Behind the Scenes

Rehousing the hat collection collections at Toitū

Following an upgrade to our costume and textile store in 2025, supported by a grant from Lotteries Environment and Heritage, we are continuing with a range of rehousing projects.

Toitū holds a diverse collection of headwear, from early European women’s bonnets and men’s caps through to more formal attire. Post the Victorian period, the collecting is less consistent and mostly formal wear, with a strength in wedding attire. Toitū also holds a large collection of hats by milliner Lindsay Kennett, who began business in Auckland in 1952 supplying wholesale to department stores around NZ. Upon retirement Kennett moved to Dunedin continuing to make hats for exhibitions and charity hat shows, many of which are now in the Toitū collection.

The aim of rehousing the hats is to ensure they:

• remain as far as possible in their original shape or structure, for example supporting the hat so the crown doesn’t fall in or the brim start to sag; (b)
• remain clean and free of dust; and
• can be stored and moved easily without risk of damage.

We also wanted to come up with a methodology that was efficient, easily repeatable and low cost. The collections and conservation team did some research and also had a few working sessions where we experimented with different materials and approaches.

Eventually, we came up with a system using a set of cardboard strips, tissue paper, an ethafoam based with slots for inserting the cardboard strips at variable lengths, and two box sizes which work efficiently with our shelving configuration.

The cardboard strips are 30mm wide cut from 1000gsm archival board supplied by Conservation Supplies (who did the cutting for us), and who also supplied the sheets of card for our boxes – which we are currently looking at having custom made.

Above are images of our prototype.

Below is an image of a hat stored using the new system (note the variable length of the cardboard strips allows us to cater for things like feathers). The box lid (on the left) holds the front fold down panel in place vertically – for access just slide the foam out.