ASMR at the museum | Conserving Vivien Leigh's Cleopatra Cloak | V&A

This is an amazing theatre costume which  had been in storage for a long long time.   We were having an exhibition  dedicated to Vivien Leigh   in the aftermath of us receiving her archive, and  so it was an opportunity to focus on this actress.   We did a a front of silk to  indicate maybe the underdress,   so that we don't see the body or the pole  of the mannequin, and that was just enough   to display the cape at a slight angle, showing  the train. On display it was very effective. So this costume was in quite a sorry state. These cloth feathers were really folded and  creased, in fact you can see a little bit of that.   So I use the cold poultice technique – basically  it's a kind of sandwich with moisture gradually   going up and relaxing the fibres under slight  tension, which I create with my glass weights. I'm going to prepare my layers.  I'm going to start with this... so I'm going to introduce   the barrier so the moisture doesn't  go to areas that are not intended. And this is blotting paper which I'm  going to moisten with a fine spray. Moist blotting paper which is cut to the right  size for the area I'm going to treat. Here is   this fold – I want to get rid of it, and I'm going  to put it underneath my membrane which is going to   relax it very gently, then  finally the polyethylene barrier.   So I've got my sandwich ready and  I'm going to slide it underneath.   Again there is stitching here, but I  know I have enough space. And in order to   accelerate this process, I'm going to put  it under the weight under slight tension. So this goes there, and then my membrane will  control the flow of the water – of the moisture. Another piece. So then I lay the textile. I don't want to pierce the membrane because  then the moisture will go through that hole   more aggressively and I don't want to do  that – everything has to be quite controlled.   I'm going to use the weights under  slight tension to flatten it. And then I can cover it again. And that will create a chamber,  trapping the moisture underneath,   so working it more effectively, and I can  get rid of the creases and the folds. That's   the same method I use for all the lower sections.  This was trickier – so actually here I had to use   kind of floating cold poultices – holding like  that and holding at the side with clips and then   letting the floating chamber work on their own,  section per section because they're all stitched   together still. But fortunately these ones which  were loose, I could work them out as a group. The main body of the cape is very thin in areas  – there isn't very much I could do about that,   apart from when it goes on display, with  my spatula I tied the loose floats and   aligned them again. But it would be too  interventive to start couching on them,   and I will create tensions which will probably  distort the effect, so I wouldn't attempt to   start couching all those floats. And I think with  careful handling we can we can live with that. When she opened and closed the cape there  was a lot of handling in this area, so   this also has a wider net area which I have  zigzagged onto the original to keep in place.

Channel: Victoria and Albert Museum

Views: 219,111

Keywords: Vivien Leigh, ASMR, tingles, V&A, Victoria and Albert Museum, museum, Susana Fajardo, theatre, costume, conservation, cold poultice, feathers, weights, glass weights, jewels, shakespeare, antony and cleopatra, anthony and cleopatra, performance, V&A conservation, V&A ASMR, ASMR conservation, ASMR museum, Jackie Sloan, Sequin conservation, Sequin ASMR, asmr sounds, asmr tapping, asmr relax, asmr tingles, asmr trigger, curator, crinkling, unwrapping, laurence olivier

Id: JC_UnIAwZxg

Length: 6min 21sec (381 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 26 2021