AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

The focus of this presentation is the investigation and treatment of a tian-tsui headdress from the collection of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA). This project was completed in an advanced graduate course at the Conservation Center of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, under the supervision of Judith Praska Distinguished Visiting Professor in Conservation Pamela Hatchfield. The course was designed in collaboration between Hatchfield, MOCA Director of Collections Yue Ma, and private conservators from A.M. Art Conservation, LLC: Rachael Perkins Arenstein, Anne Léculier King, and Eugenie Milroy. 

MOCA was founded in 1980 and began as a grassroots organization with community-driven collecting practices and the guiding aim of preserving and sharing the diverse tangible heritage, oral histories, and cultural experiences of people of Chinese descent in the United States. Some of its earliest accessioned objects were brought in by museum staff, donated by Chinatown residents, or even collected from the curb; as such, there is limited or nonexistent provenance for many items in the collection, the tian-tsui headdress included. MOCA is in the process of recovery and new growth after a devastating fire in 2020, and the headdress is among the objects that sustained damage related to this event. A driving goal of this project was thus to research and prepare the headdress to go on display alongside other conserved MOCA objects when the renovated museum reopens in 2025. 

The headdress is skillfully constructed in the style of a dianzi, an ornate, horseshoe-shaped headdress worn by wealthy Manchu women in the Qing Dynasty (1636–1912 CE) for festive occasions. A woven framework of black silk-wrapped rattan cane supports dozens of gilt copper openwork and filigree ornaments set on wires and springs that allow them to tremble with the movement of the wearer, a style that can be traced back to the buyao (“step-shake”) hair ornaments of the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). The ornaments are further decorated with tian-tsui (or diancui, literally “dotting with kingfishers”), an ancient Chinese decorative tradition related to cloisonné that utilizes the cut feathers of kingfishers to create striking inlaid motifs in various shades of blue.

Prior to treatment, the aesthetic value of the headdress was diminished by physical deformation that suppressed the stylistically essential trembling movement of the gilt copper ornaments. The headdress was further disfigured by delamination, detachment, and loss of the tian-tsui decoration resulting from failure of the original water-soluble adhesive used to secure the kingfisher feathers to the metal ornaments. In collaboration with MOCA and A.M. Art Conservation, a holistic understanding of the context and manufacture of the headdress was produced through in-depth research and instrumental analysis. With respect to tian-tsui craft tradition, sustainability principles, and the priorities of MOCA staff, a complex but appropriate structural and cosmetic treatment methodology was devised and executed: the conservation intervention involved stabilizing the tian-tsui inlay, reshaping the crushed buyao ornaments, and developing an innovative approach to kingfisher feather inlay loss compensation. This presentation will describe the pitfalls and successes therein.