The Oneida County Pioneer Museum is the primary repository of historical documents, information, and artifacts in the region.  Over the course of time, the museum has accumulated a large inventory of objects from the county’s history, from a library of historical documents to the eye-catching bear skin that hangs behind the museum’s front counter.  One of the largest collections in the museum consists of clothing items that contain the long and evolving history of the county in their own way. 

Because clothing items are primarily composed of organic materials such as cotton, wool, and animal fur, they are also in need of careful cataloging and restoration.  For that reason, the museum secured a grant to bring in vintage clothing restorer Jo Ann Peters from BYU-Idaho, as well as her intern Brianne McDougal.  The two have been carefully working through the museum’s holdings for the last several weeks, and have made a number of interesting discoveries.

JoAnn Peters, Adjunct Professor at BYU-Idaho, teaches a range of courses in the apparel design program and believes strongly in the idea that materials from the past are very helpful for students in modern design programs to become familiar with.  The apparel design major “starts out with beginning sewing, and we teach them how to do that as well as pattern making and design. We want graduates to come out of the experience ready to work in the industry today.  These historic clothes have a richness of patterns and materials that are very helpful for understanding design.”

Intern Brianne McDougal agrees.  She has recently completed a course for the major that utilizes CAD (Computer Assisted Drafting) to create 3D models of the clothing designs that students design to help visualize them.  “We use an avatar, and then stitch our designs together to see how it would look. I’m fascinated by pattern making, and that’s one reason it’s amazing to see all of these old designs.  I think I find a new favorite dress every few minutes.  There’s just a lot of amazing work here.”  

Jo Ann McDougal, the granddaughter of Norman Jaussi, has also been able to explore her own roots in the area.  “The early pioneer women were their own dressmakers, and so the clothes are all basically unique.  If you didn’t know how to sew, you had to take your clothes to someone who did, so towns like Malad had a lot of talented dressmakers.”  

The two have come across many skillfully made examples from a range of eras.  Peters fell in love with a purple wedding dress made of velvet, which she felt was “really heavy and just gorgeous!”  McDougal explains that, for her part, “I love the clothes from about 1919 back, specifically.  They worked really hard to make the things their own, and you can really see the personality come through.”

Peters, who has also worked in a preservation capacity for other museum collections, including in Bingham County, decided to return to school after her children were raised.  After completing a program at Cal State Long Beach, she began her work documenting and preserving historic clothing items.  “It’s been a fun adventure!” she says.  “It’s like a treasure hunt—finding new skills to take back to the university, especially with some things that have kind of been lost.  There are all kinds of techniques to put clothing together than have almost disappeared, but that we find in clothes like these.  People used to spend a lot more time on clothes than we do in today’s fast paced world.”

While driving back and forth from BYU-Idaho to Utah, she says that Malad was always on her mind.   “I just knew I needed to stop,” she says. And once she saw the holdings at the museum, she knew she wanted to be involved in keeping the clothing as well-preserved as possible.  “So far, it’s been really fun,” she says.  

The first order of business has been to fully catalog what is in the museum, and make a digital record and description of the materials.  “We take them off the hangers or out of their boxes first, and put them on padded hangers to prevent creasing,” McDougal explains.  "Then we take pictures of them and assign them a number and create a description for the computer database.  That way, anyone who is looking for specific items can use a search to find them.”

McDougal demonstrates with one item, 2022.97 OPM.  “This is a lavender suit consisting of a jacket and skirt.  It has three buttons and a snap for the closure.  There’s a lace collar with a lapel style collar underneath.  There are decorative elements on the front and back, and decorative lace cuffs.  There are also three darts at the elbow, which is unique, and a yoke piece with the rest of the jacket gathered into it.”  Using similar descriptions, both the museum and others interested in the collection can search by time period, style, material, and other descriptors to locate items.

“This will allow the museum to more easily keep track of what they have,” Peters says.  “That way they can rotate displays as needed.”  Other than wear and tear, sun damage is an issue that the catalog will prevent, as items displayed for too long or too frequently in window displays can be subject to it.  Some of the items with fur components also require treatment to remove any mites, moths, or silverfish that may have taken up residence.  “We try not to use chemicals on them,” McDougal explains.  “So if we can, we freeze them instead.”

While the two have not examined the entire collection yet, they already have a good appreciation for what is in it.  “You guys in Malad have a great collection over the eras—anything from pioneer bonnets from the 1860s up to the present time.  I was especially excited to see a great collection of Victorian dresses from the 1880s—they’ve just been a delight to document.”

Brianne McDougal’s internship has a requirement of 120 hours of preservation work, and the two are hoping to be able to catalog the entire collection by the end of April.  They visit Malad every weekend to continue the work.  “I think it’s very important to preserve these items that they treasured,” Peters says.  “What has survived is the very best of what they brought with them—often all the way from Wales.”

Many of the items also contain evidence of their use over time.  “A lot of these are homemade, and we can see how they’ve been altered over time,” McDougal says.  Pointing to one example, she shows how the original pleats have been let out as the owner grew over time.  “Clothes were made differently back then—they were made to last a long time, and to be adaptable.”

Not only will the documentation work create an extensive catalog of the materials for archival work by the museum, but also for current students in the apparel design program.  “We’re building a resource for the students so that they can look back at vintage fashion and get ideas for the new things they’re making.  In that way they can learn from the past to create new, unique objects and items,” Peters says.