I am a book conservator tee shirt

You have the advanced degree,

the knowledge of materials science and applied organic chemistry,

the paring knife,

and, probably, a twelve month grant funded contract position without benefits.

You jet set around the world attending international conferences with a roster of impressive speakers.

You are

a book conservator.

You know that. I may even know that.
But do your potential clients know where to find you?

Now available in a very limited edition

I am a book conservator ®

tee shirts!

	Perfect for the conference circuit (you want accreditation? I'll show you accreditation!)
as well as for cocktail parties (why, yes, I do work in leather).		This brilliant propaganda item is sure to be the new must-have item, and accessorizes brilliantly under lab coats and the traditional apron.
	John Fryett, of Sussex, was inspired by his fabulous muse, the talented British Library conservator Ruth Stevens, to create a line of clothing featuring this hallowed profession.
Until the AIC or the institution formerly known as the IPC begin to take out full page color advertisements in the Sunday papers advertising the benefits of hiring a conservator, it behooves us all to find the market for our services.		The tee shirt as supplied is available in a dashing robin's egg blue, perfectly highlighting the skin tones and eye colors of the English Rose for whom it was designed. The I am a book conservator ® logo is screen printed onto a 100% cotton base by artisans in rural Sussex, and the shirts are available for either love or money, depending on the quantity of whichever you are willing to supply.
	An altered artist's version of the same is also available, although the quanitites of both love and money which are required to receive said tee shirt are significantly higher.
The tee shirt is first accordion folded and then wound with a heavy polyester string, being careful to secure the ends and ensure a constant level of tension throughout the wrapping process.		Originally, the color was reduced using a dilute sodium hypochlorite solution, in this case commercial Clorox bleach.
	Following an extended 12 hour soaking, a pink residue remained on the cloth, and a different bleaching agent was sought.
Sodium hydrosulfite did the job brilliantly; this solution requires heat activation, and the shirt was then cooked for fifteen minutes on a low simmer. Presumably, sodium hypochlorite is an oxidating agent, and sodium hydrosulfite is a reducing agent, but my application to the study of applied chemistry was too ambivalent for me to place any money on the statement.
	Following the immersion in a whitening bath, the tee shirt was toned using organic dyestuffs, in this instance, a Darjeeling tea sold by Harney and Son's. This tea is hand picked from steep slopes, processed in small batches, and made available in tidy and elegant black tins.
	The toning medium was brewed to produce a very strong tea indeed, and strained into a simmering brine solution. Once again, I think that the purpose of salt in a dye bath is to provide a fixative for the pigment, but as to whether the presence of sodium is required for tea-dyeing, there is room for further experimentation.
The shirt simmered in the solution for a further twenty four hours,
	after which it was thoroughly rinsed in hot water, untied, and washed in a hot water bath with a detergent containing anionic and nonionic biodegradable surfactants and enzymes, but without phosphates, dyes, or perfumes. In this instance, the washing solution used was dilute Cheer free and gentle laundry detergent. The tee shirt was line dried overnight.

The next stage in the transitional process between a standard tee shirt and an altered tee shirt was the sartorial redesign, in this case believed to be necessary by the collector to increase superficial salability of the conservator at conferences, cocktail parties, and coffeehouses (if you can't sell the conservator, you can't sell the services). A historic design provided by similar items in the collector's holdings provided a pattern by which to resew the material into a more desireable shape. While this altered the very nature of the original item, the exhibition needs of the curator were deemed of greater value than the historic documentation provided by the original item. A photographic documentation of the process was deemed sufficient for provenance and research purposes.
		The alterations include the addition of side seams, as the shirt was originally of a tubular construction; the hemline was raised four inches (10.16 cm). The shoulder line, neck line, and sleeve diameter were similarly retailored. Original construction details remain visible in the armholes of the garment, as they were similar enough to the desired line to be not worth the bother of resewing.
Cotton jersey is a temperamental fabric with a prominent grain; as such, interior French (turned) seams were necessary for to stabilize the fabric for movement of the wearer; the neckline was reinforced using a facing method popularized by the prominent couturier Ellen Joanna Guldi. The hemline and sleeves were stitched multiple times, but it is at present unknown whether this will be sufficient for the future longevity of the item.
	The tee shirt did not experience any dimensional changes resulting from the repeated applications of heat or chemicals, and the ink used for the screen printing process was similarly untouched by these processes. The shirt did, however, show signs of pilling and loss of smoothness of the cotton fiber, presumably a result of the short-grained, highly processed cotton fibers which are currently in use by the commercial textile industry.
Whether the shirt results in increased sales will be the subject of further research and a future presentation.