Women's Straw hat, early 20th century, worn on Langley Farm Leafield. OXCMS:1979.111.5

A few weeks ago the improvements to the documentation of hats at the Museums Resource Centre began.  Twenty Five hats were moved into the textile store photographed from specific angles and measured.  All information has now been added to the modes database.

The movement of the hats has sparked the imagination of staff and volunteers a like, “What was that hat worn for?” they ask, “I wonder who would have worn that” and then the conversation progressed “I used to wear hats all the time I don’t do that anymore, I should start wearing a hat again” Lots of sighing and excitement has been generated, bodes well for the future exhibitions.

 This week the rest of the hats arrived inside the Textile Store.

Cloche straw hat with purple silk ribbon decoration, 20th century. OXCMS:1964.5599

 

Aimee and I spent the other day at the Museums Resource Centre looking at our shoe collection.  We discovered a massive hoard of parts of leather shoes found in a ditch at the Oxford Castle, a great project for an archaeological research group to explore at some point in the future.  Then we rediscovered this child’s shoe found in a Late Roman Well at Barton Court Farm, Abingdon.  Only 13.5cm long and 6cm wide it is the right shoe, with moccasin style vamp, a stitched on sole and stiched with thongs.  This lovely objects was conserved in 2000.  A historic treatment possibly with excessive amounts of neats foot oil had left the shoe as a sticky dark mass (see attached image).  This sticky treatment was painstakingly removed with Alcosol D70 (white spirit substitute) and then the shoe parts were reconstructed with dyed japanese tissue and silk crepline.

Roman shoe, shiney from historic conservation treatment and before removal of historic treatment and reconstruction

Romano-British child shoe found in a Late Roman well at Barton Court Farm, Abingdon