Author Archive for lindiew

Hume Costume Collection – Boorowa Museum. A report from the Powerhouse Museums Movable Heritage Fellow for 2012

Published on January 29, 2013 by lindiew in Collections, Communities, Fashion, Costume and Dress, Museology, Object of the week and Regional Services. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .
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Boorowa Museum

Each year the Powerhouse Museum’s Regional Services Program offers a Movable Heritage Fellowship to students residing in New South Wales enrolled at any University campus. Movable Heritage refers to any natural or manufactured object of heritage significance. The successful applicant undertakes a research project as part of the Fellowship on one or more objects in a community museum, historical society or other collecting institution. They are awarded $5,000 and also spend one week at the Powerhouse Museum receiving expert guidance by a supervising member of staff.

The winner of the 2012 Movable Heritage Fellowship was Rosie Strange. In this post, Rosie shares with us the nature of her costume research project and the experiences she has gained working with Lindie Ward, textile and lace curator at the Museum.

Continue reading ‘Hume Costume Collection – Boorowa Museum. A report from the Powerhouse Museums Movable Heritage Fellow for 2012′

Hermes scarves inspired by the Otomi

Published on May 9, 2012 by lindiew in Fashion, Costume and Dress. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
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2011/50/1 Tenango (embroidery), made by the Otomi people, Tenango, Hidalgo, Mexico, 2008-2009,gift of Robert Sweica, 2011. Collection: Powerhouse Museum

The vibrant Mexican colours and motifs of the Otomi textiles have not escaped the eye of French fashion house, Hermes, which has translated them into beautiful embroidered scarves.

Continue reading ‘Hermes scarves inspired by the Otomi’

Leslie Walford AM, 1927-2012

Published on February 20, 2012 by lindiew in Design and Designers, Fashion, Costume and Dress, Object of the week, Performing Arts and Toys. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .
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A bear with fond memories, 86/1053 Leslie Walford's teddy bear, Collection: Powerhouse Museum

In 1986 Leslie Walford donated a flamboyant collection of clothing and memorabilia to the Powerhouse Museum. Including this charming musical teddy bear. It was a gift from his father who died when Walford was two. This little toy has now outlasted its owner and will be fondly associated with Walford’s exuberant and generous personality. Walford remarked – He seems to be a bear of quality and his expressive features indicate his benign character.

The donation included Walford’s Mr Fish psychedelic shirts, Nutters of Saville Row suits, a kangaroo skin coat, an Yves Saint Laurent safari suit and set of Christian Dior ties. The collection tells of a time during the 1960s and 1970s when men’s clothing was exciting and exuberant.

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86/1036, 86/1030, back of Mr Fish's psychedelic shirt and Milano trousers. Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Leslie Walford’s dramatic aesthetic perfectly suited this time. His perspective on interior design was eclectic and colourful and led to a very distinguished career. After studying in Paris and London he became a prime mover in this field in Australia and served on numerous committees and foundations including the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Powerhouse Museum.

Walford’s Double Bay penthouse was bursting with intriguing stories reflecting his life and objects such as Fortuny silk lanterns and paintings by Jeffrey Smart that he collected through his extensive interests, friends and travels. In 2010 he received the Member of the Order of Australia for service to the performing arts and to the profession of interior design.
Leslie Walford will be sadly missed.

Rubber thong

Published on January 20, 2012 by lindiew in Fashion, Costume and Dress and holidays. 12 Comments Tags: , .
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89/1346 Thongs, rubber, unknown maker, 1977-1979, Gift of A W Fuller: Collection Powerhouse Museum

Not what you were expecting – tricked you!

Have you bought shoes for 99 cents and got ten years international travel out of them?

Well a Mr Fuller bought these in 1978 and trudged them all around Europe. He mended one toe strap with wire and felt they had a good two more years’ wear left, when his family prized them from him out of sheer embarrassment and gave them to the Powerhouse Museum.

Rubber thongs were a recognised anti-establishment symbol in the 1960s and 1970s, known as bangers and double pluggers, they epitomised an unpretentious and egalitarian society and reached iconic status. Australians embraced them heart and sole! Some men were even seen in them at the Opera! The residue from those subversive days is evident in the banning of thongs from many clubs and restaurants. Provocative fashion statements soften with time and thong sandals have now evolved into a benign unthreatening style of footwear – now the most popular shoe style around the world for both men and women.

Surprisingly much engineering expertise and ingenuity went into the design of thongs – the right rubber formula – the plug must not pull out – harder than you might think. Engineer Jim Merser designed the plug in a cupped shape so that as the toe thong pulled up vertically the round disc holding it into the sole spread sideways, getting wider and it did not pull through. Dunlop patented this design as a ‘device by which central forces are diverted externally.’

Thongs gained ground from the 1950s and from the early 1960s Dunlop often sold over a million pairs a year. China has long overshadowed this, producing 800 million pairs in 2001 – no surprise then that 6 million thongs are floating on our oceans.

Marine biologist Gary Carlos has a theory that the thong’s innate asymmetry separates the right thong from the left on our oceans.

Left thongs veer to the right and end up in Indonesia and right thongs end up on remote Queensland beaches and Pacific Islands.

So get down to the beach and make sure you leave your thongs above the high water mark!

Further reading:
Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, Vol 7
Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands
Joanne B. Eicher, Margaret Maynard, 2011.

The Bosdyk Dolls House- part three

Published on September 11, 2009 by lindiew in Object of the week and The Bosdyk Dolls House. 5 Comments Tags: , .
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Collection, Powerhouse Museum

The detail in the Bosdyk Dolls House is astounding. The picture above is of the top level of the house, the attic. Lets take a closer look:

Frans Bosdyk made most of the furniture for the house. However, details such as the textiles and interior designs were worked on by his wife, Christina. If we zoom in you can see that no detail was too small to escape her notice.

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In this room on the left hand side of the wall is adhered the tiniest measuring tape that you could imagine, along with sewing supplies and dress patterns.

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On the other side of the room hangs a little poster entitled “How to measure for pants” alongside tiny paper cut patterns.

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The scraps of material neatly put away…

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…and my personal favorite, the sewing thread and needles
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The Bosdyk Dolls House- part two

Published on August 21, 2009 by lindiew in Object of the week and The Bosdyk Dolls House. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .
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Photography by Nitsa Yioupros,© Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

Curators Lindie Ward and Margaret Simpson visited Frans Bosdyk at his home to find out more about the creation of his exquisite dolls house.

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Photography by Nitsa Yioupros,© Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

Frans created most of the furniture for the dolls house himself, setting up a workshop in his garage.

He told us he encountered problems trying to buy the right kind of furniture for the project so he set about developing special lathes to turn the tiny wooden parts. He researched furniture styles in ‘Antique Furniture in Australia’ by Anthony Hill and then scaled the dimensions down to produce a miniature version. He also fashioned his own tiny hand tools from 75-100mm concrete nails to make it easier for him to handle the small pieces. He used silky oak, cedar, myrtle and blackwood which formed the 3mm floorboards throughout.

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Photography by Nitsa Yioupros,© Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

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Photography by Nitsa Yioupros,© Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

Frans was an electrician by trade, he researched how to make lights, lamps and electric sockets, from websites and publications from Europe and the US. And guess what? All the lights actually work!

Frans came into the Museum to give a lecture about his work, during which we all noticed that, to our amusement, the hands that created all the teeny tiny tools, furniture, and lighting, were huge!

Photography by Sotha Bourn © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved.

Meet the curator- Lindie Ward

Published on August 7, 2009 by lindiew in Curator profiles. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .
Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

Name
Lindie Ward

What is your specialty area?
Textiles, lace, dress and shoes.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
Since 1990.

What is your favourite object in the collection?
Very hard to answer. Often an object is really memorable when you uncover its story – a bit like a treasure hunt! I have always had a soft spot for an anonymous, but exquisite, Art Deco beaded bag in the collection and was thrilled to discover, on the web, that it was very rare and designed by Maria Likarz-Strauss, an important Austrian designer of the Vienna workshops whose work was not represented in our collection. Another favourite is the Bosdyk dolls house I recently acquired. Everyone is excited by its 20 rooms and 2,000 meticulous pieces that took 8 years to make!

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career at the Museum?
Through curatorial work and exhibitions you are continually being educated, in the most interesting way, about fascinating people and about our history. After a while, isolated pieces of information start to join together into a wonderful, connected whole. A recent project that has been most rewarding is the Australian Dress Register, which will document dress in regional and private collections in New South Wales. Through this team project we have developed a wide range of web resources to assist those working in regional museums and galleries, advising how to assess significance, care for, photograph and display costume in collections. The satisfaction with this project comes from setting up a formula that can be useful well into the future and will document community history.

Ties with tradition

Published on July 31, 2009 by lindiew in Design and Designers and News. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

00x11382Apron made in Mislesevo-Vevcani, Struga, Macedonia, 1985, lent by Radmilla Karamacoska

It was love at first sight when I saw the aprons I was to be working on for an upcoming exhibition here at the Museum. I was seduced by the gorgeous colours, textures, and stories of Macedonian culture woven into them.

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Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski, © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

This photograph shows Curator Lindie Ward, Interpreter Verica Sajdovska and me in discussion with apron lender Angelina Todoroska. Angelina is describing the technique and significance of the construction and decoration of this vest, another aspect of traditional Macedonian dress

For the past three months, we have been gathering information about the Macedonian aprons and documenting the stories of five Macedonia women from the Illawarra. With the aid of volunteer interpreter Verica Sajdovska I travelled back to my hometown of Wollongong to document their stories.

A particularly memorable experience was hearing about aprons from sisters Spasija Aleksoska and Kostadinka Jordeska.

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Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski, © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

Sisters Spasija Aleksoska and Kostadinka Jordeska talking about Spasija’s aprons

When I asked how they wore the aprons Spasija acted out the motions- folding and placing thick towels underneath her top, padding out her stomach and tying the apron on top.

“The men prefer large women. If she is too skinny, how can she work in the fields? When I was young I was skinny and the men would tease me. I would say to them, If you want meat go to the butcher, I am fine as I am. They would always prefer the skinny girls to dance with though”.

All the women described to me how the different colours and patterns were worn for different ages and how they could tell where a person came from by looking at their apron. The women also showed and described the techniques used to make aprons, including weaving, embroidery and making pompoms.

I came away with a deeper knowledge of the significance of these aprons, a full stomach, and some prospective Macedonian nephews and grandsons to date!

I would personally like to thank the five Macedonian women that were interviewed, for their kindness and willingness to share their apron stories. I feel privileged to have met and learnt from these remarkable women, who, when asked why they wove the aprons the way they did, replied, “it is how it should be, it is how it has always been, it is tradition”.

Rebecca Evans
Assistant Curator

Photography © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved