Handspun
animal fibers consist of wools from llama, sheep, goats, rabbits, silk,
or other less widely used (nationally) materials such as camelhair, hair
from long-haired dogs, horses or musk ox.The
design for the organization of this collection will allow for all of these
materials to be described, but the sample collection will not represent
the entire array of wonderful fibers (like plant fibers or synthetic fibers).
This
collection of materials consists of only handspun animal fibers, while
I envision that for a greater catalog of fiber arts, this would only be
a subdivision along with plant fibers and synthetic fibers.For
this project, the specific subdivision of a fiber arts catalog has been
narrowed down to handspun animal fibers and can consist of any material
that has been handspun on a foot-powered spinning wheel or drop spindle
using any of the various animal fibers.While
there would be room for the classifying of plant fibers and machine spun
fibers in the greater fiber arts catalog, this particular collection does
not address a material unless it fits into both categories of handspun
and animal fiber.
Handspun
animal fibers can come in different forms.An
item can be made of handspun animal fibers or fabric can be made of handspun
animal fibers.This project does
not cover either of these forms; instead, it is a collection of the yarn
in its unfinished form.The fibers
can be balled or skeined but cannot be altered by extraneous techniques,
like weaving or knitting.
Because
these are all handspun materials, their twist and size was carefully considered
when spun.Size of the yarn can be
determined by the number of threads that are plied together and the number
of ends per inch (e.p.i.).These
are all recognizable in this collection and are part of the information
package.
Normally
a collection of this type would not be cataloged for its organization and
retrieval.This type of collection
would only be documented so that the individual items in it could be retrieved,
used and changed into a new information package (ie. the ball of camelhair
is dyed and woven into a rug, thus the form is no longer ‘yarn’, but is
instead a ‘rug’).For the purpose
of this project, the materials are being treated as the final product and
that the intent is to analyze the contents and thus place value on a material
that is usually only valued for its functional purpose.
The primary collection only consists of animal fibers, but the organization and retrieval tools allow for the expansion of the collection to include fibers of all types and treated in different ways (handspun, machine spun, felted, etc.). Sample 8 shows the possibilities for expansion of the collection.Because the user group is fiber oriented, the more complex the collection, the better.The decimal system created for the retrieval of objects can also be expanded with the use of cutter numbers.Like many archival collections, the objects will be classified by subject, then numbered according to the order of acquisition.This method can allow the collection to grow to include any fiber technique.
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Organization Rationale| Creation
of a Retrieval Tool| Samples | References
JJ