Handy Holders: Mounting with Magnets for Flexible Display and Study Options

This talk will discuss a small glove mounting project for a private client that presented certain interesting challenges. The gloves dated from the second world war and had been heavily mended, resulting in a pair of three dimensional objects with a complex, layered construction of historical repairs and additions. The owner wished to display them safely in a frame, but in a way that also allowed them to be turned over for study by local historical groups, so that both faces of the gloves could be looked at. It was therefore important that the gloves be easily removable from any mount, especially as they were likely to be handled by non-museum professionals (and therefore, presumably not trained in safe object handling protocol). The normal method of stitching a textile object to a padded board (to then be framed) was therefore not appropriate, and I was also reluctant to add any additional stitching that might be confused with the myriad of historical stitched repairs.
My solution was to use magnets, gently lowered into the fingers of each glove, with corresponding silk covered magnets sewn to a padded board. This allowed the gloves to be turned over and easily swapped, enabling either the front or back faces to be displayed. I attached threads to each of the magnets sitting inside the glove fingers, that can be pulled for easy magnet retrieval. The solution, while relatively simple, is a useful one that might potentially be employed further in study collections to aid object safety and minimal, easy handling.