Blog

The first of the flags is the 37 star American flag that covered Abraham Lincoln's coffin. This flag made a 12 day train journey in 1865 from Washington, DC, to Springfield, Illinois, retracing most of Lincoln's 1861 inaugural route. The flag was recently acquired by an artifact collector who asked the Textile Lab to conserve it. It was cleaned, stabilized, and mounted before it was installed in Keen’s Steakhouse here in NYC. A custom mount was designed to fit the limited space on the wall. Next time you're downtown, be sure to swing by and visit the flag!

Next up the Lab conserved a flag from the Civil War that had been carried into battle by the volunteers of New Bremen, Ohio. This flag had been wrapped, twisted, and tied around a flagpole and sat in the New Bremen Historical Society in a narrow box for decades until a local brought it to the lab for help. Despite looking so hopeless, our conservators were able to carefully untwist all the fragments, flatten them, wet clean and encase them in netting. They then put the pieces together like a puzzle, preserving the gun blast holes and souvenired voids (patches of flag that were deliberately cut and saved for memorializing the battles fought for freedom). The Lab had the honor of returning it to its home in Ohio to mount and frame this piece of history. This flag can be seen on permanent exhibit in the town’s Bicycle Museum of America.

And last, to celebrate our country’s 250th anniversary the Textile Lab recieved a request from the NYPhilharmonic. Our friends at the Phil had a 48 star silk flag that needed to be cleaned and stabilized. During WWII, this flag was displayed onstage in Carnegie Hall as conductor Arturo Toscanini began concerts with the orchestra standing while playing the national anthem. Many American concert halls during wartime in the 1940’s followed this (controversial) tradition. This flag has also been draped by the Phil on their Lincoln Center stage for other tributes such as 9/11 and to mark the pandemic shutdown.