Preserving the Textile Collection through Re-housing

FAIN: PG-50515-09

Central Michigan University (Mount Pleasant, MI 48859-0001)
William S. Pretzer (Project Director: May 2008 to May 2010)
Pamela Gates (Project Director: May 2010 to August 2013)

The purchase of supplies and equipment to rehouse the museum's historical clothing and textile collection. Among the items in the collection are a flag carried at the Battle of Shiloh (1862), 19th-century clothing, and a wedding dress made in 1945 from a World War II parachute. Students of the university's museum studies program will participate in the project.

This proposal requests $5,990 to purchase supplies and equipment to re-house the university museum's historical clothing and textile collection totaling 713 pieces. The collection documents personal adornment, domestic activities, occupational wear, fraternal regalia and the commemoration of significant past events by mid-Michigan families from the 1850s to the present. Necessary for preservation and improved access (intellectual and physical), re-housing this collection is one in a series of improvements to collection storage that began with the installation of climate control last year and will continue through the re-housing of the entire history collection.