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. 

Wedding dresses for Of Love and War on temporary mannequins

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.

Jennifer Selby, Assistant Curator of Film and Sound, tastes life on the other side of the studio, recording letter extracts from the collection

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.

Detail of the front bodice of Mrs N S Bissaker wedding dress.

Detail of the upper back bodice of Mrs N S Bissaker wedding dress.

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.

Officers of the 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade. B00572

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

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. 

Wedding dress of Miss Isabel Margaret Platt-Hepworth

Wedding dress of Mrs Audrey Norton

Wedding dress of Norma Bissaker

wedding dress of Mrs V B Glover 001

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.

On December 3, 2009, the Australian War Memorial will be opening its exhibition “Of love and war”.  

The impact of war on romantic relationships and the ways in which Australians incorporated affairs of the heart into their wartime lives  is a powerful subject and we would like the public to contribute their stories via our Flickr group.
This group is running in conjunction with the exhibition and we are excited to have this opportunity to allow people to tell their stories of love and war. The images can be photos or scans (there are already a number of wonderful letters in the group) and we would love you to tell us as much as possible about the subjects in the images as you can – you can do this through the comments area. 

You have to be a member of the group to add images and remember that you need at least 4 images in your Flickr account for them to become visible. If you have any questions, please contact me (I am the group administrator) via email emma.jones@awm.gov.au or leave a comment on this blog post and I’ll get back to you.

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Those who regularly read the AWM blog might remember the Valentine’s Day blog post about a mysterious love letter from a young French woman to her soldier sweetheart.

This letter, and the mystery that surrounds it, created lots of interest. With the help of an enthusiastic member of the public, and her wonderfully helpful relative in France, we have since found a few more details about Marthe and her letter.

Marthe and her family were evacuated from Armentières, on the French/Belgian border, to Saint-Sulpice-Les-Feuilles during the First World War. Armentières was destroyed during the war and rebuilt afterwards.

It was in Saint-Sulpice-Les-Feuilles that Marthe met her sweetheart. However, the identity of Marthe’s sweetheart and his fate remain a mystery. The two never married as he rejoined his battalion and never came back to her. Marthe’s nephew heard the story from his father but the family cannot recall his name after all these years. However, enquires continue and I’ll do another blog post if any more information turns up.

Marthe’s letter will be on public display as part of the Memorial’s Of Love and War exhibition opening in December.

The digitisation of the whole series of Australian Imperial Force (AIF) war diaries from the First World War, (Official Records series AWM4), recently passed the 400,000 image mark.   Included in the 400,000 images are all the available diaries for the Australian Flying Corps, (AFC) .  Digitised versions of the diaries are being regularly uploaded to the Memorial’s website as they are completed. 

The AIF war diaries are an invaluable resource for anyone researching a particular unit and sometimes contain unexpected windows into the daily experience of war.  A revealing example of this is contained in the appendices to the AFC diaries titled ‘Combats in the Air’.  These documents detail personal accounts of aerial combat recorded in the immediate aftermath by the participants.

read on

The Memorial recently acquired a mysterious letter. It is beautifully written and decorated, but we don’t know much about it. It seems it was written by a French woman to her sweetheart, and we assume he was Australian, as the letter ended up in Australia. We do not know who they were, but we do know that the letter was written on 25 August 1918 and was sent from Saint-Sulpice-les-Feuilles in France. The writer, Martha (or perhaps Marthe) Gylbert, obviously missed her soldier, and went to a great deal of trouble to decorate the letter. It seems that the two were engaged to be married, as the letter ends with the words (almost obscured with kisses) “wife to be very soon”.

First page of a letter written in France in 1918. PR03970