Return of the Textiles

When Molly Carlson approached Norlands the day after our fire to help with disaster recovery we could see the concern in her eyes. We didn't, at the time, see all the expertise she brought, we saw it as the recovery process unfolded and Molly provided invaluable guidance and suggestions for the process. As part of a Federal Disaster Recovery Team Molly's experience touched many facets of collections. This story is about our textile recovery.

Left to right: Shanel and Emma toolin' down the highway in our 24' Budget Rent A Truck; Michael loading boxes in the bubble; Carbon Dioxide Bubble with Shanel Lavoie, Norlands Volunteer, Michael Schuetz, Collections Technician and Megan MacNeil

Norlands has one of the largest collections of mid 1800 clothing and textiles. The Washburn's were frugal people and thus have passed along many articles of clothing - Elihu's opera cloak, Stanley's correspondent uniforms, many of Adele's dresses - as well as bed and table linens. Our storage area was on the second floor where many of the items resided in acid free boxes and a few of the clothing items were displayed on mannequins. This area was heavily damaged by smoke and fortunately only smoke.

At some time in Norlands' history carpeting was donated that, unfortunately, carried some carpet beetles and clothes webbing moths. Molly noticed evidence of their activity and realized that the disturbance caused by moving items to escape damage during the fire stimulated these bugs to move more freely amongst our textiles. She realized we needed to deal with this immediately to prevent further damage and set about educating us and creating the circumstances for preserving our textile treasures.

Eliminating insect infestations is an expensive process and while dealing with that problem was high on the list for us it wasn't the highest. Molly was persistent in providing information and in a short time we knew we had to take immediate steps.

We began an Integrated Pest Management System by setting out traps to identify the types of insects we were dealing with. As we put this in place Molly spoke with many of her contacts in the Museum world to explain what we were trying to accomplish.

Left to right: The truck being unloaded by Shanel Lavoie, John Luciano and Garnett Rutherford, Boxes in the front hall and in the dining room,  "Budget Bob" of Webster Rent a Truck in Auburn

In stepped Historic New England (formerly known as SPNEA) with a most generous offer. The best way to eliminate insect infestation is to "immerse" the items in a Carbon Dioxide chamber for 2 weeks and if we could get our textiles down to Haverhill , Mass, they offered their chamber to us, free of charge. What a generous offer.

Molly and volunteers spent many hours taking textiles off mannequins, out of drawers, off shelves, and did some vacuuming to remove as much insect debris as possible before packing. The acid free boxes and tissue were damaged by smoke but were good enough to use to transport our collection for the CO2 treatment.

Next, in stepped "Budget Bob" from Webster Rent a Truck in Auburn , who offered us a significant discount on truck rental. Then the connection was completed by speaking with Mike Scheutz, the Historic New England Collections Technician, to set up a day for the textiles to arrive and treatment to begin.

All went well a few days before Thanksgiving as Shanel Lavoie drove the 24 foot truck down the Maine turnpike and up to the loading dock in Haverhill . The chamber was started on November 21 st and its work was completed on December 12 th .

We than made arrangements to pick up the collection on - well, I forget the dates but figure it that we scheduled at least four dates because of all the snow storms in December and the first week of January. We were stymied by weather so much "Budget Bob" was on the phone to me about rescheduling just as I finished talking to Mike and Shanel.

Success, at last, Shanel steered another "Budget Bob" truck rental special and the 120 boxes, 2 horse hair mattresses and 11 rugs were picked up and brought back to Norlands.

Now the task is getting all the textiles re-housed in new boxes, new ones should be arriving by the end of this week, and training volunteers how to properly handle these precious textiles as they vacuum the remaining insect debris, fold them in a manner that eliminates creases and store them with the best use of the acid free paper used for protection. We're doing volunteer recruitment for assistance with this project. All the supplies will be ready for us to schedule training and work groups in mid February so we can implement operation "New Home For Textiles".

Huge thanks to the many hands that sped this project along thus far: Molly, Peggy Kinitsky, our initial contact with Historic New England, Mike the Collections Technician, all the volunteers who prepared the textiles for shipment, Shanel for everything, Kathy Beauregard for "grunt" work loading and unloading boxes and organizing them for the next step.

We'll be posting our project schedule on the website and if you're fascinated by 1800s clothing and you'd like experience what they were like close up you can do that by helping with the preparation and re-storage of our textiles. Either call Norlands at 207 897 4366 or send an e-mail to volunteers@norlands.org . We'll be getting back to everyone the first of February with an outline of tasks and the dates for training and implementation.