Challenges in Displaying Archaeological and Historical Vestments from the Collection of the National Museum of Transylvanian History
Challenges in Displaying Archaeological and Historical Vestments from the Collection of the National Museum of Transylvanian History

Summary/Abstract: The focus of this paper is represented by the display of female and male clothing pieces as well as luxurious ornaments, from the premodern and modern collections of The National History Museum of Transylvania, as exhibited in the temporary exhibition Cornucopia. Luxury in Transylvanian noble world. The aim is to underline the challenges the conservators had in mounting the items of dress, while considering the conservation restrictions (the mounting would not damage the object) as well as display requirements (an appropriate arranging of historic clothing). In order to properly display the dresses’ relationship with the human silhouette and due to the fact that some of the objects required prior restoration, the mounting itself proved to be extremely challenging.Since the exhibition’s curators had to work with a tight budget, that also meant that the costumes had to be mounted on standard sized, commercially available dress stands, as opposed to acquiring ‘museum mannequins,’ specifically designed to dress every individual object. Therefore, modern dress stands were adapted to fit the historical and archaeological garments: they were carved, cut‑down, padded, while under‑structures were created using horizontal and vertical tubes of cotton filled with puffed wadding sewn onto the inside of an underskirt‑like structure; as a result, the mounted mannequins, captured the body‑dress relationship the curators wanted, while, at the same time, considering the conservation and display requirements.

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