like that and for stuffing out three-dimensional components like I mentioned sleeves or shoes you can also start with a core of crumpled aluminum foil that the fabric is in wrapped around to pad out those three dimensional components like shoes or gloves or hats and the nice thing about this aluminum foil besides being very inexpensive is that also that aluminum foil does not absorb and hold moisture so you're not creating a sponge that you're inserting into the toe of the shoe and will not hold any water in the case of a relatively high humidity high relative humidity in a storage space for bad day in terms of weather or an environmental disaster you can also use fabric as the outside wrap of rolled textiles and frame textiles and then covering the whole set with polyethylene sheeting or lay flat tubing with the seams taped and remember if you're rolling textiles for storage you have that the end of it make sure that that in that opening spacing down not up and then when if there is water sheeting from the ceiling from condensation block condensation line that it's sheeting off of that facing that's going down and not up if you're a custom-made hanger or shroud or outside cover also label it with the individual accession number if you I also recommend that there be an individual shroud for each hanging costume even if it's inside a powder coated metal storage cabinet and that the shroud be labeled the other thing about this individual shroud is not only is it keeping the costumes to themselves so no intermingling no catching of buttons on each other and it allows them to slide in and out of the storage cabinet quite well but it's also been a means of monitoring insect activity because it will be you'll open up your storage cabinet and there will not see frass in the bottom of the cabinet you'll have no idea which costume it came out of you just have to investigate some shrouds and decide from the evidence caught in the shroud which who is the guilty party the shroud will also capture any components that are falling off of your costumes with that you know three more sequence if have fallen off the ball gown another button has fallen off the the army jacket at least it will be kept in close to its original costume and so here's a drawing of what I call it a no-sew costume shroud and it just uses flat fabric and gives you a head start in getting those individual shrouds going for your costume so you guys have a lot of homework you already know that when you signed up for this these responsibilities heritage responders and once again my hats off to all of you for taking this on as well I know you're all have so much to do already and just it's so wonderful that you've decided that this is also important for your institutions and your collections so reach out to your first responders and have them visit your facility all shifts periodically and pointing out where your high priority artifacts are and loans are if you're especially if you're alone you have loans that come in and out they need to know that in this gallery you know there aren't any more loans but they're now in that gallery and I have to admit you know it might be the baby grand piano on the second landing is considered the pilgrimage piece for your particular institution darn if those first responders won't throw tarps all over it if they haven't been able to drag it out of the building for you during an emergency reach out to conservators who are specific to your collection types in and out of your area and get their 24-7 contact information and get that information into your D plan or your prep plan and those information about what those are also on the my reference list if they haven't already been referred to by other speakers and then gather the supplies ahead of time that you need to protect and salvage your high priority artifacts and store them where they're needed and labeled the make all sorts of wonderful rolling bin trash cans that work great in all sorts of different sizes and it's really easy to seal those shut with literally just very large address labels that say authorized personnel only and so they'll be easy to open but you can also tell whether somebody went fishing for a pair of scissors and decided that that emergency response bin was the easiest place to get a pair of scissors determine ahead of time if you've got oversized textiles in your collection where they can be laid out or brought to if you needed and how would you get them there and then tabletop drills and trainings to brainstorm using a type of your collection and a disaster scenario and here is just two examples of what what you need to do and then follow through on that tabletop drill and training and now just reiterate of course the most important thing is for you to protect your own personal health and safety and here's just quick list of things that I recommend please please please do not reuse your nitro gloves change them wear them under the work gloves that you're doing don't ever reuse them throw them away you not turn them inside out and then use them again you also have to be careful because I know honto virus is also present throughout the state of Washington because infected deer my serve throughout the state of Washington so this is another contamination if you're dealing with something that is been contaminated by rodent feces in urine you don't know what kind of little little rodents have been doing the poop and in peeing some other supplies to get other things to remember I can't recommend highly enough that health and safety for museum professionals book it's really fabulous the thing to keep remembering also those waterlog textiles and boxes are very very heavy and you really need to protect your back use of carts and you can literally use a piece of polyethylene sheeting just laid on the ground and lay the box on that and you can literally drag it around on the ground using that way using that and don't forget those steel toe shoes and with non-slip soles for the reentry teams in the first first round of salvage so some salvage tips in general it's very difficult to you know it's once again one of these things where you need to look at your own specific collections and your own priorities within that collection and and get specific training on salvage tips for though your particular situation I'm a real fan of using polyethylene sheeting or bags to gently wriggle under that whole stack of wet out textiles in a box if you haven't already interlined them with the fabric interlining you can also gently wriggle the pieces of polyethylene sheeting or bags into the arms and the hats between the front of the back to separate for shaping rinsing and air drying and if you're actually using bags you can use the separate use the the two sides of the bag to separate the textile and use it for stuffing out you're going to need a lot of clean running water with the nozzle controlled and if you're set up in an inside workspace is something to check out you may be using a lot of water is that space set up to deal with a large quantity of water or use somebody with hardwood floors that's not an area for dealing with large quantities of water you can use fabric for the initial blotting flat bed sheets are a wonder for this and for covering while they're air drying and wicking use of the pet pee pads has already been mentioned and it's fab they're fabulous for inserting into the edges of the poultry for blotting they're very inexpensive also be aware that the polyester plastic polyethylene hangers may fail if the costume is waterlog because it's just too much weight for the hook you can unframe frame textiles to allow the components to air dry and to also discard those backing boards there's no need to keep those backing boards if it's not original to the frame textile the air circulation is so critical to slow down the mold and mildew growth that has already been mentioned and you want this the fans directed around but not directly pointed at the textiles and costume I hate to tell you but once the mold and mildew population is visible to our naked eye you probably won't be able to remove all the staining after the disaster is the number of fruiting bodies and from them actually consuming and then excreting on it's just the reality of removing that kind of staining from a historic textiler costume and then there's some safe turning over techniques for small to large textiles let me show you a couple of images of that oh yes and then of course I get my extra large absorbent pee pads from good old Costco as you can see they're very affordable they're definitely need to be in your response kit I mean oh here's that image I wanted to show you about this is a the green one is a had a wool jacket on it and in this you can see how that hook is opened up and you can see if a closet rod was there it would slip right off that closet rod because that hook has opened up so much so be aware if you have using polyethylene plastic hangers for storing your costume collections on that that's going to be a problem and here's some alternatives for hangers and then here's some methods for turning over textiles a very simple not rocket science once you know how to do it it makes it much safer for the costume and the textiles and much safer for you the the scale is just different if you're turning over a large quilt or contemporary fiber art or a tapestry for number two there you'd basically a rolled textile it's just a matter of how you lead the have the leader coming off the rolled roll first of course you'd be on to a clean a clean surface getting near the end here folks basically if you have soot or older present you need to consult a conservator immediately for possible removal methods because it's a combination of the actual textile individual textile or costume itself what materials burn to create the smoke or the soot and then the possibilities of and then between those two things they're the possibilities but I have to tell even in this day and age it's a very long drawn-out process freezing does help at the beginning but then it's this it's any kind of handling with soot possible present is really a difficult situation so here's some supplies I recommend that you get right off the back those flat sheets I love those polyethylene top folding tables and now they make them adjustable height so you can actually use them at while you're sitting sit it in a chair or while you're standing once again standing and trying to work at a table that's at the height for sitting is really going to do a number on your back so having a table that can be adjusted up to standing height is much safer for your health 2 to 4 mil polyethylene sheeting a lay flat tubing easy to obtain wet dry HEPA vacuum cleaner and of course the very important replacement filters and bags 120 inch flexible retracting tape measures wonderful wonderful little creatures battery powered everything and now of course with the LED task lights we get fantastic battery life and color accuracy I'm a real fan of right in rain right in the rain products because their papers are waterproof in their notebooks so if you're going into as a first responder to do a first look see having waterproof papers and notebooks so if you do accidentally drop them your clipboard in the in the group your notes are not ruined and then I'm also very much a fan of Tyvek both in its paper like and its fabric like components and my favorite supplier is a company called materials concept and here is my favorite vacuum cleaner they are actually called dust extractors and are sold to the general contracting and woodworking industry and so the mini that I have it costs 435 dollars so it's a very affordable and you can get them in a wide rate variety of sizes and all the accoutrements of storage units that clip on the top and replacement hoses and all that kind of good stuff other brands that are recommended or the mealy ones and once again this is that you have to be careful readers and checking with the dealers on these because you must make sure that they are truly HEPA filter and not HEPA like because they get sort of sneaky in their semantic some way somewhere and they tend to be oh the other thing that's nice about the at the festivals is that they're also variable speed and so the mealy's also can be variable speed and here's a source for my favorite tape measure and it's wonderful that they're retractable and very affordable I recommend you buy at least six of them at a time because you will find that they will sprout legs and walk away all right people like I said here's my contact information I'm in the same time zone and I'm only two hours away by phone and I'm happy to be of assistance and answer any questions you might have right now or in the future thank you and so generous we got any questions for follow-up as well so we did have a couple of questions come in during the presentation and if anyone has any others do feel free to drop those in the chat box there so we're hoping that maybe you could provide some specific titles you mentioned earlier on the textbook side are the textile science textbooks did you have any recommendations off the top of your head for titles or would you just recommend searching under specific terms I think actually I unfortunately am far enough from my bookcase that I can't quite see them but yeah you can you know you do the usual you know textile science textbook in Google search or Amazon or whatever and there'll be a whole bunch of them what I can also do Jess if you're interested is send you that information that you could sure yeah that would then share with the email with with the rest of the folks and then there's another question about the water alarm right be happy to do that discussing and one of them in particular it looked like you could see the name brand do you know was it sonan I can go back to where that was okay yeah I would call it sonan S-O-N-I-N yeah and you know once again it's it's one of these things where you know if you buy it from a disaster preparedness catalog it's like $35 but if you buy it via Amazon or some other you know a hard I've even seen them in large hardware stores you know that you know $15 or $20 it's I hadn't heard about the ones that will alert you on your film that's great yeah it's one of the once again it's the you know what they call the Internet of Things this is absolutely one of those I don't care about my refrigerator telling me whether or not I've got orange juice on the shelf but having my water alarm system call me or text me and they've also got it where you can also set it up for temperature you know or relative humidity if the temperature gets too high or too low the relative humidity gets too high or too low or you know they've detected the detected water and my understanding is that some of the more sophisticated read expensive HVAC systems for the the very large institution some of their computer systems are set up that you can add alarm systems to their you know their their overall awareness situation and they can alarm the facilities manager person or some other designated person via text or telephone call or whatever so that's the nicest thing of Internet of Things it gets giving us more timely information questions coming in at the moment but again thank you for your willingness to answer follow-up questions or things I'm going to go ahead and pull over the survey link for you all so I think knows the drill at this point just click on the evaluate the webinar text and then the browse to you but again that kind of feedback is always really helpful for us in these programs I want to thank all the participants for taking the time to join us today and a big thank you to make for this excellent program by such helpful information and tangible steps to take to be better prepared so thank you and I will send out a follow-up email with some of those titles for the textbooks as well thanks again everyone