A Practical Guide To Costume Mounting

The effective preparation of garments for display is essential for exhibitions of contemporary and historical dress. Costumes not only need to be visually appealing but also fully supported and historically accurate. This book provides a comprehensive guide to mounting costumes from the eighteenth century to the present day. It includes methods for adapting and shaping figures to create historical silhouettes, constructing underpinnings and making replicas and toiles using inexpensive and simple techniques. A Practical Guide to Costume Mounting is an invaluable resource for conservators, historians and all those working with clothing in museums, private collections and throughout the fashion and theatre industries. Trained as a historical costume maker, author Lara Flecker is the textile display specialist at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. She has worked extensively with the museum’s world-class costume collection, preparing garments for display. Her simple mounting methods are clearly explained and can be used by people with a wide range of experience, including those with few sewing skills.

This second edition of Textile Conservation offers an up-to-date perspective on the role and practice of textile conservators, capturing the diversity of textile conservation work across the globe. The volume considers key factors that are integral to effective conservation decision-making. It achieves this by focusing on four major factors that have influenced development in textile conservation practice over the past decades: the changing context, an evolution in the way conservators think about objects, the greater involvement of stakeholders, and technical development. Features of the new edition include: Updated chapters that explain new techniques and recent developments in the field; New and updated international case studies that demonstrate conservation decision-making in practice, including assessments of the conservation of objects in some of the world’s major cultural institutions; Full-colour illustrations that demonstrate conservation in practice. Textile Conservation will be essential reading for conservators around the world. It will also be of great interest to academics and students engaged in the study of the conservation of textiles, as well as museum and heritage professionals.

This volume explores the conservation and presentation of dress in museums and beyond as a complex, collaborative process. Recognizing this process as a dynamic interaction of investigation, interpretation, intervention, re-creation, and display, Refashioning and Redress: Conserving and Displaying Dress examines the ways in which these seemingly static exhibitions of “costume” or “fashion” are actively engaged in cultural production. The seventeen case studies included here reflect a broad range of practice and are presented by conservators, curators, makers, and researchers from around the world, exposing changing approaches and actions at different times and in different places. Ranging from the practical to the conceptual, these contributions demonstrate the material, social, and philosophical interactions inherent in the conservation and display of dress and draw upon diverse disciplines ranging from dress history to social history, material cultural studies to fashion studies, and conservation to museology. Case studies include fashion as spectacle in the museum, dress as political and personal memorialization, and theatrical dress, as well as dress from living indigenous cultures, dress in fragments, and dress online.

This is an invaluable guide for anyone who designs, or aspires to design, costumes for stage productions. It explains the role of the costume designer, from understanding the script to realizing ideas on paper and in fabric. Among the topics covered are art and design materials; exercises for developing drawing skills; script and character analysis; the theater production process; and approaches to historical and modern dress productions. This excellent guide is complete with a fabric dictionary of textiles and their terms. Gary Thorne designs for repertory theater in Canada, England, and France. He is also the author of Stage Design: A Practical Guide.

Written by a well-known costume designer, this book is for anyone who would like to create costumes for the theater, whatever their experience or their budget. Topics include understanding the structure and work of a theater company; making the best use of production meetings; coping with budgets; decoding the costume clues in a script; setting up and equipping a workroom; finding costumes at thrift shops and flea markets; altering modern clothes for period productions; using and adapting commercial patterns; and developing simple sewing skills. Tina Bicât has worked as a costume designer for The Royal National Theatre, The New York City Ballet, The English National Opera, as well as for fringe theater groups, television, and film.

"Antiquity on Display" offers an insight into the history of the imaginative reproductions of architecture housed in Berlin's Pergamon Museum and the shifting regimes of the authentic in museum displays from the 19th century to the present.