#ThrowbackThursday: Saws and Drills

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 - August 10th

We spent the day hanging coverlets & it went very well. It is a good thing that we are all fairly handy with saws and drills. The painting is started

Jerry starts on the white walls.

Frank getting the blue paint on the floor of the blanket cases.

Transcript:
The coverlets go up on the wall pinned in groups over rods cut to certain lengths. Hooks are put in the wall & eyes in the end of the rods. It involves quite a lot of sewing & drilling but goes very fast.

I'd never make a carpenters union but I usually end up with the right length.

When all the tables are covered it's a good thing to have a square inch left on the floor.