Heather Joynes

Heather Joynes is a well–respected and skilled embroiderer and quilter. She is a whiz on the sewing machine and has volunteered in the Materials Conservation Unit for over 35 years making her the longest serving Australian Museum volunteer. Heather has worked on many exhibition and storage projects creating soft supports and mounting systems for objects and specimens. Heather has also designed a storage wheel (we call it a donut) which changed the way we store a huge variety of objects and has been so successful that other museums want it too!

Heather has contributed enormously to the care of the museum’s collections so much that it’s impossible to estimate how many objects she has worked on. These are just some of the major projects she has been involved with:

• Death; the last taboo exhibition
• Pieces of Paradise exhibition
• Abelam Gallery
• Storage systems for large fish
• Cover for the Opera House tapa
• Button blanket treatment
• Soft cushion inserts for the Pacific collection
• Textile conservation projects