Textiles Laboratory
The Master’s program first-year textile block covers textile history, technology, terminology, fiber identification, weave structure analysis, care and storage of historic, ethnographic and archaeological textiles, wet and dry cleaning methods, local stain reduction techniques, stabilization and loss compensation, minimally intrusive approaches to upholstery conservation, and textile and costume mounting, display and exhibition practices. To augment lectures, these topics are elucidated through an extended object examination and documentation project, a historic textile techniques reconstruction project, hands-on treatment exercises and field trips to collections and exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia or Washington, DC. Areas of study for second year textile majors include cleaning, stabilization and support, compensation for loss, exhibition and storage, and special problems associated with composite objects. Topics covered in theory during the first year are expanded through independent research, while students gain practical experience completing projects chosen to develop skills in accomplishing a broad range of conservation activities.
Textile conservators Joy Gardiner and Kathleen Kiefer teach the first year textile block and supervise second-year students majoring in textile conservation.
