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ST. PAUL (AP) ― Duane Schumann has removed an ink spot from Prince's pants, cleaned Tiger Jack Rosenbloom's suit and taken care of the clothes in the "Titanic" exhibit.

Schumann is the restoration manager of Treasured Garment Restoration in Stillwater. For the past 12 years, he has cleaned and cared for some of the state's most historic outfits. If you donate an antique wedding gown to the Minnesota Historical Society or the Goldstein Museum of Design at the University of Minnesota, chances are Schumann will clean it. He also regularly spruces up costumes for the Minnesota Opera and the Guthrie Theater.

One of Schumann's latest cleaning coups was a christening gown, circa 1876, that had yellowed and had tiny tears in the fabric caused by "bacteria from baby spit-up and other things," said Melissa Schille, who had it cleaned ahead of her grandson's baptism.

Schille, of South St. Paul, called the Minnesota Historical Society, and a curator referred her to Schumann at Treasured Garment Restoration, a division of St. Croix Cleaners.

Schumann cleaned the gown in early April.

"He didn't have to do much," Schille said. "They cleaned it and got out all the old bacteria and old stains. It's absolutely stunning." The bill came to $126.84.

Ironically, a job in dirt led Schumann, 37, to dry-cleaning. He was working for a company that recycles contaminated soil when he decided it was time for a career change.

"I just kept praying that I could get out of that dirty, dirty business," he said. He worked for Clean'n'Press, Don's Leather Cleaning and Best Cleaning and Restoration before joining Treasured Garment Restoration last year.

"I've always been interested in vintage clothes," he said. "I was always interested in my grandmother's clothes. ... My mother always thought I was weird."

When he's not cleaning and preserving vintage clothing, Schumann paints custom designs on street rods and motorcycles.

"I do that in my spare time," he said. "I like it, but not as much as I like doing antique and vintage clothing."

On a recent weekday, he worked on an 1898 baptismal gown that was remarkably white for its age and had a butterfly shaped lace inset on its front. "There's not much oxidation," he said. "There's some really intricate tatting work -- that's handmade lace."

With surgical precision, Schumann snipped the tiniest bit of fabric from an inside seam at the bottom of the gown. First, he tested its tensile strength by tugging on it slightly. The minimal resistance he encountered was a good sign, he said.

"If it pulls away too easy, that tells me that the fabric is weak," he said. "This looks really good."

Then, using tweezers, he burned a bit of the white cloth and analyzed its smell and the makeup of its ashes.

"I look at my charts, and this ash leads me to cotton batiste," he said. "It's a real fine cotton."

Schumann has a Zen-like approach to preserving clothes: "There are six things that I always say: 'Patience and test. Patience and test. Patience and test.' And if you do those six things, you should be able to clean anything."

He cleans all vintage clothes by hand. To turn yellow clothes white again, he spends hours soaking and rinsing them.

He uses a special vacuum to dry the clothes. "I wrap it with nylon, so no fibers can come through," he said. "I just want that moisture to come out. And then I lay it flat to dry. The finishing is all done by hand. They become amazingly white."

The yellower the clothes, the more expensive the cleaning process. Schumann charges $75 an hour.

For example, a tea-colored Edwardian wedding gown -- dating to about 1901 -- likely will cost $400 to $500 to clean and preserve, Schumann said. The dress, displayed on a mannequin near Schumann's worktable, likely will be donated to the Minnesota Historical Society or the Goldstein Gallery. Next to it is a row of tiny antique christening gowns -- all handmade.

Schumann said he never worries about ruining someone's family heirloom.

"I've got confidence in myself," he said. "You've got to have confidence in yourself when you're tackling something like this -- confidence, not cockiness.

"Before the customer sees it, I want to feel as happy as the customer," he said. "This, just seeing what I accomplish in the cleaning, makes me happy and confident that the customer is going to be happy."

His oldest piece to date is a wedding gown from 1826; he also restored an 1898 needlepoint birth announcement in German. Many of his referrals come from the Minnesota Historical Society, he said.

Linda McShannock, collections curator for the Minnesota Historical Society, said the society gets two to three calls a week from people who want to donate or preserve historic garments. Pieces of interest to the Historical Society are those that come with documentation or oral history detailing the origin.

"We are very conservative about what we take into the collection," McShannock said. "We look for things that are in good condition and don't duplicate what we already have. We look at things that have good family histories to them -- that are especially pertinent to Minnesota history. And we look for objects that relate to other items in our collections -- we look for completeness and relevance."

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