How do you look after an item of clothing that's more than 200 years old? How do you ensure it doesn't fall apart, while still preserving its unique history?
These were some of the challenges facing Royal Museums Greenwich conservator Aisling Macken, as she worked on a 19th century uniform worn during a daring Napoleonic escape.
“The uniform has survived for over 200 years before coming to us,” Macken says. “It’s a privilege to get to work on it to ensure its survival for future generations.”
Royal Museums Greenwich is comprised of the Royal Observatory, Cutty Sark, the National Maritime Museum and the Queen’s House. Learn stories of exploration, endeavour, wonder and awe at these four historic museums, all located within a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
I'm just going to measure the area of damage. I know how big to cut my support fabric.
Okay now I'm going to insert behind the area of damage. Now I just need to unroll it inside.
I'm just going to put a pin where I roughly want the bottom corner of the patch to be
and then use a thread to pull it into place and then I'm going to start the stitching.
I think stitching is quite relaxing because you're very much just focused on this one moment,
getting everything lined up and tacked down so it won't move, so it's well supported,
and it's a really nice task to just sit quietly and focus on. And it's so satisfying when you
finish and your patch matches and your stitching is neat. Yeah it's always amazing to look at the
original stitching and the original materials and think about how we stitch and the materials
that we use today. We're going to be using polyester thread today to sew whereas they
used cotton thread originally to make this uniform so we can tell the difference between
original and modern conservation work. So I'm just securing my sewing thread in my support fabric,
running stitches just around the holes. The important thing is just to stitch through
this top layer and support fabric and not the outer layer of wool. So what I need to do when
I put my needle in is just feel how many layers of fabric I've actually gone through and just
make sure I'm not going through all of them. Done! So for the eagles which are located on the bottom
of the coattails I'm going to just do some very small stitches just to hold down a few of the
metal threads which have come loose and I'm going to be using this very fine thread called Staple
Tex which is actually from a woven polyester fabric and I've just drawn the thread out of the
fabric to use as my sewing thread. The imperial eagle is a symbol that you can see on the buttons
and the front of the shako which is the eagle with its wings outstretched. Napoleon used the
eagle as a symbol of military power to convey pride in his troops. We won't repair this
because we don't add in any extra metal threads or any extra metal. What I'll do is just make
sure that the existing threads are secure and that they're not going to fall off or be lost.
Just sewing on the replica buttons we have had made for the front of the uniform.
These buttons have been made by Furman House who are expert button makers and they've been
making buttons since 1655 so before this uniform was even in existence. We sent them photographs
and a resin cast of one of the original small buttons and they've scaled up the design to the
correct size for the front but I also created three resin buttons for the cuffs of the uniform.
These buttons I've made with an epoxy resin that I cast from the one original cuff button that
remains. I then mixed silver powder into the resin and then painted it with acrylic
paints to give it that really aged look.
