In 1915, Blackmore began teaching courses within the areas of clothing and textile design at Cornell. By 1925, she became the first department head of the newly formed Clothing and Textiles Department. While developing the department’s curriculum, she recognized the need for students to access garments, textiles, and accessories in order for them to gather information and inspiration. Prior to her trip around the world in 1936, Blackmore largely relied on the collections of other professionals, faculty members, and students on and around Cornell’s campus. Initially, she worked with the art collector, Helen Jewett, who owned and operated The Little Bungalow Shop in Cortland, N.Y. Throughout the interwar period, Jewett gave several talks on Cornell’s campus related to ancient textiles and ethnological dress. Blackmore also took her students up to Cortland to view Jewett’s vast collection of textiles in 1935. Blackmore’s collaboration with Jewett eventually led her to donate artifacts from her personal collection of Central European and Asian clothing and textiles to Cornell in 1953. Following her retirement in 1951, Blackmore expressed the extent to which Jewett’s collection had served as a “constant source of inspiration and delight to both the staff and the students” on Cornell’s campus. Blackmore also collaborated with other faculty in the department. Throughout the 1930s, Blackmore worked with Professor Margaret Humphrey who traveled extensively throughout Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and collected examples of European peasant dress, including the Moravian kroj she later donated to the collection.

In addition to working with those dress collections assembled by other faculty and professionals, Blackmore collaborated with several students who had either traveled or lived abroad. For instance, Olivia Pei-Heng Wu ‘39, a graduate student at Cornell from Peiping, China, lent Blackmore several garments from her personal wardrobe for the 1938 showcase, "Costumes of Many Lands," one of which she donated to the collection in 1939. Several years later, Wu's qipao was used by Jean Allanson ‘45 as a source of inspiration for her final project in Textiles and Clothing 400. As seen in the photograph, Allanson was inspired by the round collar and asymmetrical closure that is characteristic of the qipao. Blackmore’s collaborations with professionals, faculty, and students thus demonstrate her sustained interest in collecting, documenting, and exhibiting ethnological dress on Cornell’s campus, as well as the networks she formed in order to provide her students with primary materials for design research and instruction.

Ruth Burdick Sharp arrived at Cornell with her husband, Lauriston Sharp, when he was hired as the university’s first anthropology faculty appointment. As the wife of a faculty member, Sharp was active in the Cornell community, notably with the Campus Club, which supported women on Cornell’s campus, and with international students, especially those from Thailand. Sharp collected textiles, clothing, and ceramics when she was in Thailand accompanying Lauriston Sharp on anthropological fieldwork projects, starting in the late 1940s. Through her fieldwork experience, alongside additional research, she gained expertise on Southeast Asian pottery. Sharp likely acquired the collection that she donated to the Anthropology department during the Bennington-Cornell Survey of the Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand, which was conducted in 1963-64.The survey focused on documenting tribal peoples and ethnic minorities who resided in the forested hill regions of Northern Thailand. Although focused only on Thailand, these communities also live in other areas of Southeast Asia including Laos, Myanmar, and China and in diasporic communities across the world. The survey project, which was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development, was meant to add to the sparse literature on these communities and coincided with increased U.S. presence in the area.The project also aimed to aid the integration of these Indigenous communities into the larger Thai nation, supporting Thai government interests and aligning with the nation’s cold war strategies in Southeast Asia. While in Thailand for the Bennington-Cornell Survey, Sharp could not travel as freely throughout the region as her male counterparts, and so acquired some of her collection through her interactions with American and British missionaries stationed in the region. She also formed connections with other Westerners, including Peace Corps volunteers, and worked with these individuals on projects regarding tribal arts and crafts markets.

Sharp’s collection was not part of the official scope of the fieldwork project, which focused on development in Northern Thailand and the integration of tribal members into the Thai nation; however, she did author a small number of essays that connect her collecting interests with the project’s developmental goals and were published in edited reports documenting the project. Additionally, her input was valued. According to a Cornell Annual Report, Sharp’s contribution to the fieldwork focused on the modifications and changes to folk art practices in the region. Therefore, she found ways to integrate her collecting practices into the larger anthropological project, even if they might not have been understood as integral to the project itself, by others. In addition, Ruth, and her collection, provide information about the construction of anthropological knowledge and Cornell’s anthropology department by her positioning within the periphery of the anthropological project.