Textiles in Focus Day

Event Poster

On the 29th October, the Museum was - or so it felt - entirely taken over by textiles! Working collaboratively with Conservation staff and the Collections team, the Need/Make/Use team developed an event to showcase pieces from the textile collections and offer hands-on and behind-the-scenes opportunities for visitors. In particular, we set out to highlight textiles collected by Sheila Paine during her fieldwork throughout East and Central Asia. From 16th August 2016 through to 12th February 2017, you can see a special display on the first floor of the Museum entitled Stitch of a Symbol - Insights into the textile journeys of Sheila Paine. You can read a great article about Sheila Paine here.

Stitch of a Symbol gallery display

Going behind-the-scenes

Visitors were able to book a place on a special behind-the-scenes talk led by Curator and Joint Head of Collections, Julia Nicholson. Visitors were able to see close-up objects specially taken off of display and retrieved from the Museum's stores. 

Textiles in the research space © Pitt Rivers Museum

Curatorial Assistant, Nicholas Crowe, and Curator and Joint Head of Collections, Julia Nicholson, laying out objects in the research space ready for the tours. 

Visitors in the research space © Pitt Rivers Museum

Beautiful and intricate objects were laid out in the research space. Visitors were able to take photos, hear Julia talk about how the objects were acquired and learn a bit about their history. It was excellent to hear many of the visitors puzzling between themselves about how they thought garments were constructed and exactly how decorations were applied. Through opportunities such as this, we hope to facilitate visitors to get thinking about the intricacies of construction and about the individuals who made - and still make - such objects.

Floral brocaded ribbon (Slovakia 2008.117.5) © Pitt Rivers Museum

Mola (Panama, 1924.46.74) © Pitt Rivers Museum

Waistcoat and blouse (Slovakia, 2008.117.1-.2)
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Tapestry panel (Peru, 1952.7.69) © Pitt Rivers Museum

Huipil blouse (Guatemala 1990.46.1) © Pitt Rivers Museum

Visitors in the research space © Pitt Rivers Museum

Weaving demonstrations and object handling
The balcony space on the first floor was filled with textiles from our handling collections - visitors were able to pick up and look closely at all sorts of objects - contrasted in different ways - from around the world. One of the days highlights was Head of Conservation, Jeremy Uden, demonstrating weaving on an 8 shaft loom. Visitors of all ages seemed to find this intricate and time consuming work really interesting and asked many questions throughout the day! With help from VERVE volunteers, people could also have a go at weaving on a 4 shaft loom. 

Head of Conservation, Jeremy Uden, demonstrating
an 8 shaft loom. © Pitt Rivers Museum

Visitor using a 4 shaft loom © Pitt Rivers Museum

Volunteers and visitors have a go at 4 shaft loom weaving using patterns designed by Jeremy Uden, Head of Conservation. 

Colourful handling objects © Pitt Rivers Museum

Handling objects - Huipil blouses from Guatemala (2016.223.edu and 2016.219.edu) and a backstop loom likely to be from South America (2002.168.edu). 

Handling object - toy doll in traditional Uzbek dress
(2016.608.edu) © Pitt Rivers Museum 

Coffee and cross stitch  
To finish off their visit, we invited people to join VERVE staff and volunteers for a coffee and to have a go at cross stitch in our seminar room. Each cross stitch design had been specially created by VERVE volunteers and reflected patterns found on the women's hats in the Sheila Paine collection. People could take away patterns and the work they had begun to continue cross stitching in their own time. Some visitors said that this was the first time they had cross stitched since childhood and that they now felt inspired to keep going with the craft. Others had never tried cross stitching before and learnt a new skill whilst also connecting with the collections in a new way. 

Designs based on 2008.116.22 - a panel made for a
women's skull cap © Pitt Rivers Museum

Cross stitching © Pitt Rivers Museum

Finished cross stitch © Pitt Rivers Museum

A new convert to cross stitching shows off her completed design! 

All in all, Textiles in Focus Day was a real success, offering more than 400 visitors the chance to closely examine the textiles in the collections and get some insight into the people who still make and use such items today. 

Keep an eye on our what's on pages for information about other events like this one ... in 2017 we are offering monthly hands-on workshops (such as prehistoric knife making!) that provide the chance to explore the making methods behind objects in the collections. 

Jozie Kettle
VERVE Programming and Communications Officer

Collections Care and Careers Day: lifting the lid on museum work

The Museum held its first 'Collections Care and Careers' Day on Saturday 14 September. Held in collaboration with Oxford Open Doors, this is a new type of event, envisioned by the VERVE project to help open up the way the Museum works and offer members of the public the chance to talk with behind-the-scenes staff, helping to foster a shared sense of why caring for collections is important. 

The event was primarily aimed at teenagers and young adults who might interested in a career in the museums and heritage sector, although anyone was welcome to come along and in the end we had a lovely variety of ages attending, from 6 to 60!

The day was a great opportunity for project staff to show the often-unseen aspects of Museum life. Small groups went on tours around the Collections, Conservation and Technical Services areas - ostensibly following the path of an object as it travels through the Museum departments - and here their various roles and duties were explained; from cataloguing and labelling, to pest management, packing items for loan and dealing with hazardous materials. This approach meant we finished up in the galleries with the 'final' stage being the display, making it easier for visitors to digest the various processes and understand the level of work involved. As one said, it was a "brilliantly enlightening tour of lots of areas of the Museum – especially great to go on the same journey as a newly accessioned object." Another said, "Great tour, really enjoyed meeting all the people involved,"  so we hope made the point about the kind of people who work in museums - passionate, friendly and appreciative of the unique environment in which they work.

Meanwhile, downstairs, staff were on hand throughout the day with some of the tools of their trade (such as gloves, journals, databases and scale models) to answer questions from the public. Joining us from the Oxford University Careers Service was Lucy Hawkins who was able to provide advice on volunteering, relevant university courses, internships and professional publications such as Museums Journal. With thanks to the University of Manchester, the University of Leicester, the Institute of Archaeology at UCL, and the University of Leeds for providing course brochures. 

Tours of the Conservation and Collections Departments © Pitt Rivers Museum

VERVE's Collections Care and Career events will run twice a year. Next year we are likely to hold it in the spring to coincide with university term time. We hope to involve staff from a number of different departments within the Museum with the aim of informing and inspiring children and young people to consider the importance of their heritage, as well as the possibility of working within the sector. 

John Simmons, Head of Technical Services, talks to a visitor
about his team's work © Pitt Rivers Museum

The day was well-attended by around 100 people, ranging of people from those just beginning to consider working in areas such as conservation, archives and anthropology, to those interested in perhaps a change in career, to those who were just, well, interested! As staff, we all enjoyed the chance to demonstrate just some of the range of jobs available in museums - did you know, there are more than 50 distinct roles at the Pitt Rivers? - as well as answer some interesting and occasionally tricky questions about both the PRM and museums in general.