The Future of the 20th Century
Collecting, Interpreting and Conserving Modern Materials
Edited by Cordelia Rogerson and Paul Garside

ISBN: 1-90498-217-4 • $80 • Paper • 2006

This volume contains the edited papers and posters presented at the second annual conference of the AHRC Research Centre for Textile Conservation and Textile Studies at Winchester, UK in 2005.
Modern materials, whether as art or everyday objects, are the basis of the contemporary material world. Accordingly objects encountered within museums and collections increasingly represent a broad spectrum of materials whose preservation may be without precedent. This conference was the first meeting to consider modern materials in the textile field as a subject in its own right. Topics range from familiar textile types, such as costume, to more unusual applications in suitcases, wall hangings, furniture and theatre scenery. Some papers prompt the reader to reconsider what makes a textile modern.

CONTENTS

Scentsory Design: the emotional living tissue • Jenny Tillotson
Can an artist create permanence from transience? The Schmuck Quickies of Yuka Oyama become durable • Cordelia Rogerson and James Beighton
Interpreting the woven devoré textile • Andie Robertson
What makes a textile modern? The recycling of clothing in the Punjabi shoddy trade • Lucy Norris
Collecting modern textile materials In pursuit of forgotten fibres? The development, disappearance and rediscovery of regenerated protein fibres • Mary M. Brooks
‘A bomb in the collection’: researching and exhibiting early 20th-century fashion 41 • Alexandra Palmer
Early elastic thread and fibres in clothing • Laura Petzold
Material challenges Identifying modern materials: taking it to the collection • Paul Garside and Paul Wyeth
Man-made fibres from polypropylene to works of art • Thea van Oosten, Ineke Joosten and Luc Megens
Probing the microstructure of protein and polyamide fibres • Paul Garside and Mary M. Brooks
Investigating cellulose nitrate degradation caused by fungal attack • Margarida Silva
Polyurethane foam: investigating the physical and chemical consequences of degradation • Paul Garside and Doon Lovett
Sticky oilskins and stiffened rubber: new challenges for textile conservation • Irene Skals and Yvonne Shashoua
The effect of acid dyes on the photodegradation of knitted nylon conservation support net • M.K. Sinha, R.M. Christie and R. Shamey
Freezing the present to preserve the future • Yvonne R. Shashoua
The pits of despair? A preliminary study of the occurrence and deterioration of rubber dress shields • Anna Hodson
Conservation applications: object studies A global challenge: the search for conservation solutions for Eero Aarnio’s Globe/Ball chair • Joelle Wickens
A study of sequins on a Cantonese opera stage curtain • Angela Cheung
Wet look in 1960s furniture design: degradation of polyurethane-coated textile carrier substrates • Tim Bechthold
Storage issues for contemporary textile art: a solution for one example • Rosemary Baker
Television puppets from the 1960s and 1970s: creation, materials and conservation • Rebecca Smith