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Conservation of an 8th-century Egyptian Tunic
Poziom:
Temat: Społeczeństwo i nauki społeczne
Hi. My name is Elizabeth-Anne Haldane and I’m a Textile Conservator here at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
And I’ve been working on an Egyptian tunic for the Medieval & Renaissance galleries
and it’s dated to around the eighth century.
The tunic has this beautiful applied tapestry decoration and at this time in the eighth century
they wove it separately and then they stitched it on.
You can see the lovely thick cream linen stitches where it has been applied
and because there has been quite a bit of damage to the back of the tunic,
through the burial conditions, some of the tapestry decoration was lost.
When the Museum purchased it the front of the tunic had two large roundels on it
but there were no roundels on the back.
We know from all the original stitch marks that there should have been roundels there as well.
Once I started examining it closely it became quite obvious that the roundels on the front of the tunic
were actually jig-sawed together from lots of different pieces.
It looks like some of the roundels actually came from the back of the tunic.
That is something the dealer did to make it more attractive for sale, so that it looked very nice from the front.
This is a photograph of the tunic before it was conserved.
You can see there were lots of different patches all over the front of the tunic.
And some of these patches actually turned out to be pieces of original tunic.
So I had to take all of these off and then find out where they belonged.
You can see, if we come down to the end of the tunic,
that these are some of the patches which I’ve been able to replace.
You can actually see that it was quite a bit longer than what we have here.
The really interesting thing about this patch is that it actually has a selvedge
which is the edge of the fabric so that helps us to work out the size of the original object.
This photograph was taken in 1922 in the museum for a publication that year
and it is a really good record of that the tunic looked like.
We can see the large composite roundels on the front that they are made from different pieces.
And you can also see so these are the stitch lines visible here,
so the tuck had been let down at that point.
And the arms are actually folded in just to fit in the photograph.
So obviously, the original tunic is actually quite fragile still
and when it goes on display it will be in a t-shaped format a bit like this photograph.
Because that is not how it was worn and we really wanted to show how an Egyptian tunic was worn.
So some replicas were commissioned by the Learning and Interpretation Department
and visitors will be able to try these on.
Stuart, who works in that department, is modelling one for us.
And you can really see what a difference there is.
The neck, which looks really small, actually fits very well.
Twirl around. See how beautifully it drapes.
It was expensive to reweave the tapestry so what we’ve done is taken photographs
and had the fabric digitally printed so we really get an idea of how it looked.
This is particularly nice, the arms, because these big roundels sit like giant shoulder pads.
And the actual sleeve here is really tight and snug.
That was one of the unusual things about the tunic that it was stitched in
and it looked like a really narrow cuff and we thought is this correct?
But actually it fits really well. And this would just drape over it.
There is little bit of breathing space underneath the arm, it is open.
And this is the tuck here to the correct height.
Stuart is actually not quite tall enough for this tunic because it should go to about the knee.
The original owner was quite a large man, quite tall.
When the original tunic is displayed in the galleries, if you stand with your arms out Stuart,
it will actually look a bit more like this.
But when the arms are put back down again you can see what a difference it makes,
but also how many folds this involves
and for a fragile tunic this would just be too much stress on the textile
which is why we have to display it without the folds.
