Once we determined that the remaining three wedding dresses, requested for the exhibtion Of Love and War, were able to be safely put on display, the textile conservators worked in collaboration with curators and exhibition staff to determine the dimensions of showcase and, the types and styles of mannequins. To get the most accurate dimensions the dresses were placed on temporary mannequins and the trains were arranged as they will fall on display.  In the picture the two wedding dresses in the foreground have undergone no conservation treatment and are on ill-fitting temporary mannequins, the wedding dress in the back is on a mannequin previously custom made for it. 

As part of the process of conservation we will ensure that mannequins are custom made for all the wedding dresses and uniforms on display in Of Love and War.  This will ensure that the garments are correctly supported and shaped and that all materials used in the construction of the mannequins are of archival quality.

Preparations for the Memorial’s new travelling exhibition Of love and war are nearly complete. The showcases are being built, all the labels and captions are being printed and we’ve been in the recording studio as well.

A large part of the Memorial’s collection relating to love during wartime comes from private records, particularly the letters that were exchanged between lovers separated by conflict.

However, an exhibition is a very visual experience and actually reading many of these letters (faded by time in some cases, terrible handwriting in others) is a hard task, especially in an exhibition setting. So we decided to bring them to life in another way. Last week several Memorial staff members put aside their day-to-day tasks and assumed the identities of 15 men and women who not only experienced the hardship of separation from their loved ones, but wrote about it in amusing, eloquent and often heartbreaking letters.

Extracts from these letters were recorded in the sound studio and will be cut together in the next week or so to provide an audio backdrop to the section of the exhibition which looks at the importance of receiving letters, and gifts, from husbands, wives, girlfriends and boyfriends. We plan to make this recording available on the website soon. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with one of the extracts:

“Marie mine, I want to get back to you again, I want so much to have you in my arms, making love to you and cuddling you close to me. When will that come again, Girlie? If I had ever thought I would be so long away from my own Wifie, I would never have enlisted. This is not life to me, being away from you.”

That was written by Lieutenant Peter McFarlane, 34th Battalion AIF, to his wife Marie in June 1917. He was killed in action at Villers-Brettonneux a year later.

Back in September, I was doing some work out at our Treloar Annex, which is where our conservators work.  I was videoing the construction process of the mannequins being made for the 3 wedding dresses  that are to be included in the “Of love and war” exhibition. During a break in filming I got talking to Jessie Firth, who was working on one of the wedding dresses .  She was applying fake perspiration to material to see what effect it would have.  Picking up my trusty camera, I went down to the conservation lab and the following is an interesting account of just what 65 year old perspiration can do to a wedding dress and how conservators plan to tackle the problem it presents.  

Sweat on a 60 year old wedding dress

 As previously explained four wedding dresses were initially selected for “Of Love and War“. One of the wedding dresses, originally owned by Mrs N S Bissaker, required hundreds of hours of painstaking work before it would be strong enough for display, so unfortunately it will not be ready for display in “Of Love and War”.  Instead this dress with go on our Vulnerable Textiles conservation list and be conserved with all the care it deserves to preserve it for the future. In cases like this, it is the vulnerability of the dress that determined its exclusion from this exhibition. However, the Memorial plans to make images of this dress available on its website in the near future.

 

                   

You can see in the pictures the fragile state of the lace, which has many holes visible as black areas.  For full conservation of this dress, sheer silk panels will be inserted behind each piece of the dress and then the lace will be carefully stitched to these panels, giving the dress the structural support it requires.

One year ago today, the Australian War Memorial joined the Commons on Flickr.  We put up a set of 30 photos of soldiers, sailors, nurses, airmen, wives, mothers, sisters, sweethearts, a prime minister, and a koala. The photos are part of our photo collection of well over a million images which covers the experience of Australians at war and Australian military history from the 1860s to the present.  We have uploaded other sets on the Commons since then, each with its own theme: Christmas, children, animals, ANZAC Day, and First World War aviation.

 The 103 images have been viewed almost 180,000 times; there have been over 530 comments, 2,000 favorites, 340 tags and 830 contacts. read on

The notebooks, diaries and folders created by Charles Bean during and after the First World War have immense historic value and are considered to be one of the most significant records created by a single Australian. The collection includes 286 volumes of diaries and historical notebooks recorded by Bean at the time and often at the front line. The diaries are firsthand accounts of the war and offer a unique perspective due to Bean’s status as official correspondent. read on

The notebooks and diaries of C.E.W. Bean provide valuable insight into the last days of the First World War. Bean was Australia’s sole official correspondent and he worked assiduously throughout the four years of the war recording events, often from the front line.

Charles Bean was staying in Lille, France during November, 1918. He was an experienced investigator and interviewer and his diaries of the weeks before Armistice detail the emotions and concerns of those who knew the war was coming to an end. Bean, who generally had access to all levels of command, writes of conversations with Generals John Monash and William Birdwood and discusses the opinions of members of the international press and political leaders including Australia’s Prime Minister Billy Hughes on the peace process. Bean spent much of his time throughout the war interviewing Australian soldiers and recording their stories. During the last months of the war he takes the time to observe and record the feelings of average French civilians noting their opinions and feelings towards Germany.

The weeks leading up to Armistice are described by Bean in his diary as subdued. He wrote “I think it is the dead who rise up between the survivors” that prevents “any sort of Bacchanalian rejoicing”. Journalists and those in command that Bean talked to were initially sceptical about Germany’s intentions. After the Kaiser and his son had abdicated and fled on the 10 November, scepticism turned to a concern about what position Germany would be in to negotiate peace and who was in command. He noted conversations that he had with military commanders, politicians and journalists and recorded their concerns about the potential break up of Germany. Many feared that the country would slide into Bolshevism. Bean wrote that if Germany split there may not be money to compensate Belgium and France. By November Bean did not support the demands on Germany strongly expressed by Billy Hughes. Australia’s Prime Minister was in France lobbying through the press and political channels for extensive reparations for all the Allied countries including Australia. Bean described the speech that Hughes gave to the French War Cabinet as unrealistic.   read on

 

 

War films show soldiers constantly locked in battle and participating in non-stop action – but the reality of war is actually much different. “No Dramas”, a film by Robert Nugent commissioned by the Australian War Memorial, shows what life is really like for our troops deployed to combat zones.

Shot in Iraq in April 2006, the film explores the isolation and routines of Australian soliders, and the long periods of waiting they endure before the inevitable moments of extreme action.

“No Dramas” will screen as part of the Canberra International Film Festival on the evening of Saturday 7 November.

For further details see the CIFF website  http://www.canberrafilmfestival.com.au/2009/10/05/no-dramas

 

The Australian War Memorial faces unique challenges presented by the modern age to its collection development for recent conflicts, including Iraq and Afghanistan. With email, phones and internet communicative tools largely replacing traditional keepsakes such as diaries and letters, this has made identifying and retaining objects of the ADF experience in modern conflict rather difficult. Furthermore, given that the number of ADF personnel serving overseas is far less than those who saw service in such conflicts as the World Wars, this also limits the amount of material representing recent conflicts and therefore what will shape the Memorial’s collections in the future.

One attempt to address this issue involved a representative from the Memorial being sent, in late 2008 to accompany Australian forces in Iraq. Mal Booth, former Head of the Memorial’s Research Centre, was fortunate enough spend time with Australian forces in Iraq and was able to identify and target items which would be of interest to the Memorial. Some of this material was identified on the industrious HMAS Parramatta, which was at that time conducting its second tour of the Gulf as part of Operation CATALYST. Mal travelled with the ship on his journey and found that the vessel and its crew provided extensive opportunities for proactive collecting.

In September 2009, the Memorial returned to HMAS Parramatta in order to gather further material…

read on

Here is the first of several blog posts about the wedding dreses being considered and conserved for our upcoming Of love and war exhibition.

Recently the Textile Conservation Laboratory retrieved from storage four wedding dresses that are proposed for the up and coming exhibition Of love and war.  Three of the dresses – originally owned Mrs Isabel Bell, Mrs Audrey Norton  and Mrs Norma. Bissaker – are relatively new to the Memorial’s collection and have not undergone any detailed conservation treatment. The fourth dress – owned by Mrs Violet Glover – has been fully conserved as it was used in an earlier exhibition . The pictures attached show what the dresses look like in their storage boxes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once curators select these items as potential objects for display in the exhibition, textile conservators have to carefully document the condition of the wedding dresses. Part of this process is to determine if they are stable and strong enough for display on mannequins for this exhibition. Special consideration is given to the materials when assessing if they are able to be displayed not only at the Memorial, but also at the venues around Australia they will travel to in 2010 and 2011.