Ruth Pearson Vella, PSEC Taradale Charity Shop Manager (left), and Sharyn Phillips, Faraday Museum manager, with some of the items donated to the collection.
Ruth Pearson Vella, PSEC Taradale Charity Shop Manager (left), and Sharyn Phillips, Faraday Museum manager, with some of the items donated to the collection.
A popular op shop in Taradale run by Presbyterian Support East Coast recently helped save some things from landfill and donated some old clothing to the Napier’s Faraday Museum.
The charity shop and the Faraday Museum are the perfect pair, as the museum works to prevent history from being thrown into landfills by gathering and exhibiting artefacts from before 1940, and the charity shop is constantly having items donated and picking up people’s pre-loved bits of history.
Faraday Museum manager, Sharyn Phillips explained the museum will use the clothing donated to educate people on how items were made, saving history from being cut up or thrown away.
Phillips added that she made it her mission “to save an old wedding dress, a going away outfit, and extra fabric during the Cyclone Gabrielle recovery period”.
While clothing doesn’t seem like a key part of history to some, it does tell a story. For example, women would use coupons to purchase fabric during the War, sometimes bundling coupons together amongst friends. Each cloth fragment was valuable.
Faraday Museum’s Bobbin lace maker from at least 120 years ago, with one of the items donated by PSEC’s Taradale Charity Shop that includes bobbin lace.
The clothing donated by the Taradale charity shop will be restored and added to the Faraday Museum’s collection.
“We inspect each one, record any damage in our database, and add details when we find out more,” Phillips said.
To keep the clothes immaculate until they are used in a display, once they are soaked and cleaned, they’ll be placed in specialist tissue paper.
Every four months, the displays at the Faraday Museum are changed. This week, volunteers cleaned Barbie’s clothing and untangled her hair to make way for a Toy Town exhibit.
PSEC’s Taradale Charity Shop manager Ruth Pearson-Vella said the historical clothes were donated to the op shop by a local community member.
“We are such a throw-away society today. It’s a fantastic idea to teach people about historical manufacturing through the museum. Preserving these handcrafted clothes is important to me because I want to honour and treasure women’s craftsmanship.”
Currently, Pearson-Vella’s shop is getting items that people today seem to be throwing away, since fewer people seem to want to save children’s or grandparents’ belongings.
“I’ve seen priceless items like these in the bin; volunteers at our charity shop understand how important it is to identify historical objects, so I’m thrilled to be able to donate this clothing to the Faraday Museum for the local community to appreciate and enjoy,” the shop manager said.
Several amazing handcrafted garments were included in the donation.
One of those is a lady’s nightgown featuring a gusset, suggesting that it was either intended for an older woman or used as a maternity or wedding nightgown.
It is believed that the little undergarments donated date from the 1930s or 1940s. Up close to people examining the clothing saw, the French seams, tiny tucks, and needlework details which they said were amazing.
There’s an adorable silk romper as well as a combination of romper pants and top that have buttons positioned at various heights to fit a growing child.
The unique bobbin lace gown may be on exhibit in the sewing section of the Faraday Museum, where they also have an over 120-year-old bobbin lace maker in their collection.
When the donated clothing goes on display the public will be able to identify which items were given by the PSEC Charity Shop thanks to the identity labels attached to each item at the Faraday Museum.
The museum manager said, that not many kids will be taught how to sew these days as school students visiting the museum find the hand-sewing stories and hand machine fascinating; they find it hard to comprehend that such intricate work was done by candlelight with no electricity during that era.
