Brazilian featherwork

Taking a feather fan belonging to the Jerônimo Ferreira das Neves Collection at the D. João VI Museum in Rio de Janeiro as a starting point, this article examines a type of featherwork that was produced for export during the nineteenth century in Brazil. The nineteenth-century fashion for adornments made from feathers and stuffed animals invaded major fashion-producing centers such as Paris and London at the time when bourgeois imperialism was helping to multiply intercontinental trade links. For middle-class women, these objects introduced the exotic as a distinct aesthetic, corresponding to a desire for innovation driven by the growing standardization in food, housing and clothing. Rigid feather fans produced in Rio de Janeiro were internationally known from 1830 onwards. However, even when taking into account existing studies, little is known about this Rio-based rigid feather fan industry, which reached its peak between 1870 and 1890. In reflecting on the production, circulation and consumption of rigid fans, this paper aims to identify the symbolic meanings attributed to the products of this industry by Brazilian and European markets.

Featherworks are part of the most remarkable category of material culture produced by Brazilian indigenous groups because of their technicality and their aesthetic beauty standards.  Weapons, baskets and musical instruments are frequently decorated with feathers. Also, these materials are used in human body adornments that, in addition to esthetical purpose, carry the function of communicating information about the individual, its position within the group and cultural values that they wish to transmit.  Trying to preserve ethnographic objects becomes challenging, since the biological cycle to which its organic substances are exposed inevitably brings stages of deterioration of these materials. In addition to their use trajectory and their biography, these collected objects are exposed to a new environmental when they are brought to the museums, where they must have their prolonged existence. The cycle of inherent deterioration of organic materials and other risk factors promotes their deterioration mainly due to the action of insects like moths and microorganisms such as fungi with irreversible consequences. Tropical Brazilian weather contributes to the proliferation of these pests making the conservation of these cultural heritage a daily challenge. Even though the featherwork craft is still practiced by the indigenous communities, the offer of raw-material and the contact with the involved society ended up diminishing the production scale of such objects. For this reason, the preservation of the material culture is very important particularly in ethnographic museums. The use of gamma radiation for the disinfection of cultural heritage and archived materials has shown to be a safe process and excellent alternative to traditional methods usually involving toxic chemical pesticides. The ionizing radiation has been used for more than 40 years and since 2004, the Institute of Energy and Nuclear Research (IPEN) Multipurpose Irradiator, a 100% Brazilian technology and pioneer in our country, has been making the use of ionizing radiation applied to cultural heritage a reality. With more than 20,000 cultural artifacts irradiated, IPEN is currently the national and international reference center for the use of radiation technology applied to the preservation of cultural heritage. Several studies have been conducted to determine the optimal dose to eliminate contamination by biological agents in organic materials such as wood, leather and feathers.  A maximum dose of 10kGy is recommended for these artifacts in order to avoid affecting the physical and chemical properties of these materials. In this work we will present the results of the ionizing radiation effects on the color and morphological properties of a featherwork from the Museum of Archeology and Ethnology of the University of São Paulo (MAE/USP). Samples of feathers were selected and irradiated with gamma rays at the Multipurpose Gamma Irradiation Facility applying absorbed doses between 0.5 kGy to 200 kGy. Samples were chosen according to the feather colors, photographed and analyzed using colorimetry with CIELAB 1976 color space scale before, and 48 hours after the irradiation doses and scanning electron microscopy. The results show no significant changes on color and morphological properties within the disinfection applied range.