From the Bangkok Post:
Flying in and out of Bangkok regularly over the past two years is textile conservator Julia Brennan. US-based Brennan is no newcomer to Thailand, having grown up in Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai at the time Her Majesty the Queen was establishing the Support Foundation and reviving the nearly lost textile traditions.
Julia Brennan has taught textile conservation in Asia for the past decade. She helped establish the National Textile Museum, under the royal patronage of HM Ashi Sangay Wangchuk in Bhutan. Over a period of eight years she helped train the first generation of Bhutanese textile conservators.
However, working in Thailand as a professional conservator, to preserve Thai cultural treasures was a long held dream that has now come true. In Thailand, she has been working on a number of textile projects, mainly as a consultant training a group of textile conservators, helping to set up a new textile conservation laboratory, and helping to establish the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles, organised under the Support Foundation and Her Majesty’s the Queen’s Personal Affairs Division Office. The museum is expected to open in August.
Another project, which she has just completed, is the conservation of the ceremonial robe presented by King Chulalongkorn to Phraya Cholayuth Yothin, otherwise known as Vice Admiral Andreas du Plessis de Richelieu, a Danish navy officer who became the first and only foreigner to take command of the Royal Thai Navy at the beginning of the 20th century…
