Pre-Program Experience

Internship at the National Museum of African Art. The decorative sword is from the Akan region in Ghana. For treatment I unfolded creased areas of the gold foil hilt and re-adhered lifting foil with Paraloid B72 in acetone. I also degreased the iron blade with ethanol. 

Internship at the National Museum of American History. Myself and another intern were responsible for treating a collection of over 50 point papers. Point papers are used to transfer designs onto punch cards that are fed into a Jacquard loom. We surface cleaned the papers with a hake brush. Then, we lined the torn edges up in the front using 2% gelatin and berlin tissue before flipping the papers over and applying more robust tissue mends on the back using wheat starch paste. Mentioned in the Watch Point Presentation I gave at the Washington Conservation Guild's Intern and Fellow Talks on March 4th 2021.

Internship at the National Museum of American History. The bonnet for which myself and another intern created the hat mount for inspired the Sun-Maid Raisin logo. We carved the head form out of layers of Ethafoam, then covered the head form with polyester batting, stockinette, and a gray fabric. We added a brim to the head form to support the brim of the bonnet. The hat mount was then adhered to a blue board square for ease of removal from the box. The box did not need to completely enclose the bonnet because it was to be stored in a cabinet. The box's main purpose was to provide a way to handle the object without touching the bonnet itself. 

Internship at the National Museum of American History. Watch papers are circular objects made out of paper or textiles that are placed inside a pocket watch. They were often used as advertisements by watch makers. This collection of over 100 watch paper was in need of rehousing. With the help of my supervisor I developed a method of creating custom archival paper squares to hold each watch paper. Those squares could then be placed inside slots on Mylar pages. The Mylar pages were interleaved with acid free paper and bound into a book. To make room for the collection to expand, I included blank paper squares to eventually be cut to fit additional watch papers. Mentioned in the Watch Point Presentation I gave at the Washington Conservation Guild's Intern and Fellow Talks on March 4th 2021.

​