Since 1911 preservation virginia has shared the chief justices life and legacy. We are grateful to many descendents who have over the years returned books furnishing tableware and personal items. These objects bring the room alive and it doesnt take much to imagine the activities of the family the household and the many guests who visited. There are no artifacts that better define marshalls career than the robe he wore for his tenure as chief justice of the United StatesSupreme Court. The room is cared for by generations of descendents before finding its way into our collection. The robe is a witness object and if robes could talk what a story this one could share. John marsh award this robe is a prison guard presided over Supreme Court cases during which time the Supreme Court was elevated to an equal branch of the federal government and today the simple black robe is a recognizable icon at the american judicial system and as our curator collection put it this iconic image of the american giant has been carried on by everyone from chief Justice John Roberts to stories from its tailoring as marshall wrote the circuit from the days hearing arguments before the court cases like barbary versus madison which is perhaps his most significant president judicial review asserting the courts power and authority to the u. S. Constitution. And stories of activities like the Supreme Court along with the robes of the other justices to the loving care received over the years by family members and virginia staff. And so to quote or ceo this object is the story of the early years of the Supreme Court and represents the tensile strength of the experiment in american democracy. We were able to successfully conserve this icon of her nation because of people like you and many of you are joining us today. Your contribution have helped to ensure that the robe has been stabilized and set up to slow deterioration. In our her work leads to the next phase so we are providing ongoing education both physically and digitally. We welcome you to earn more. Now its my honor to introduce the preservation virginia but dont hold that against her but she is she graduated the with a bachelors degree from the university of virginia and she earned her masters degree in american material culture. She joins preservation virginia at the 2019th from the Cincinnati Art Museum and since that time we his lead virginias Historic Sites at the most unusual times issued simultaneously manage our of the pandemic. So with that leah i will turn it over to you. Thank you jan. Its been an amazing year with some change so im so happy that you guys have joined us today. This robe was one of the first projects we launched into when i started and its been great to watch it come to fruition. Im going to share my screen and sometimes this takes just a second so bear with me. There we go. Preservation virginia has cared for John Marshalls judicial world for 108 years now. 108 years as the core object in our collection of 108 years of frequent display and 108 years of unintentional amount damage from caring about the spread of garment so much. Why do we care . Weibring the karen act section will scale of howard who stabilize this silk survivor. Before i turned turn it over to howard on how the accomplish this feat its important to look at the history of the robe. This is the story that has been repeated throughout the 20th century when marshall assumed his role as chief justice and the justices wore brightly robes. Marshall was in the practice of wearing a simple black world promoting offensive impartiality and this is the image of the judge that lives on today. Marshalls robe, this robe is the iconic root of that tradition. Like many good stories its a bit more complicated than that. In two weeks time on may 19 i joined to the next webinar which featured matthew is the associate curator at the Supreme Court and has just published in round breaking article the topic of how judicial robes change in time but hes been working on this for over 20 years and it calls into question a lot of the assumptions that we have made about the Supreme Court in the early formative for public year so please dont miss the next webinar on may 19. I dont want to steal matthews so lets suffice it to say the shift from colorful to black robe is less about symbolism and more about good oldfashioned practicality. The first chief Justice John Jay initiated a very elaborate design for the Supreme Court justices wrote in a shown here in this portrait bison Wilbur Stuart as well as his surviving robe which is at the smithsonian. Ours is one of very few that does survive. This is described in the period as partly and as justices rotated off including jay it was difficult to match these rather unique garments. Black is comparatively easy to procure and achieve a sense of uniformity so its probably not a symbolic move and we think it had already happened by the time the marshall took the helm of the court in 1801. Its not like the black robes to an already exist. They had been used in england especially in lower courts and by lawyers and in the United States in late 18 centuries judges don stark robes on the bench. George with was a prominent lawyer and statesman and we know that he favored the black robes look. In 1772 he ordered from a merchant in london quote a robe such as worn by casa, the better that i had which was scandalous and i couldnt figure out what was so scandalous about the first show but a black robe is customarily worn and hopefully was a less scandalous choice. And i havent pinned down the exact moment when marshall starts giving credit for bringing the black robe and to our National Economic graffiti but i suspect it was in the early 20th century perhaps around 1901 in the celebrations of his appointment as chief justice. It inspired a flurry of newspaper articles and speeches and dinner parties like this one here that was held in england. Regardless of its voracity the icon of the martial robe has taken on a life of its own. These are just a few quotes from Supreme Court justices. There is power in symbolism and in the story. After all marshall did define the powers of the court and he insisted on uniformity in other ways. For example justices live together in boarding houses and they mostly issued rulings. So whether or not he instigated the use of black robes hes totally in keeping with his approach to jurisprudence. So turning from the myth of the object lets look at the object itself. Marshall may have had more than one robe over the course of his 30 fouryear term on the court that this is the only one that survived and theres nothing that really points to a particular date within those 34 years in terms of construction and the materials and the only unusual aspect of the design are the seems and the fulton pleats. Perhaps it was a personal preference, we just dont know and the ham and the residue around the caller it it was present in normal moments. Marshall worked through five different president s and the press often noted his black robe. This photo by Chester Irving the robe witnessed great injustices like marshalls repeated denial of africanamerican we dont know exactly where the robe went after John Marshall died in 1835 but it was likely pass to his daughter who inherited most of this property. Although she owned the John Marshall house which is marked in green on a map she and her household lived a few blocks away and use it marked in red and the robe was probably stored at that location for period of time to the next time we have a confirmed sighting of the robe is 1888. Annie fischer harpy when it her daughter so one of marshalls granddaughters loaned the robe to the exposition. By 1892 annie and her sister were back at the John Marshall house living there. For years it had been rented out but they were back in the family residence in one of the nephews dr. Hat lee norton mason recalled that the robe was tucked away in a box in the cabinet in the parlor. This is a picture of the parlor in about 1890 and we now interpret this as the small dining room space. In the far back corner you will see a couple of doors and i think thats the cabinet he is referring to so if you can see with your xray vision through both stores thats where the robe is. He recalled how his mother, it is 12 years older at the time draped this robe over him and pranced around the house. The Marshall House was transferred to the stewardship of the association for the preservation of virginia antiquities down on this preservation virginia and in 1913 the house opened to public and on that Opening Weekend the Star Attraction was the robe on loan from the harpy sisters. When emily died in 1920 the robe became part of the permanent collection. Since that time the robe has been extensively conserved. One major Conservation Campaign to place in 1962 which took over 600 hours. You remember dr. May simple little boy he was prancing around the house in 1892, while on vacation of his 1962 Conservation Campaign he came back to the house and he put the robe on again. He did not try on the road this time. He was not the original. The robe has been exhibited in various spots in the Marshall House. Its shown on some mannequin in its travel ban exhibition such as this one in 1967. The many years of display and stress on the fibers has all the fragility of this remarkable robe. Its been off a few and its only been pulled up for special events and for visitors. Here is john showing the robe to associate justice sonya sotomayor. In 2019 restart in partnership with the John Marshall center with constitutional civics to save the robe campaign to support the conservation of this object. Thanks to the daughters of this project in the works by Howard Sutcliffe this robe can be safely and responsibly share. Its my honor to pass it on to jen who will now introduce howard. Thank you leo. There are a lot of things in there that i dont think i have ever seen so that is excellent. Thank you so much. Now its my pleasure to introduce Howard Sutcliffe. Howard is the conservator and director of river region conservation and has a private practice in alabama. Howard has previously worked as the head conservator at the Detroit Institute of arts in the textile conservation studios at the Philadelphia Museum of art and the American TextileHistory Museum in u. S. Senate national ecms in his native uk is in professionals as a member of the American Institute for conservation of historic and act as works and is the current board member of the north American Textile conservation conference. Howard received a bachelor of design and constructed textiles with honors from jordan sten college of art and the university of dundee in scotland received a postgraduate textile conservation with credit from the textile Conservation CenterHampton Court palace and affiliation with the institute of bard at the university of and he received a masters of the arts in museum and gallery management with merit from the school of cultural policy from the city of university in london. Howard 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. That all makes me sound really old with all that stuff but that may share my screen. Here we go. Hopefully you can all see that. So, thank you jen and thank you leah. I have not seen some of those photos either and it was really interesting to see the photo of Andrew Jacksons inauguration as i also worked on some artifacts for that better in the Tennessee State museum so it would be kind of interesting if both the robe and Andrew Jacksons top hat were in the same spot at the same time. Very cool. My involvement in this project goes back to january of 2019 which seems like a very long time ago now but i flew up to richmond to basically spend a morning at the house examining the robe and just really kind of coming to grips with its current condition. I dont think anyone had seen it for quite a while. It was just very fragile and people had wanted to take it out so i spent the morning carefully folding it documenting its current condition and after that i wrote up a treatment proposal for virginia and thats basically a document that outlines the condition and also goes through what i suggest for the treatment stepbystep and gives the client time and cost estimate and so as leo mentioned there was a period of time grazing and we had quite a few days on the calendar to go to richmond to look at the robe and various world events kind of took over last year and eventually we made it up there in midjune to get the robe and bring it back down to my studio. These two photos basically show the robe front and back front on the left and and that the back on the right before conservation and basically to just run through a description, its a very simple construction that is two panels on the back and two smaller side panels and two panels on the front and you have a front and back panel on each sleeve. The robe is made from black silk satin and satin is a and they are much finer than the wifes in this case and its a loom and each panel of fabric is about 2 feet wide. The panels are stitched together along the edges and they are drawn together at the top. This is a photo that you will see a little bit later on but this is after conservation but it shows you very clearly those panels and so you have the two in the center back the two differently sized small side panels and in the front panels and it is really interesting that the construction of the robe is a little bit not exact i think would be a polite term. You can see where the center back does not line up. There is a lot of excess material so i think the thought is whoever constructed these was maybe working from a description and maybe was not the most talented of seamstresses and obviously did you then have issued this leaves being backed up front as well. But all that fabric there is a lot of fabric there is brought together around the oak with really is fleecing. Its amazing how they have done all this fabric together to fit around the neck and you can see from these two photos that it is very very finally done. Im not sure if you can see on the righthand image the top pleading pleating and the sleeve back there. We want to see that slides to you do get a good view of that. Those are just my soap talk plates held in place using twine silk rap cord and i think those pieces are about 2 inches long each and then theres the lovely silk wrapped a wooden button at the end of each of those. In this photo you can start to see the splits and the condition issues at the robe has. There were some interesting other little construction things going on particularly around the neckline. There had been a panel added almost like a caller that was obviously done fairly early on. It was probably contemporary to John Marshall in the creation of robes but its added on almost asymmetric so it sits like a caller on one side and then it comes down as an overlay. That sets up the neckline and makes the way that the robe lies on the body a little bit strange. I dont know whether that was done because he wasnt happy with the neckline or it got damaged. There are a number of Different Reasons why that could have been done but it was definitely added temporary can dish in her repair typical of the 1800s. So lets move on and here are a few photos of the robe. Which really shows some of the condition issues that it has. There are a lot of conditions that contributed to its degradation. Its a 220yearold objects so it has age going against it and considering it is 220 years old its amazing there so much of it but first of all its made from silk which during and certainly during this time the would have been subjected to wilting. Soak is sold by the weight at this point so when you start off with the little silk cocoon those of oil down and they are boiled down to release and collect the filament thread so during that process a little bit of gum is lost in the gum is quite heavy so to counteract that the dealers would then soak those threads in a heavy metal solution to impart the none of those chemicals are great for its preservation itself so they contribute to the general degradation. You also have the structure going against it because you have certainly with this one you have six, seven actually threads crossing over every thread so its a little uneven. Its worth threads are much finer so you have that difference in weight and you have all those works on the surface that could be easily abraded so they are quite easily damaged. You also have the fact that it is dyed a lack so at this time its possible that they used iron gold guide which could have been incredibly expensive and i think its probably in more likely that it was dyed using none of those things are great for the preservation of the robe itself and then generally with it just being silk, silk of all the natural fibers silk is very susceptible to environmental damage such as uv lights and fluctuations in relative humidity and temperature. The fibers can undergo a process called acid hydrolysis in the presence of uv so they basically just start to break down and become more brittle and you will see the splits and breaks start to fall which you can see on this photo. What is happening in the center they are is a lot of breaks in the w