Blog category - Exhibitions

Love Letter Update for Valentine’s Day

13 February 2010 by Nicholas Schmidt. 6 Comments
Collection,From the collection,News,Of love and war,Personal Stories, Exhibition, Of Love and War, People, Private Records

It has been a year since the first blog entry went up about Marthe Gylbert and her letter. In this time, with the help of some very generous people, I have been able to discover much about Marthe and her wonderful love letter. If you have not seen the previous blog entries, they can be found here and here.

Marthe‘s nephew Jean Marc Gylbert has been very helpful and interested. He has provided much information about his family and his aunt although some part of the story remains a mystery even to him. This blog is based on information Jean Marc Gylbert has provided.

Marthe Gylbert

Marthe was born on the 24th April 1901 to Louis and Marie Louise Gylbert. She was the fourth child in the family of six children, two of whom died while very young. The family came originally from Nieppe, a village about 3 km from Armentières, on the left bank of the Lys River. Jean Marc Gylbert describes the family as ‘very poor’ with Marthe’s father working as a farm labourer and her mother employed as a servant.

Marthe met her Australian sweetheart in Armentières not Saint-Sulpice-les-Feuilles as I said before in my previous update. Armentières had been briefly occupied by the Germans, in October 1914, but was taken back by the British, who occupied the village until the 10th April 1918. Amongst the troops in Armentières were Australians and this is when Marthe appears to met her ‘Darling Little Sweetheart’.

read on

Conservation Cleaning of a Wedding Dress

14 December 2009 by Jessie Firth. 4 Comments
Collection,Conservation,From the collection,Of love and war, Conservation, Dry-cleaning, Exhibition, From the collection, Of Love and War, Textile, wedding dress

Emma Jones previously mentioned in 60 year old sweat on a wedding dress – a conservation challenge the preparation of Miss Platt-Hepworth’s wedding dress for the exhibition Of Love and War. The decision was made by the curator Rebecca Britt to keep the staining as evidence of use. While the staining is important to keep, the fabric was not as lustrous as it once was. The dress has a pattern of pretty daises made from cream silk woven with numerous silver threads. A lot of the silver plating on the metal threads had tarnished and been damaged; this has exposed the copper substrate of the thread and gives the dress a more golden appearance than it originally had.

Due to the presence of the metal threads, I discounted the use of many of the cleaning methods that a textile conservator might normally use such as washing. As any treatment with water could damage the silk or cause further corrosion of the metal I decided to use a solvent to ‘dry-clean’ the dress. Petroleum spirits was my chosen solvent as it is less toxic than a lot of the other dry-cleaning solvents. My tests also indicated that the lustre and handle of the silk would be improved, while leaving the historical staining intact.

Petroleum Sprits is an unpleasant chemical to use, so to ensure our safety we used gloves and respirators. The bath was set up in a large fume extractor in the Large Technology Conservation Workshop, which is usually used to paint tanks!

When historical textiles are being treated it is important to be very gentle so as not to damage the fabric. So for this wedding dress a large bath was used to prevent creases and folds.  During ‘dry-cleaning’ the dress was very gently sponged by hand to move the solvent through the fabric without moving the fabric too much. Once rinsed with more of the solvent, the dress was lifted out of the bath on a nylon netting supporting sling and placed on a hammock (made of more netting) to dry.

The following photographs show Sarah Clayton, Senior Textile Conservator, and myself, ‘dry-cleaning’ Miss Platt-Hepworth’s wedding dress in Petroleum Spirits and the dress drying.

Sarah Clayton and Jessie Firth ‘dry-cleaning’ Miss Platt-Hepworth’s wedding dress

Miss Platt-Hepworth’s wedding dress drying after 'dry-cleaning'

This was a successful treatment; the fabric is fresher and more lustrous after cleaning, whilst the historical stains remain intact. It is now very important that we use gloves when handling this dress, to prevent the natural oils and acids from our skin tarnishing the silver threads again.

“Dorothy” the Kitbag

11 December 2009 by Bridie Kirkpatrick. 3 Comments
Collection,Conservation,Exhibitions,Of love and war, Conservation, Dorothy Lamour, Exhibition, kitbag, Of Love and War, pin-up, Sgn John Conrad Lynam, Textile

Isn’t it funny how things come about? While working on the textiles component for the exhibition Of Love and War a painted kitbag came to me for treatment. The lovely pin-up painted on the bag looked an awful lot like Dorothy Lamour, a beautiful actress known as the “Sarong Girl” in the 1940’s.  As the exhibition will be travelling I had to chuckle that Dorothy Lamour made a string of Bing Crosby/ Bob Hope “On the Road” films. The kitbag belonged to Signaller John Conrad Lynam, a timber cutter from Brisbane. Signaller John appears to have had an artistic hand and a taste for beautiful women.  The kitbag was worn and many years of use and storage had caused abrasions and losses. The paint was also flaking from the canvas, leaving the surface very unstable. The conservation challenge was to find a binding agent to stabilise the paint surface that was strong but flexible and would not discolour the paint or underlying canvas. After much testing a traditional conservation material “Isinglass” was chosen. Isinglass is made from the bladder of the Sturgeon fish and has the consistency of wall paper glue. It was applied sparingly with a small paint brush in conjunction with a wicking solvent.

Applying solvent to "Dorothy" the Kitbag

The kitbag is currently on display and Dorothy is safe to go “On the Road” again.

Wedding Dresses, Part 3

19 November 2009 by Sarah Clayton. 3 Comments
Conservation,Of love and war, Conservation, Of Love and War, preservation, Textile, wedding dress, Wedding Dresses

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.

A different day at work

13 November 2009 by Rebecca Britt. 1 Comment
Of love and war,Personal Stories, Exhibition, Love and war

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.

60 year old sweat on a wedding dress – a conservation challenge

12 November 2009 by Emma Jones. 7 Comments
Conservation,From the collection,Of love and war, Conservation, Exhibition, Love and war, Of Love and War, youtube

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

Wedding Dresses, part 2

11 November 2009 by Sarah Clayton. 1 Comment
Conservation,Exhibitions,Of love and war, Conservation, Exhibition, Of Love and War, preservation, Textile, Wedding Dresses

 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.

Celebrating a year on the Commons on Flickr

11 November 2009 by Liz Holcombe. 4 Comments
Collection,News,Of love and war, 11 November, Armistice, Exhibition, Flickr, flickr commons, Of Love and War, Remembrance Day

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

Wedding dresses

29 October 2009 by Emma Jones. 2 Comments
Conservation,Exhibitions, Conservation, Exhibition, Love and war, wedding dress

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.

Love and War Flickr group

22 October 2009 by Emma Jones. No comments
Exhibitions, Exhibition, Flickr

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.