Condition

The bast strips woven to create the body of the shoes are brittle, and covered with a layer of surface dirt. Due to this, some of the strips have snapped in areas of high stress, with small sections missing. This is more prevelant on one shoe, which has been severely flattened and distorted (right shoe in the image above). The shoes are abraded on the sole and insole, presumabley from being worn.

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Treatment Aims

Stabilize the materials and reform the structure of the shoes. Produce packaging to prevent compression from causing further damage.

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Treatment

The shoes were first dry cleaned using a soft brush, smoke sponge, and in non-friable areas, groom stick.

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The shape of the shoes was addressed next. To allow the wood to relax and be reshaped, they were placed in a humidification chamber, and slowly brought up to 60% RH. They were allowed to stabilise, before being shaped with supports.

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To support the shape of the shoes, strips were created to replace the missing sections of bast. These were created by folding and securing squares of Okay tissue paper, stained with watercolour. Once these were the right width, they were painted with acrylics to form a similar pattern to the strip they were to be attached to. The tissue ends were then cut to match where the bast was broken, and the two were connected with additional tissue and PVA.

 

An internal structure was also created to sit in the toe of each shoe, for the lower end of the strips to be attached to. In this way, the shaping pressure was distributed across a wider area. This support was created from a larger piece of tissue, coloured only with watercolour, as it was not to be visible while on display.

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For storage, a layer of cardboard was arranged on feet, to allow one shoe to sit over the other in their box without causing stress. Each shoe had an acid-free tissue puff placed in it, providing additional support the upper vamp.