Determining treatment priorities for ecclesiastical textiles using significance and conservation assessments

The Benedictine monastic community at New Norcia, Western Australia needed an assessment of their historic textile collection as a preliminary step in gaining financial support to preserve the garments. The textiles were grouped according to functional use with sampling controlled by random number generation of the registers. The highest significance and conservation rankings were rated at 5 and the lowest in the categories was given values of one. The numbers in each category fell logarithmically as the significance values increased. The number of hours of work required to stabilise the objects increased logarithmically as the conservation ranking increased from 1 to 5. Analysis of the conservation needs indicated that nearly 84% of the collection, the sum of the level 1 and level 2 textiles can be stabilised with simple preventive conservation methods practised by trained volunteers, leaving the most significant items in the care of experienced conservators. Multiplication of the conservation and the significance values provides a treatment priority score to guide collection managers in determining which objects are treated by conservators. Data is also provided on the impact of light exposure on the deterioration of the coloured fabrics of the vestments.