ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the conservation goals and treatment rationale leading to two different support strategies for a group of six tapestries belonging to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (ISGM) in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. These sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Flemish tapestries, described in the catalogue of the museum’s textile collection (Cavallo, 1986) are: The Land Lord and the Woodcutters (T30w4); The Education of the Prince of Peace (T30w13); God Commands Noah to Build the Ark (T31e4); God Shows Noah a Rainbow (T27e31); Esther Fainting before Ahasuerus (T24w3); and Melintus and Ariane Fleeing from Rome (T27w11). The work, undertaken between 1997 and 2002, was carried out collaboratively by museum staff and conservators at the Textile Conservation Center (TCC), a regional conservation facility at the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts.
