I am so excited to announce this needlework nibble, which has been in process since late September. During our Jacket Tour, I learned about a project to rehouse the 17th century glove collection at the Fashion Museum in Bath (formally known as the Museum of Costume and Assembly Rooms).
The tour gave funds to help the museum purchase new conservation boxes and mounts for a portion of the gloves in the museum and I decided that Thistle Threads would raise the rest of the money needed to house the remaining gloves. Rosemary, the curator, was enthusiastic about the idea and worked with me to get all the permissions in place.
The project is based on a small detail from one of the gloves in
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BATMC-GLO-23342A By permission of the Gloves Collection Trust, courtesy of the Fashion Museum, Bath and North East Somerset Council
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the collection - a little snail using a wonderful combination of 17th century threads. As luck would have it - one of the needed threads was already being made for me by Bill Barnes of Golden Threads and this would be the first commercial use of this new Silk Gimp thread.
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By permission of the Gloves Collection Trust, courtesy of the Fashion Museum, Bath and North East Somerset Council
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There are over 150 pairs of 17th century gloves in the collection, most are owned by the Gloves Collection Trust, set up by the Worshipful Company of Glovers. If you were in the Floral Glove course, you enjoyed many looks at pieces in this collection from their website. The gloves are currently in drawers separated by leaves of tissue and are hard to locate. The project will house each pair in its own box with a new acrylic mount that will make it easy for the staff to find and bring out pairs for people who have made appointments. Elaine, collections manager, told me
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By permission of the Gloves Collection Trust, courtesy of the Fashion Museum, Bath and North East Somerset Council
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that this will enable her to bring out twice as many pieces to a visitor in about half the time - increasing access to the lovely pieces. The new mounts and boxes cost about 10 pounds each.
$7.50 of each kit sold will be donated to the Fashion Museum and earmarked for this use. So it only takes two kits sold to rehouse a pair of gloves! We will be sending a list of the people who have purchased the kits to the museum as well to be listed in their gift rolls.
The kits are $17.50 and contain the newly manufactured silk gimp, silk wrapped purl, soie ovale, soie paris, needles, linen, floss for twisted cord and a silk fabric for backing. The instructions are on the website and can be downloaded for free. There is a limited amount of the blue silk gimp and blue silk purl available right now. So if you are interested, get it right away. It will be a few months before Golden Threads sends its next manufacturing run of these threads due to the backlog of orders in hand.
The best part is that the museum has given me permission to use my research photos on the blog for the next month - so you can pull up a chair and a cup of tea everyday for a visual treat!
Instructions for Glittering Snail Needlework NibblePurchase the Needlework Nibble to help the Fashion Museum
