Amelia Fowler
Amelia S. Bold Fowler (1862 in
preservation techniques to save it from further deterioration. She used dyed-to-match silk thread and employed ten assistants to reinforce the 1,020-square-foot (95 m2) relic. They anchored it onto Irish linen with 1.7 million of Fowler's special honeycomb patterned, six-sided stitches. It took eight weeks to finish the preservation process. Upon completion, she claimed the restored flag would "defy the test of time," and charged the government $1,243.[2]
Eighty-four years later, in 1998, ongoing conservation efforts at the
Smithsonian Institution budgeted $18.2 million to preserving the same flag. Today, all of the stitches from Fowler's earlier preservation attempt have been removed, as well as the linen backing.[3]
References
- ^ "Amelia S. Bold Fowler (1862-1923)". Find A Grave. Retrieved 6 March 2020.
- ^ Flag: An American Biography by Marc Leepson, Macmillan, 2006, p. 73.
- ^ "Star-Spangled Banner "Too Fragile To Hang Again"". news.nationalgeographic.com. Archived from the original on July 7, 2001.