Joy S. Emery, above, curator of the University of Rhode Island’s commercial pattern archive, looks through the archives which recently acquired a number of McCall’s patterns. Below, volunteer Roberta Hale holds an original cloth model of a bodice produced by A. Burdette Smith around 1875.

The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl Gretchen Ertl

SOUTH KINGSTOWN ‘We’re quite thrilled with these,” said Joy S. Emery, curator of the University of Rhode Island’s commercial pattern archive.

She was referring to recently acquired Butterick patterns from McCall’s. The patterns date from 1871 to 2000, and will be added to the 40,000 commercial patterns already woven into URI’s collection, thought to be the largest commercial clothing pattern collection in the world.

Emery, of West Kingston, is a URI professor emerita of theater and former adjunct professor of textiles, fashion merchandising and design. She devotes most of her retirement days to the second floor of the university library, where, in a back office of Special Collections, she examines the amassed patterns.

Then she scans them into an electronic database.

“We’ve done about two-thirds of them,” she said. And just when she and the other volunteers think they see a glimmer of light, more boxes arrive.

“We keep getting new things here,” she said, laughing.

Emery and the rest of the team recently put aside their daily scanning — they are up to about 1984 — to incorporate the newest patterns.

The patterns were donated to URI, she said, “to protect them and because they wanted the patterns to be more accessible.”

EMERY HAS BEEN working with pattern companies “for a number of years,” so her archival expertise with the patterns has taken on its own notability.

Emery, 70, gets calls from people around the world doing research about particular types of garments. With much of the collection archived, it is becoming a great deal easier to find what she is looking for.

Emery has been collecting patterns personally for more than 30 years. By way of a friendship with a New York costume designer, Betty Williams, Emery inherited Williams’ 12,000 patterns when the designer died.

Pretty soon, a collection was born, and after finding a home at the URI library, the collection also found it had developed a reputation, with inquiries — and donations — coming in from around the nation.

Emery pulled out a few of the newly acquired patterns, smiling in delight at the sight of each one, handling them as carefully as rare historical documents — which, to her, they are.

A pattern for a 1926 scarf wrap looks not unlike a wrap from current fashion magazine pages.

“What’s so fabulous is that some of them have never been used,” Emery said of the patterns.

EMERY’S VOLUNTEER JOB is never done, because the collection attracts more patterns, and because Emery is so enamored of them.

“It’s a passion for me,” she said. “I really believe in this project, and it’s an important part of out cultural heritage.

“In a way, it’s never-ending. But it helps keep me young.”

To learn more about the collection, check www.uri.edu/library/special_collections/COPA/home.htm

To contact Emery, call (401) 874-2713.