Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Hanging Securely

It's too easy for me to ask Ben to take care of these things, but I want to be a little more of a self-sufficient Kiwi girl, so I tried this myself.

Since early 2008, I've wanted to have my scarves at Refinery Art Gallery shop, but there were two problems. The first is, I wanted to develop a drastically different style to reflect the funkiness of the Refinery, and this took a while. Tomorrow, I'm dropping off the four which were in the Waiheke Art Gallery exhibition.

The other problem was, The Refinery wanted me to make sure my scarves were secure, and suggested I bring in a lockable cabinet. But mine are textiles, and I wanted them out in the open, yet relatively secure. Besides, the shop does not have space for yet another cabinet. I thought it couldn't be that difficult, so I worked it out in my head about a year ago, and finally made the new rig this afternoon.

* I had a dowel 183cm long with nails in the center of both ends for fishing line to be tied. (Top photo on the link.)
* First I removed the fishing line.
* I sawed this into two, 91cm and 92cm long respectively.
* I took the nail out of one end of the shorter 91cm dowel and nailed it into the other end of longer 92cm dowel.
* I put in an eye hook at each end of the shorter 91cm dowel.
* I tied the fishing lines to the nails, and threaded them through the eye hooks.

Above, you can see the rig still bows a little, which was a problem at The Suter, and I only have one small cotton scarf hung. With more, or with a heavier weight fabric, I'm not sure if I can avoid this. (The knots will be secured tightly by Ben later, then cut and perhaps burned off.)

However, the rig and the scarves will be hung against a wall at the gallery (here, the cardboard box), so I don't think the bowing will be too much of a problem. Staff need to simply lift the top bar and hang or remove scarves, but when you pull on a scarf, it catches on the dowels, so at least it can't be taken in an instant.

It's hilariously simple, but I am pleased with myself. It didn't take me 10 minutes, much shorter than editing photos and writing up this post!

3 comments:

  1. That is great. I'll remember that!

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  2. it occurs to me that if you find this still does not deter thieves, you could also try an eye hook in both dowels and a simple cable lock with a key.

    Not sure how persistent those gallery thieves are over there.

    p.s. it occurred to me why you liked the window decor in my studio, it is very girly and as you said on the podcast, you love girly things!

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  3. Desiree, inexpensive, too!

    One of the things I considered is to make it easy for staff to take scarves off when, hopefully, they sell it, ergo no locks. But I shall keep it in mind and let them know, Dana.

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