Proceedings of the AICCM TSIG Symposium, Sydney, Australia 19 to 22 May, 2016
ABSTRACT
A prominent object in the exhibition Spirited: Australia’s Horse History at the National Museum of Australia (NMA) from September 2014 to March 2015 was a landau horse-drawn carriage ordered from Brewster & Co Carriage Builders, New York, by distinguished pastoralist William Pitt Faithfull for his daughter Florence in 1889. The Landau was the Rolls Royce of its time with a fashionable convertible roof. Prior to the exhibition the textiles and upholstered interior of the carriage required significant conservation treatment after many decades of barn storage and insect and rodent infestation. Through thorough cleaning, the use of equipment specially adapted for the project, experimentation and testing of repair fabrics, adhesives and stitching techniques, optimum medium and long-term conservation solutions were devised and customised to suit the constraints of this project and the quality required of the final result.
KEYWORDS: Textiles conservation, landau carriage, Springfield station, National Museum of Australia, Beva® 371