Re: William Morris Textiles

[Textiles & Organics Conservation <tex-org@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry about late response - I had to look up some records at home. I
worked on a lot of Morris textiles in the 1980s at Birmingham City
Museums and Art Gallery. Collection's purpose was to illustrate Wm.
Morris designs so we wouldn't have worried about the lining unless we
had evidence that his factory made up the curtains. I have not seen such
a curtain, but the tapestries we had were lined by Morris with plain
weave blue cotton. Most of our textiles were samples from the factory -
half a yard of the loom width. I didn't wash Dove and Rose, which was a
compound double cloth because the silk was too badly light damaged, but 
I did wash Anenome, also silk and wool, but a sateen weave.

I also washed some large and extremely filthy Tulip and Rose curtains -
all wool. The curtains were made up of pieced lengths, and curators were
primarily interested in them as Morris designs, not curtains, so they
were unpicked to convenient sizes for washing and display. Because I had
so many pieces of similarly soiled wool I worked my way through Judith
Hofenk de Graaff's detergent formulations and a combined
nonionic/anionic, plus Cellofas and sodium tripolyphosphate worked best.
I would not necessarily recommend this for Dove and Rose, though,
especially if the silk areas are weak.     
The curtains were washed supported on monofilament gauze, on a metal
grid to make rinsing and drying easier. They were very heavy, almost
tapestry like, and drying was slow. Repairs were carried out by couching
to dyed nylon net with crewel wools in weak areas, and dyed wool patches
for holes. 

Hope this helps.

Vivien Chapman
Head of Organics Conservation 
Conservation Centre (NMGM)
Liverpool, L1 6HZ, England

In message <001901be4b43$4b241320$1fa5f4cc@oemcomputer>, Joan Marshall
<joan_marshall@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>I need information from anyone who has done cleaning and/or other conservation 
>of William Morris textiles.  I am trying to make some decisions about the