'Sequin by sequin,' it took over 200 hours to restore Dorothy's ruby red slippers
October 18, 2018 | In the PressFrom The Telegraph (https://www.macon.com/news/nation-world/national/article220221920.html)
When people first see the pair of Ruby Slippers on display at the National Museum of American History, they’re often surprised to see how small they are.
“It brings home the fact that Judy Garland was 16 years old when making the film. . . . It’s a very recognizable and understandable object,” Ryan Lintelman, curator of entertainment at the museum, told the Smithsonian Magazine.
Garland played Dorothy Gale in “The Wizard of Oz,” and she wore a size 5 heel, according to a tweet from the museum
Despite the small, child-sized slippers, it took many, many hours to restore and conserve the iconic movie memorabilia.
The Ruby Slippers “were almost continuously on display until April 2017,” according to the museum’s website, but they were taken off display to undergo “extensive research and conservation.”
Now, almost two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, the heels are set to go back on display this Friday.
“Our conservators spent about 200 hours cleaning and stabilizing the 80-year-old shoes from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ so they’ll be on display for generations to come,” the museum said in a tweet.
These Ruby Slippers are one of at least four pairs that exist from the 1939 movie, according to the Associated Press.
And while these slippers are lined with those ruby sequins, “they’re actually just a commercial pair of shoes that the studio purchased, then they were modified by the costumers,” objects conservator Dawn Wallace told WTOP.
“They’re covered in sequins at a really interesting time period because sequins had a gelatin core with cellulose nitrate coating, so it really makes this an interesting part of early plastics,” Wallace told WTOP. “We then have the bow, and although they sparkle like rubies, three different types of glass make up the beads.”
It was those intricate sequins that made the restoration such a long process.
“I knew we had the work cut out for us,” preservation services manager Richard Barden told the Smithsonian Magazine. “When you really start looking at the slippers, you see how many different materials they are. And with each material you have to consider its condition, its physical state, what the materials are made of, how they deteriorate, what environmental factors affect them.”
So, “sequin by sequin, under a microscope,” conservators spent over 200 hours polishing the shoes, the magazine reported.
“It was done on a sequin by sequin sequence,” Wallace told WTOP. “Every sequin was addressed, cleaned of surface dirt, the thread tested for stability, then we were able to realign sequins that had been flipped.”
Conservators used a small paintbrush and a pipette attached to a hose and vacuum to clean the sequins, the Smithsonian Magazine reported, and they used water and cotton swaps for the glass-beaded bow.
The Smithsonian Institution had a $300,000 goal to conserve the ruby red slippers and #KeepThemRuby. Almost $350,000 was raised as a part of the KickStarter fundraiser.
As a result of those efforts, the Ruby Slippers will go back on display on Oct. 19.
The shoes will have a “special gallery,” which includes the “perfect selfie spot” with a mural of one of Dorothy’s most well-known quotes.
This pair of ruby red slippers at the Smithsonian is not the same pair that was stolen from a museum in Garland’s Minnesota hometown in 2005. That pair was recovered this summer during a sting operation, the FBI reported.
“We are still working to ensure that we have identified all parties involved in both the initial theft and the more recent extortion attempt for their return,” the FBI said in September. “This is very much an active investigation.”
