If you had to store your most treasured items, how would you protect them?

We'll find out today as Ohio History Connection opens their vault to us.

Hey, Becky.

Hi, Diana.

Wow, this is so.

Amazing.

Welcome to the new Collections Care Center here at the Ohio History Connection.

Wow it is beautiful.

So what types of things are you storing here?

So we have here our natural history collections and the majority of our history collections.

So as you can see behind me here we have our Macedon bones are stored in this space but we also have our quilt collections, clothing, military, furniture, and all sorts of other treasures.

Well, I see a lot of artwork and very big, big paintings, especially this man back here.

Who is that?

Yes, this is Robert Alfonso Taft.

He is the son of President William Howard Taft and the grandfather of Ohio Governor Bob Taft, and this is a painting from his 1952 campaign for the Republican nomination for president.

It was part of his whistle-stop tour.

So he would stop along the way at different railway stations, and this portrait would hang on the side of the train, and so it's so large so people could see it from a distance.

And who donated it?

This is actually from Bob and Hope Taft.

We're here to look at some of these things in your vault, some of your treasures, but also to give our viewers kind of an idea of ways that they can preserve some of their treasured items.

I mean, you have lots of space to store big art, but how do people at home do that?

Hanging large pieces of art is a great way to save space, but also if you have an oil painting, you have to store that upright.

If you store it flat, the canvas can settle with the weight of that oil paint, and that's when it can kind of bow, and when you sit it upright, it starts to look kind of loose and wavy.

Ideally you want it in an area with consistent temperature and humidity.

Now humidity is a little harder in the home environment, but ideally you want your temperature to be anywhere from 65 to 70 degrees.

For sustainability reasons, 70 is just fine, but you don't want it to be too damp.

So basements and attics are normally places we recommend people avoid storing treasured items there.

I love a second floor linen closet.

It means in general, you're not going to have any water pipes above it that could possibly leak and just gives it a little extra protection from sunlight or dirt and things like that, especially if it's on your second story.

These are amazing tips.

Do you have other things you could show us here?

Absolutely, right this way.

So this is where we store our flat art.

These are flat files.

And as you can see in this drawer here, we have an ink on vellum block print by Columbus artist Ralph Fanning.

He's better known for his watercolors like we have over here.

This is a really early piece that he did early on in his tenure at Ohio State.

These are watercolors by Will Rannells, who was another Ohio artist who also later went on to teach at Ohio state.

And Reynolds is known for his art of dogs.

I love it all local.

So these are all in these drawers.

So talk about the concept of how you store flat art.

So you want to store it flat so we have all of these drawers that are not very high because we don't want to put too much art in there so the idea is not to stack too much pressure on the pieces.

Now for folks at home it may not be very convenient to have these metal flat filing cabinets but you can achieve the same result with cardboard boxes.

Acid-free boxes are better so that acid doesn't transfer to the paper and start to cause it to become discolored.

But if you have large enough boxes, you can just lay your artwork in there flat and just separate it again by acid-free paper or tissue in order to save your art.

Yeah, people really should look around their houses to see if there's any valuable things that they do want to store in store like this.

So these are great tips.

All right.

Well, what else do you have for us on this thing?

And down these aisles are the nearly 300 quilts we have in our quilt collection.

Wow, what kind of years do they range from?

Our earliest quilts date from the 1700s and our newest ones date from 2000s.

Wow.

And so talk just about sort of the preservation of these.

How do you keep quilts?

Ideally, any quilt that's not silk, we want to keep it rolled.

So it's just rolled around these cardboard tubes that you can see here.

These are acid-free cardboard.

Secure it with a piece of unbleached muslin and then tie it off.

Now, in our old facility, we had to keep our quilts boxed and that's what I would recommend for folks for preserving their quilts at home.

Just box it in an acid- free box or you could keep it in a cotton pillowcase is fine.

Again, you know, up.

In a linen closet, anything like that, is a great place for storage.

But for us, we roll our quilts to keep those pesky folds out of them.

And to roll our quilt, we actually recruited a lot of volunteers from local quilt guilds who came in and volunteered their time, not only to help roll the quilts, but also to see our amazing quilt collection.

Well, can we see one?

Unfortunately, it's a little difficult to unroll them right here where we're standing, but I do have something else that I can show you.

Oh, I see clothing and costumes, my favorite type of thing.

So down these aisles, we have our clothing or costume collections.

These are great, what era are these from though?

So most of these are from the 1980s and 1990s.

As you can see for these longer pieces, we have high hanging bars, so none of these skirts drag on the ground and they're all on these great padded hangers.

I'll pull this one out for you.

This is Hope Taft's inauguration gown.

Well, I recognize that skirt from the 80s and 90s.

And then a little bit more of a throwback.

This is an inauguration dress that Dagmar Celeste wore.

Oh my goodness.

And I just have to point out, look at this, that is total 80s.

Oh my goodness.

The full jean jumpsuit.

The jumpsuit is back now, so I'm just saying.

But this is amazing.

So what types of clothing, like, what eras do you have it from?

Our clothing collection starts in the 1700s and goes all the way through to today.

Now, for at-home people, what are some things they should consider as they preserve their clothing?

Sure.

You can hang your clothes just pad out your hanger you can wrap it with strips of batting so that you don't get stretch marks in the shoulders and again hang it in a dry place not in a basement closet you want it to breathe please don't put it in it a plastic container that plastic container seals it off doesn't allow the textiles to breathe and can cause more more harm than good but if you have to put it into a box you know buy a decent size box for dresses in particular those are the trickiest to preserve Getting a long but skinny dress box is ideal because you can lay the dress down and just fold in the sides.

Great tips, great tips.

Now I could look at costumes forever or clothing, but I'd love to look at some of your other collections.

Absolutely.

Wow, I love looking at all this furniture.

So what kinds of furniture do you collect?

We collect pieces mainly made in Ohio and sometimes pieces that were used here too to help us understand how people have lived.

So what type of advice do you have for people to take care of their kind of old, especially wooden furniture?

Well, really the best thing to do is keep it dry and then keep it clean.

So keep it dusted.

Really dirt is its worst enemy.

Let's go over here.

I have something else to show you.

So I want to point out, before we start here, we have paintings of James Preston Poindexter, of Poindextor Village fame.

And those pieces are from an exhibit in 2020 celebrating his contributions to the community.

You really do have art around every corner here.

Don't you?

We do, including down this aisle which has a lot of pieces from our pottery collection.

Pottery was a huge industry in Ohio.

We have the right clay content of our soil to make pottery and we've got a lot of great potteries represented here in our collections including one in this box from Hall Pottery.

Ooh, are we gonna be able to look at it?

Yes.

I love hall pottery.

They were known for their teapots.

They have this great mid-century modern style.

They were immensely popular in the 1940s and 50s.

We have them stored in boxes and we have foam cut out to keep them still.

So as we transport the boxes, they don't move.

At home, again, just keep them clean and dust-free and perhaps away from any balls or other play areas.

Great advice.

Well, I see you have a couple other boxes.

We do.

We have some boxed art collections over here because not all art can hang.

And so some of our three-dimensional art then lives in boxes.

These are figurines carved by Columbus artist Elijah Pierce.

Yes, very recognizable, that's amazing.

How much artwork of his do you have?

We only have about four pieces of his artwork, some carvings, and then a larger wall hanging that's actually currently at the governor's residence for display.

Okay, and so same kind of thought as far as storing this type of artwork?

Yes.

We've got ours divided by cardboard dividers and then wrapped in tissue and foam.

But again, if you don't have it on display, if you just put it upright in a box and prop it upright with crumpled bubble wrap or foam or anything like that, that will help to preserve it.

Great.

And then over here we have some smaller pieces of artwork, literally.

These are some of our miniatures called such because they are literally miniature paintings.

In this row here are miniature paintings of some prominent Marietta, Ohio businessmen.

The last one on the right actually ended up becoming Secretary of State of Ohio in the 1830s, Carter Harlan.

We've got these pieces stored in boxes.

They lay flat and we have them in these great trays so we can easily lift them out of the box.

We can stack multiple trays in the box so that we can use our space more efficiently, but then they're all in their own separate compartments so that they don't run into each other and cause damage that way.

All right, well, this is an amazing amount of just varying types of artwork and things that you have here.

Is there anything else you have to show me?

I have one more spot I wanna show you right this way.

So down these aisles we have slat storage.

This is for artwork that either can't hang but needs to stay vertical, some of those unframed oil paintings, as well as pieces that we maybe don't want hanging out for people to encounter on their own.

Some very, you know, racist depictions, things like that, that are really important to preserve and study and understand, but that we just don't wanna out all the time.

That makes sense.

Now down here, we have some great pieces from Columbus artist, Emerson Burkhardt.

This is a still life, an incomplete one that he did.

And since it's an unframed oil painting, it has to stay upright, but we don't have a way to hang it right now.

So it stays here in the slot.

That's fantastic.

I mean, it's not a typical one that you usually see from him, like this still life.

No, he usually does portraits or scene paintings as well.

So the still life is a great piece to have.

That's fantastic.

And then down low here, we have a study for one of his works progress administration murals or WPA murals.

Wow!

This one is likely the mural for Stillman Hall at Ohio State.

I love that you can see the unfinished part of it too.

Yes, I love pieces like this where you can see the artist's process, in this case his pencil drawings that he hasn't yet covered up with his pastels.

What I love about it is really anything can be art here, can it?

Yes.

Well, thank you so much for showing us your new facility.

It's amazing, and I can't wait to come back.

But before I leave, can we go look at the clothing?

Sure.