#ThrowbackThursday: Hanging the Curtains

In September, 1971, the ROM opened the landmark exhibition Keep Me Warm One Night, a kaleidoscopic display of over 500 pieces of Canadian handweaving. It was the culmination of decades of pioneering research and collecting by the ROM curatorial powerhouse duo 'Burnham and Burnham’, aka Dorothy K. Burnham and Harold B. Burnham.

To kick off the one-year count down to the ROM’s conference, Cloth Cultures (November 10-12, 2017), which will commemorate Dorothy Burnham’s many legacies, and to mark Canada’s approaching 2017 Sesquicentennial, we will be posting bi-weekly excerpts from Dorothy’s journal of Keep Me Warm One Night. We hope you will enjoy this unofficial glimpse into the bygone days of the ROM, and into the pioneering days of textile studies.

Transcript:
Tuesday - Aug 24th

The curtains for the bedroom needed careful pleating etc to make them hang properly. Judy did that and then we got them up - a very fussy job but they look well. Mary in display has been doing letraset numbers for the individual pieces in each area and we got most of those on upstairs. The labels are coming. Liz can't take her nose out of them or she is overwhelmed but she is keeping up very well with out writing production.

Each piece in the show needs a number to correspond with its number on the label. Mary has about 500 to make.

Transcript:
Hanging the curtains in the bedroom was a problem. The wall is Masonite so Harold drilled a couple of holes and took cord around the curtain and back through the hole to be fastened at the back.

Jerry working on the set up of one of the big labels. The diagrams are photographs of the ones I did for the book.

Transcript:
Ian & Mike. They have come in as extra help for the carpenters on the show.

Mike & Marshall

Transcript:
Eddie and Jan on the scaffold loosening it and letting it down.

Mike, Alan Russel & Jan. If the carpenters didn't make things so well they wouldn't have such a time getting them apart!