You think this is just a Community Center . No, its more than that. Comcast is partnering with a thousand Community Centers to create wifi lift zones so students from low income families get the tools they need to be ready for anythin comcast along with these Television Companies supporting cspan2 as a public service. Grateful for the descendents who returned and the personal items. The objects bring the world alive and it doesnt take much to imagine the activities and the many that visited. There is no artifact that better defines been the United StatesSupreme Court. With generations before the collection. Asou he presided over the supree court cases elevated to be an equal branch of the federal government. And today is a recognizable icon. This iconic image has been carried on with chief justice roberts. [inaudible] from the arguments between the court with marbury versus madison and the judicial review with the power and authority to interpret. Cothe Old Supreme Court chamber along with of the other justices. Through the love and care received over the years by family members and for the ceo and the families the object is a story of the early years of the court and represents the strength of the democracy. We are able to successfully conserve this icon because of people like you and many of you are joining us today to help to ensure the environmental factors. We are providing education to the house. We welcome you and now it is my honor [inaudible] graduated with a bachelors degree in history from the university of virginia and earned her masters in American History and culture. From the Cincinnati Art Museum and since that time the unusual signs [inaudible] so with that i will turn it over to you. Thank you. Its been an amazing year of change now. Im so happy that you joined us today. This is one of the first projects that we launched into when we started and its been interesting to watch it come into fruition. Bear with me. Preservation virginia has for 108 years now the core object and the collection, 108 years of frequent display and 108 years of damage from caring about this garment. Why do we care . And exceptional skill to stabilize. For the full exploration of how to accomplish that feat i think it is worth considering the question and looking at the history of the group. This is a story that has been repeated throughout the century when marshall resumed his role as chief justice in 1801 marshall promoting a sense of impartiality and this became the image of the american judge that moves on today. F this is an iconic root of that tradition. It is a bit more complicated than that. A just published a groundbreaking article on the topic. Hes been working on this for over 20 years and questions a lot of the assumptions we made about the Supreme Court in those early formative republic years. Please dont miss the next webinar on may 19th. And i dont want to steal the thunder. Suffice it to say its probably less about symbolism and more about the good oldfashioned practicality. John jay initiated a very elaborate design for the Supreme Court justices and shows here id the portrait as well as the surviving at the smithsonian and this is the oldest arriving judicial robe. Ours is one of the brief you that it does survive. Now this is partly colored and the justices rotated. Its difficult to match these letters. Its comparatively easy to procure. Probably not a symbolic moveul when we think its already happened by the time that marshall took the helm of the court in 1801. They had been in the lower court and some judges spoke on the bench. The student whos in the portrait there in the top left with the prominent virginia lawyer and statesman. 1772 he ordered from the merchant in london, quote, a robe such as the house of commons better than the one that i had which indeed was scandalous. I couldnt figure out what was so scandalous about the first robe, but its customarily worn by the clerk and hopefully is a less scandalous choice. To pin down the moment when marshall starts getting credit for bringing it back to the National Economic griffey but i suspected in the 20th century perhaps 1901 the celebration is the appointment of chief justice in spite of the newspaper articles into speeches and dinner parties like this one here held in cleveland. Regardless of its veracity, its taken on a life of its own. These are just a few from the Supreme Court justices. The power and the symbolism and the story. After all as mentioned marshall did the design the power of the court and insisted on other ways for example justices live together in boarding houses and mostly are interested in these rulings. Whether or not he instigated the use of back roads, he was keeping with his approach to jurisprudence. Lets look at the object itself. There may have been more than one robe but this is the only one that survived. Theres nothing that points to a particular date in those years in terms of construction o or materials into the unusual oaspect on the reverse rather than the front which is what you would expect on that contemporary date. Fnow its clear that it didnt bother marshall and to the best that we can tell perhaps it was a personal preference we just dont know. They underscored the fact that this is on the historic and normal moments the press often noted that the black robe. There were critical rulings but often great injustices is the repeated denial of africanamerican freedom. They dont know exactly where the road went after 35 but marrying Marshall Harvey to inherit most of the property. Although she owned the house they lived a few blocks away down where you see it marked in red and its probably stored at a period ofn for time. The next time thereap is a confirmed sighting is 1888. One of marys daughters had the mechanical antitobacco had a relics and antiquities section. They were back at the John Marshall house living there. One of the nephews recalled that it was tucked away in a cabinet at the parlor and this is a pitcher of the parlor at about 1890. There useful but pointing to a couple of doors and i think that isan the covenant that he is referring to. He recalled how his mother pranced around the house. It transferred to the stewardship for the virginia antiquity and is preservation in 1911. In 1920 it became a part of our permanentt collection. Since that time it had beenob extensively exhibited and one major Conservation Campaign took place with over 600 hours. An occasion of this 1962 Conservation Campaign he came back to the house and was gone again. There were various spots around the Marshall House including this one in 1967. The exposure to light and express on the fibers all compounded the remarkable object. Since 2005 there had been special events and visitors showing the road. There was a campaign to help support the conservation of the subject. The road can be safely and responsibly shared with visitors. Its my honor to introduce. Thank you so much. Now it is my pleasure to introduce howard, the director of conservation but a private practice in alabama. Previously worked at the Detroit Institute of art and at the Philadelphia Museum of art and museum in the u. S. For the artistic works and as a board member for the 2021 meeting the bachelor of design and constructive textiles. He received a diploma with credits. The cultural policy in london. Its an honor to have you join us. Welcome and thank you so much and now i will turn it over to you. Thank you. Let me share my screen. Here we go. I also worked on some artifacts from that veteran Tennessee State so it would be interesting if the top hats were in the same spot at the same time. In this project it goes back to january of 2019. When i flew to richmond in the Marshall House it had been boxed off and more carefully to the current condition with a proposal to the present relations and a document that outlines the condition and then also goes through what i suggest for the treatment of stepbystep and gives the client cost estimates and as mentioned theres a period of fundraising and we have quite a few to drive up to richmond to come collect down to the studio. Basically front on the lefthand right on the back. To run through a quick description its a very simple construction then obviously you have a front and back on each sleeve. They are mostly on the surface and they are much finer. Each panel of fabric is about 2 feet wide so panel together they are drawn together at the top. Tthis one you will see a little bit later on but this is after conservation but it shows you very clearly those panels so you have the two side panels and then the front panels and it is really interesting that the construction is not exact i think would be a polite term that it doesnt line up nice and flat but kind of excess material. So i think the sources whoever constructed these maybe was in the most talented with the issue being on back to front as well. There is a lot brought together with. Its amazing how theyve drawn this fabric together and you can see from these photos that it is very finally done. Im not sure if you can see on the righthand image its decorating the sleeve back there but we will move on to this next slide is so you do get a good view of it. Its using this twined silk wrap and i think those pieces of about 2 inches each and then theres a wooden button at the end of each of those. And even in this photo you can even start to see some of the condition issues. There isth some interesting othr constructions going on particularly around the neckline. There had been a panel added that was a done fairly early on. It was probably contemporary to John Marshall and the creation of their own but also its asymmetric with a little car on one side and then it comes down as a panel all the way on the last but that sets up the neckline a for some tensions and it was put onto kind of repair something, a number of Different Reasons but a contemporary addition to the early 1800s. Lets move on. Here are a few photos. Just want to share some of the condition issues that it has. They kind of contribute to the degradation over the years. Its a 220yearold object so it has been amazing so much of it has elapsed. During thisime it would have been subjected to a process called waiting so its sold by the way to at this point so you start off with a little cocoon and during they can collect so during that process it is lost and quite heavy so to counteract that they would soak them in a heavy solution. None of them are great for the preservation of silk so they contribute to the general degradation. You have six or seven crossing over so its a little uneven. It would be much more stable. Its much finer than the left so you have the difference in weight and it can be caught so theyt are quite easily damaged. You also have the fact that its dyed black so at this time, its possible that they used this guy that could have been incredibly expensive and also would have been i think more likely using a panic acid. None of those things are for the preservation itself. Of all the national fibers, it is susceptible to the environmental damage such as uv lights and temperature. They can undergo a process called hydraulics so they start to break down and you see they start to form which you can see that. Theres a lot of breaks and you can see that on the right of your screen as well. Also, as mentioned, theres going to be kind of mechanical damage obviously. Theres all sorts of things on the body at the time. Also, damage from where it would have dragged on the cusp of where he would have been writing interesting. This would show that its an object thats v received heavy use. Then anotherhi contributing facr to the damage is the fact that it had been displayed in the past and quite a lot actually so hanging it up and having it on a vertical display on mannequins hasnt helped over the years especially not very well supported. The things i had to deal with really that the road has been subject to a lot of restoration and conservation work in the past so in these two slides you can see the interior of the front with different campaigns so you have patches, areas where it is to itself and here are some more along those lines in the bottom left you can see more the silk red boot and another patch thats been added on top of that to reinforce quite a few of those and in the top left photo you can see the intense stitching during the restoration. Some of those areas its very intent. The process here another part of the project was to kind of create the replica. The whole process started with kind of mapping the robe really understanding it and for the reconstruction part of the project i worked with my friend in the Alabama Department in montgomery. That is not my forte so it was a Natural Choice to kind of recruit and you can see it was an eightmonth process. You can s see there the sample. T it was a t trial run of the blue polyester before launching into the expensive silk. In addition to all of that i had worked with a lady sheryl in maryland before another project where i needed a reproduction. Maryland may be reproduction buttons for the replicas and then we were having a hard time figuring out how to find replica braids. Its not like you can walk into the fabric can find this stuff on the t peg. So eventually in august 1 of my friends came in to conservation from a background in custom design and last year because of the pandemic always ends state closed and are still closed. She sat at home twiddling her thumbs and i had this great project and she was able to make a reproduction and ship it across. Its a bit of a global affair and the replica came from email in the uk asas well. So the compensation process i started with using low powered suction and thats basically a way of saying i crafted it using the very fancy vacuum. So everythingme was cleaned andi was also able to attach the silk fibers that came off during cleaning. Its a fairly common thing in preservation and it was useful in this case. Its certainly done with archaeological textiles. Its done quite a lot certainly with archaeological textiles because you can literally get the soils and pinpoint where textiles come from if their documentation is not great. Its also done a lot with American Civil War pieces because you can again pinpoint particular battlefields looking at the type of grass seeds or pollen that you can find in the dirt as well. So, once it was done to did a thorough evaluation of the previous repairs and then really figured out what was safe to keep. The criteria was looking at kind of all these repairs and still doing the job that they were intended for and quoting the damage. Somein repairs were more easily dealt with than others. All of that incredibly intense ditching from the 1960s was very stable and removing any of that would have done a lot more damage so most of that state. Along the patches, the if the stitches were large i was able to remove those easily are trimmed than down as you can see by some of the patches there in the patches along the hemline were so i was able to kind of easily remove those as well. So there was a lot of cutting and clipping for many days. And then after that the rope was humidified which is something you two just to impart some water vapor that the fibers to improve their condition and with this the rope is very nice and flat so can be used with vortex shooting so vortex is often used in winter coats is a samarium permeable membrane and tried one side and wet on the other new dry why the dry side wanted and the water wicks into the fabric. Its basically just going from panel to panel to panel doing this so you can see kind of on the righthand of the screen there once each panel was humidified i was able to realign everything to get everything nice and flat. Ready for the structural supports and so the whole row basically i had been doing little patches here and there and each of the panels were fully lined using a crepe organza from a Conservation Company in the uk. So here you can see me laying it out and measuring things in cutting the salvages off. The salvages quite tight so you dont needd it. And so those panels were pinned in place on the refers just to hold everything and then the rope was turned over and you can see there on the right hand of the screen i stitched in gridlines basically but i was unable to follow for support stitching and if you look at the bottom right of that image on the right you can see that area which is one of those 1960s repairsto that is, its amazing. The time that it took to do all of that was insane. Its so heavily stitched. And so here i am using these new stitches so to support all of the damage i used lines of couching. The threads that i used were silk threads pulled from the bands of fabric. You go from the top down to the bottom and the then you come back up and catch those threads down every centimeter or so. And its basically just a very repetitive process over the areas of damage certainly and then in between those lines i used anotherto reverse running to hold the linings in place. And so here these are photos of lining fabrics along the oak the yoke. And then again repeating the process of stitching the damage along the sleeves. And then you can see how big it is. My tables are 18 inches long so its quite a large object and definitely fills the studio quite well. Here you can see some of the support materials that i had used. And there we have the rope front end treatment. And here we have that interior shot again. Most of the interior was completely lined along the sleeves as well. I did leave the panel there and you can see it ona the lefthand side. There was an area that didnt need any conservation work so i left that they are just so in the future researchers and scholars can see the back of the fabric. Without having to undo any conservation work. Here is the back of the rope after preservation. And then the last stage of the treatment really was dealing with thehi display. Here i am using a thin plastic traced around it to the rope as the display path. I left the rope flat splayed out and gave it a little bit of latte. And so the pads are made from several layers of polyester backing for accommodating the felt and a cotton jersey. The main body as you can see there is a and you c