Our names become our identity. Parents name their children. Children name their pets. Buildings are named after famous people. Street corners are named after veterans or special people in the neighborhood. And some people even change their names!

Many brand names become so popular that the brand name becomes the product! Kleenex for facial tissue, Xerox for photocopiers, Band-Aid for adhesive bandages. Can you think of more?

Well, here at the ATHM, we named our store for the heart of what we are: Textiles, but changed the spelling to reflect the variety of stylish merchandise we have. TexStyles, the store at ATHM.

So come visit TexStyles and win a $25 gift certificate for your next shopping spree!

Learn more about TexStyles through this acrostic poem:

T for Throws woven at ATHM
E for Earthmates, Recycled Fuzzy Animals
X for “X”tra nice merchandise
S for Solmate Socks made in Vermont
T for Textile technique books
Y for You Doo Dolls – make your own Mini-Me
L for Love to have you visit
E for EnviroSax – lightweight travel bags
S for Silk Sari Yarn

P.S. Have a special item of interest you would like us to sell? Let us know and we will do our best to find it.

Sandra Price
Coordinator of Volunteer and Visitor Services and Store Manager

 
For those of you interested in the progress of our online catalogue, we are pleased to announce that the Chace Catalogue now contains 30,000 records!!! Most of the records are from the Osborne Library but there is a good percentage of curatorial records, especially from the costume and textile collections. Visit http://chace.athm.org to check it out!

As we reported in the latest issue of the Textile Times, our museum newsletter, the Osborne Library has added over 500 media files to the Chace Catalogue. What does this mean? Now you can view a table of contents, a book review, links to websites and, in some cases, a full text copy of a book right on your screen.

To see a great example of this, just go to the Chace Catalogue and type “Cavalry Troop C” in the basic search box. What you will find is a photograph related to the Textile Worker’s Strike of 1912 and a link to an external website with detailed information about the strike.

Better yet, check out Jeremy Fielding’s draft book. Type “Fielding, Jeremy” in the basic search box and click on the link under related materials. Just flip the pages to see his notes, view samples, and much more right from your desktop.

Stay tuned for more additions to the Chace Catalogue as we add more and more media files.

Hurricanes and the Textile Industry in New England

Bad weather has always had an impact on the New England mills. Here are a few dramatic images from our collection:

“Ruins of the Reading (Pennsylvania) Silk Mill destroyed by Cyclone, Jan. 9, 1889.” The photograph shows the ruins of the Grimshaw Brothers silk mill destroyed by a tornado with over 200 operatives inside, many of whom were killed or injured.

A view of the Minterburn Mill in Rockville, Conn. This photograph shows flood damage from the Great Hurricane of 1938. Minterburn was part of the Hockanum Mills Company which was sold to M.T. Stevens & Sons of North Andover, Mass. in 1934.

A view of damage done to Elm St., North Andover, Mass. during Hurricane Edna, 1954. Buildings from Davis & Furber Machine Company (textile machinery) are in background.

View of flood damage to the foundation of a Hockanum Mills Company building in Rockville, Conn. from the Great Hurricane of 1938.

View of Warwick Mills, Centreville, R.I. The Hurricane of 1938 opened up the fourth floor of the mill and brought down trees.

Clare Sheridan

Librarian

 
“Say hello to my little friend!” No, I’m not Al Pacino; nor is this some horrible blog rendition of Scarface (nor am I holding a machine gun). It’s just that it’s my job to keep all those textile-eating insects away from our Museum collections and I’ve had a few too many “little friends” making appearances in my office lately!

I do regular visual checks and set sticky pest traps in an effort to lure notorious insects away from the collection, but every so often someone finds a lost bug wandering the halls of the Museum. Everyone knows to try to catch it and bring it to me, if possible. Then I determine (based on what it is and where it was found) whether we have a potential problem or not. The usual Museum pest culprits are easy enough to identify: carpet beetles, webbing clothes moths, case-making clothes moths, and a variety of wood boring/eating beetles, just to name a few. Luckily, we typically only have issues with the wool-loving webbing clothes moth and we have that under control.

However, in less than a month, I have had three different staff members bring me weird bugs and, surprisingly, none of them were from Textile Revolution, where the easiest access to the outside is located. The first our Assistant Librarian, Jane, brought to me. She had smashed the poor creature to within an inch of its life and I wasn’t able to tell what it was from the mangled, twitching remains in the paper towel (although I did scream pretty loudly when it started wiggling). From what I could tell, I didn’t recognize it as a “bad” Museum bug. No picture for this one. Moving on…

Next, I came in one morning to a Tupperware container on my desk holding an unusually large (over an inch long) beetle. I definitely didn’t recognize it, so I started my research and quickly found it to be a harmless Grapevine Beetle that frequents the vineyards of New England. Again, not a threat to our collections. I let him go outside and hope to never see him again!

Just a day or so later, our intern, Kelly, found a quick little beetle in the study room where she was working. He wound up in a Tupperware container on my desk as well. My attempts to identify him haven’t been nearly as successful as they were with Mr. Grapevine Beetle. His case (and his survival) have been severely hampered (okay, I admit it, he died) by my suspicions that his tastes might not be so innocuous. I won’t give up on identifying him just in case I am right, but his rather generic coloring and lack of markings is making it a challenge.

For the record, I don’t mind this odd little part of my job, but I DON’T DO SPIDERS. I would just as soon pull out my Al Pacino-style machine gun and take care of it that way!

Stephanie Hebert
Registrar

As Coordinator of Volunteer and Visitor Services, I’m always interested in getting another person’s viewpoint on the experience at the American Textile History Museum. Intern Anthony Carter describes what it’s like to lead a tour for the very first time:

“Wow. Today was my day of days. My worst fear at the American Textile History Museum came true. Not only was I coming back from a needed week off, but as I walked through the door the first person I met was Sandra Price. Not that she isn’t an excellent person, but I was expecting the receptionist followed by a call upstairs and even a five to ten minute wait.

But, Sandra was a having conversation with Kathy, one of the women who works with the children’s groups that come to the Museum for visits and programs, and, in not so many words, I was lured into giving my first tour.

For so many weeks my fear was that I wouldn’t be able to answer any question on the walk through, but, to my surprise, I wasn’t asked any questions. It was more along the lines of me being the one who was guided, and by such an eager group. The group that I volunteered to lead did such a great job in assisting me. The group of special needs students consisted of maybe twenty children and four group leaders. The miraculous thing was there were three gentlemen in the group who just had all the answers to everything on the scavenger hunt list. All I needed to do was make the pathway clear, and work on my fear of answering those questions that actually never came about.

As we walked through the Museum, to my surprise, I remembered just about everything that I had gone over. Research actually paid off in conquering the great fear of being a leader in a Museum tour at the American Textile History Museum. Well, that, and the fact that I walked through umpteen times before behind other groups as well as on my own. I hope they had as much fun as I did on hosting my first tour at the American Textile History Museum.”

Sandra Price
Coordinator of Volunteer and Visitor Services

Every organization that offers programming intends to play to its strengths and do what they do best as a primary focus. That’s only natural. For ATHM, the entire museum is a celebration of the art, science, and history of textile creativity, and it would seem natural for us to teach textile arts techniques as a supplement to this.

Offering techniques classes is a mixed blessing. Coordinating the classes is a tricky undertaking with the range of skill levels and busy lives of interested would-be (or variously experienced) weavers, knitters, sewers, felters, and quilters out there, but we keep at it. Part of the fun of this venture comes with connecting with the local artists who are our teachers. There are tremendously talented individuals right in our midst who have honed their skills with love of the art, and are ready to pass it on to the next generation of textile techies.

Below is our list of summertime samplers, each offering an opportunity to jump in and get creative. Don’t be afraid to get your feet wet – the water is warm and welcoming!

Sue Bunker
Director of Education