Conrad Mansion volunteer showcases history through fashion

As a youngster, Teresa Knutson dreamed of becoming a fashion designer but discovered her talents actually lay in constructing clothing and then later in curating historical fashion.

“When I was a little girl I wanted to be a fashion designer,” she said. “I would design clothes on a blackboard and then I learned to sew — it was always what I wanted to do. As I got older I started to realize that I was better on the craftsman side than I was on the design side. It takes a special sort of person to be a designer, a different type of creativity than to actually craft things.”

She went on to be an undergraduate major in costume and textile design, along with earning a minor in museum studies, and then later completed graduate work in costume and textile history. That coursework shaped the path for her career and now provides her knowledge base to serve in the role of volunteer curator of textiles at the Conrad Mansion in Kalispell.

She has been volunteering with the mansion since 2006. In that time she has inventoried all of the clothing and textiles in the collection and cataloged over 250 of the historic garments.

Each year she puts on a new historic clothing exhibit focusing on 19th- and 20th-Century fashion which are on display on all three floors of the historic home. Pioneer businessman Charles E. Conrad moved his family into the mansion in 1895.

Knutson uses fashion to tell the story of the time period, but also that of the Conrad family.

“Because the Conrads were fairly wealthy we’re not looking at the history of the working man in Kalispell, but what’s been collected here is the nicer clothing,” she says sitting off to the side of the grand hall at the mansion. “Then occasionally I add in a piece of clothing that may have been worn by a servant say in the laundry room.”

The home was donated to the city in 1975 by the youngest Conrad daughter. It was a time, Knutson said, when not as much importance was placed on preserving historic clothing as is today so an inventory was not kept for which garments belonged to which family members. And clothing was loaned out for theater performances.

“It wasn’t until the late 1970s that the Costume Society of America put out a statement that any clothing, or costume pieces and a collection are to be saved once they go into a museum for perpetuity and that they should not be worn,” she said.

Still, Knutson praises the collection as containing some pieces that can be traced back to having been worn by members of the Conrad family. It also includes items that have been added to supplement the collection.

KNUTSON CONSTRUCTED mannequins, a key in displaying historical clothing to make the garments look as though they are being worn, for the Rattlesnake Kate dress at the Greeley History Museum, for the Memphis Rock n' Soul Museum, for the exhibit Aluminum by Design at The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, and for the Edgar Paxson shirt at the Missoula County Courthouse.

But one of her best sources of knowledge of the history and construction of historic costumes or clothing came from her decade spent as a seamstress and pattern maker in the Minnesota Opera Company costume shop.

“That was a wonderful way to learn clothing construction,” she said. “There was a dichotomy in where you were going to be accurate to the period or going to show the characters, but usually we were fairly period accurate so I learned.”

Working in theater provides an opportunity to be around other creative people, she notes, but because of her interest in the historic side of clothing, she gravitated toward working in museums.

“I loved making the things but over time, I came to realize I think I love the history of it more,” she said.

For the Conrad mansion, Knutson has put together exhibits based upon fashion trends of certain eras, shown off clothing for holidays like Christmas and has tied the exhibits to modern-day interests as when she put together a show playing off the popularity of the PBS TV show “Downton Abbey.”

Much of the themes come from the clothing available in the mansion. Right now Knutson is preparing an exhibit focusing on the clothing worn for recreation and sports between the 1880s and 1970.

To coincide with the exhibit, she prepares fashion tours that take visitors throughout the mansion explaining the history of clothing woven together with the history of the era and the Conrad family. She reads and researches extensively in preparation for the exhibits.

“I learn so much during the process as I’m figuring out what I’m going to talk about and how I’m going to pull the exhibits together,” she said.

Knutson says there’s a civic responsibility to volunteer where you live and volunteering at the mansion makes sense for her.

“I feel like here I can give my expertise on something I like doing that fulfills me and also helps the mansion,” she said. “I always have hoped by doing nice costume exhibits that would help the Conrad mansion because I think the Conrad mansion is a real asset. It's part of the history of Kalispell, and I think it's a real asset to the city.”

Features Editor Heidi Desch may be reached at 758-4421 or hdesch@dailyinterlake.com.