Preserving a Family Collection: Wedding Dress, Before and After

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Wedding Dress, Before and After

The treatments are finished! This is the final entry in a 12-part series on selected conservation treatments of artwork and photographs, as well as the final entry of "Preserving a Family Collection."

The subject is brides.

From the start, “Preserving a Family Collection” has been a supplemental blog to the main attraction, June and Art. The work of preservation is never an end in itself. Works are preserved in order to help us tell stories, to remember our past, and to continue to appreciate the work of our ancestors.

The story of June and Art culminates today with a bride, a groom, and a wedding. And these blogs end here today on September 1, 2011, the 60th anniversary of the marriage of June and Art.

My mother (June) loved brides and weddings. She drew several fashion illustrations of brides while studying at Traphagen School of Fashion from 1948 to 1950. Several years ago, I had the watercolor image of two brides cleaned, matted, and framed at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts. This year, I returned to the Center to ask them to treat this smaller pen-and-ink piece. It had been glued to a backing support and the image itself was covered by a transparent plastic overlay.

Thank you to Rachel Wetzel, Conservator at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, for her beautiful work conserving this lovely and meaningful item from our family collection! It provides a very fitting image to conclude this blog and to bid farewell to the story of the courtship of June and Art.

And thank you to the followers and readers of this blog, “Preserving a Family Collection.” Take care of your stories. And best wishes for your efforts to preserve your family collections.