Rachel Midgley

Here’s the mannequin I worked on today; it is for a geometric print wrapper dress/dressing gown from about 1840-1850 which you can see looking rather sad on an un-padded mannequin in the top left image. In the top right image you can see a comparison between a basic unaltered mannequin (left hand side) and the mannequin I have padded out and added sleeve supports and petticoats to (right hand side).

Next job on the conservation list was to reinforce the neckline of a beautiful wedding dress from 1844. I’ll be posting lots more information about the dress itself soon, including more photos.

The neckline has a very deep slit, and the bottom point of this is a weak area that might be damaged or strained during the mounting process. The dress is made of a lovely figured silk and fully lined, so it is quite heavy, which means that weak points like this one can be put under strain during the repeated fittings on the mannequin which are necessary when mounting up a costume.

Back at Gawthorpe after a week of holiday, and I’m checking, recording and sorting all the packaging for the items that have been put on display in galleries 3 and 4. Empty packaging will be sorted by display case and stored separately ready for when things come off display while anything with collection items still in; for example in the case of multiple pieces of an item where one is on display without the other, the packaging has to be returned to its usual location in the stores. So I’m making a lot of lists, filling in movement tickets and updating locations on the database.

I forgot to post these the other week when I was working on this - another time I was able to work on one of my favourite pieces in the Gawthorpe Textiles Collection (I have a lot of favourites if I’m honest).

This is a really, really beautiful waistcoat from the late 18th century, probably sometime around 1780-1800. It was bought by the donor in Gibraltar and so we often refer to it as the ‘Spanish waistcoat’ but the colours, design and motifs are all quite typical of English and French waistcoats of this period too. The stitching is really fine workmanship, worked in silk floss that has kept its vibrant hues on a lustrous cream silk ground. In addition to the embroidery there are sections where the silk has been painted black (now faded to brownish grey) and net overlaid on top of this to create a fine trellis effect.

Last week we finished off Gallery 3 at Gawthorpe so it was time to move onto Gallery 2. I spent quite a bit of time today getting this gorgeous Indonesian batik sarong ready for display. I really wish I had been shown something this lovely when we covered batik in GCSE textiles, I think I would have had a much better appreciation for the technique and what it can produce.

Today I’ve been working on one of my favourite items in the collection at Gawthorpe Textiles Collection.

This lovely piece of applique is probably the centre of a bigger quilt or coverlet but was either cut down or unfinished. It has some lovely fabrics dating from around 1780 through the early 1800s up to about 1820 and includes examples of lapis, block, roller and plate printing techniques. The colours are still really fresh looking and the browns, yellows and pinks typical of the period combine with some unusual emerald greens and coral fabrics that make the central motifs stand out beautifully.The applique is beautifully sewn too and I especially love the little bows made from straight strips of fabric minutely gathered as they were sewn onto the backing fabric.

Here’s a piece of trim we had shortlisted for our dress trimmings case in Gallery 3 at Gawthorpe but it didn’t quite make the final cut.

Still, it is always better to have too many things to put in the case than not enough. Luckily we have quite a large collection of broderie anglaise and whitework trims (I would know, I had to review most of them last year) so we had plenty of good pieces to pick from.

Today we made an amazing discovery at Gawthorpe Textiles Collection; an item which I have been hoping to find ever since I first found a mysterious reference to it some time ago.

It all started when I was looking through one of the old accessions registers and came across a reference to the collection having an ‘embroidered cotton muslin’ wedding dress worn by Louisa Hubbard when she married Sir Woodbine Parish in 1844. Woodbine Parish was related to the founder of the collection, Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth, on her maternal side; so not only was this a potentially beautiful garment, it had a link to the family too.

Unfortunately matching items from the old accessions registers to their current locations and numbers can be less than straight forward and my preliminary searches came up empty. Having recently worked on a review of the costume in hanging storage I went back and checked through the records of all the dresses from this period that we had covered in the review to see if any matched. No luck, so I did the same for all of the wedding dresses (in case of mis-dating etc) and still nothing. A little frustrated about not being able to find what I was sure must be a lovely item I had to put my search on hold for the time being.

Fast forward a few months and while putting away some boxes in the store I happened to notice a box marked ‘Ayrshire embroidered dress, 1805 1840s′. The date change got me curious despite no mention of Louisa Hubbard or wedding dresses and I started to wonder if this could be the wedding dress I had been trying to locate. The Curator and I decided to investigate and got the box out. We tentatively opened the lid, unfolded the layers of Melinex and tissue and... there it was!

We are hoping to display the dress in some way in the future so I’m only going to post a few sneak peek details of it, it really is too exciting and beautiful not to share! In the top image you can see the minutely gathered and piped shoulder section with the original Miss Rachel label next to it. The bottom image shows a detail of the skirt and the exquisitely fine muslin decorated with delicate embroidery.

I had to put this project on hold while I worked on the exhibtiion in Kendal, but it was great to finally start sewing on it when I got back from Europe.

Today was my first day back at Gawthorpe Textiles Collection. I spent most of the day getting out some lovely items for a study visit in early September. Pictured here are some pieces of Honiton lace and Leek embroidery.