Cotton Tales

The carpet beetle story continues. There's a freezer full of packed clothes in the Museum and volunteers have prepared packages for the next phase. An application is nearly ready to go to AIM, the Association of Independent Museums for their next round of funding. A pest control expert has been to assess and his report is eagerly awaited. It's a huge amount of work and an unexpected task to have to deal with in the middle of the busy summer open season, but it is all progressing as it must thanks to manager Anita Spencer and the volunteers. One piece of good news is that cotton items may not need freezing. There are a lot of them in the collection. It's an everyday, domestic material and many of the clothes are everyday and domestic. Advice is being taken, as cottons and linens can be delicate, especially when the fabrics are old. Hopefully we will be able to wash some of them. If they can cope with dolly tubs and possers, boilers and smoothing irons, hopefully they can cope with some specialist laundering. As a bit of light relief I visited the Cotton Couture exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery. These beautiful outfits were commissioned by the Cotton Board In the mid 1950s to promote cotton in its heartland of manufacture. The exhibition runs through until June 2015, so catch it if you can. The wedding dress and cotton lace ensemble, ideal for the mother of the bride, are on show. The lovely turquoise print dress from the late 1950s, early 1960s is one of the most recent items in the Museum's collection and would be snapped up in a vintage shop nowadays.