Handling Antique Textiles when Collecting
If your knowledge about collecting antiques is limited to furniture, Chinese
jars, and things from your grandfather's treasure chest, then it's good to know
that there's one more thing that you will have to add to your list: antique
textiles.
Yes, textiles can be antiques. Antique textiles can be somewhat challenging when
it comes to handling, storage and such. Textiles are more delicate to handle
relative to other kinds of collections. Nevertheless, the following are some
basic techniques and tips in handling vintage textile antiques.
These tips will go a long way especially if you don't have any expert knowledge
and experience in handling such valuable materials.
Just like all other antiques, you will need to handle old textiles carefully.
Keep whatever you find clean as much as possible. Take note, however, that this
doesn't mean that you're going to wash the textile immediately. Just remove
visible dust and other foreign articles from the textile for now.
If you really need to wash vintage clothing and
crochet items, you will have to make sure that the
textile is laundry washable and colorfast. Also, make sure that you wash the
textile in cold water and by hand. Do not put starch or bleach while you wash
the cloth. Do not iron the textile as well.
If you can't remove the dirt or if the textile is too fragile to be washed, an
option would be to use a vacuum to clean the surface. However, avoid direct
contact with the fabric. Use some sort of covering like a fiberglass screen to
come between the textile and the vacuum.
Once dried or cleaned, you should store antique textiles in cool, dark and
especially dry places. Ideally, you should monitor the humidity as well. It is
not ideal to store textiles in places where humidity changes drastically.
Specialized drawers for storing textiles would be the most ideal place to store
the cloths.
Storing antique textiles in attics or in your garage is textile suicide. Not
only will it cause considerable damage to the cloth but most likely the damage
will be permanent.
Also, tissue papers and wrapping papers do not go well with textiles so don't
use them to wrap the vintage cloth. Wood as well is not the best thing to come
in contact with vintage textiles. These are but a few of the tricks and tips
that you would need to know. There are a lot of other important things that you
will need to study if you want to be an expert in antique textile collecting.