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Bunschoten-Spakenburg mannequin between two quilts with Dutch-inspired designs. Nantes, April 2023We would like to let you know about some developments and events during the last few days: Firstly, Beverley Bennett, our shop manager and quilt guru, has been participating in an international quilt festival in Nantes (France) between 19-22 April 2023.

The festival is called Pour l’Amour du Fil (‘For the love of thread’) with the theme ‘The Netherlands from every angle’. Beverley had three quilts on display, while the TRC lent three mannequins dressed in Bunschoten-Spakenburg, Marken and Volendam regional dress.

At the same time a group from the TRC went to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam for an international conference called 'Under the Microscope' (20-21 April). It was a stimulating and thought provoking event! A report about the conference can be found here.

The Textile Research Centre (TRC) in Leiden is proud to announce the publication, on 20 April 2023, of volume three of the Bloomsbury World Encyclopedia of Embroidery, which covers sub-Saharan Africa. The work was completed under the aegis of the TRC and edited by Dr Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, director of the TRC and also chief author, together with her husband, Dr Willem Vogelsang. For the official Bloomsbury announcement of the book, click here. 

Encyclopedia of Embroidery from Sub-Saharan Africa, Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood and Willem Vogelsang

Last year we were given a number of Romanian blouses by Monique Amsel from Paris. At the time we wrote a blog about this donation. In order to gain more information about these embroidered garments a special meeting was held last year that was organised by members of the Romanian community living here in the Netherlands.

Romanian Blouse Day, 8 April 2023. Photograph Maria Linkogle.

Paysanne de l'Angoumois (Southwest France), wearing clogs. Costume print, France, late 18th century (TRC 2023.0388).

It's been busy over the last few weeks at the TRC! No surprise there, it's is simply getting busier and busier as we have new activities, visitors, items for the collection, etc.

Some good news – thanks to the efforts of a colleague, Maria Linkogle, the TRC has just been given a grant via the national Cultuurparticipatie programme for working with various groups of people, especially those with Middle Eastern backgrounds living in the Netherlands.

Hand embroidered raffia panel from DR Congo, late 20th century (TRC 2021.2201).We recently published a TRC blog about some Philippine textiles that were made from fibres of the Abaca plant, a member of the banana family. In this blog I would like to draw attention to another interesting type of fibre namely raffia (raphia), which comes from the raffia palm (especially Raphia ruffia and Raphia taedigera) in Africa.

Apart from those two, there are more species of raffia palm that are all native to sub-Saharan Africa, especially West and Central Africa, as well as Madagascar. They grow in marshy or swampy areas, especially in tropical forests or other places with a plentiful supply of water. 

Raphia australis tree. Kirstenbosch Gardens, Cape Town. Photograph by Andrew Massyn.The Raffia palm has long, curving pinnate leaves that can grow up to about 16 m (Rapphia regalis leaves can grow up to 25 m length and 3 m in width), but the best raffia is said to come from the younger leaves of about 1 m in length. The fibre itself is made from the upper epidermis of the leaves, which is removed in the form of long, thin fibres that are bundled together and then allowed to dry slowly.

In most parts of Africa the fibres are used in single lengths, rather than being spun or spliced like other fibres such as flax. This means that the length of the fibres defines the size of the finished product. Most finished products are therefore max. 2 m in size. The main exception is Madagascar where the fibres are spliced and twisted together.

The online BBC News recently (29 March) published a short, but fascinating article by Kan Zhang about the so-called ‘Dream Weavers’ of the island of Mindanao of the Philippine archipelago (to be downloaded here). They are women of the indigenous T’boli people, who live around Lake Sebu in the southern part of the island.

T'nalak cloth of the T'boli people, southern Mindanao, Philippines (TRC 2022.2909).

Costume print, France, from 'Costumes de différents pays' (c. 1797), by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (1757-1810) (TRC 2023.0004).Over the last few months the TRC has acquired a number of antique prints that will be used to illustrate various mini- exhibitions (actual and digital) as well as publications (notably the Bloomsbury World Encyclopedia of Embroidery), as well as lectures and workshops on the themes of textiles, their production and use.

One of the late 18th century prints (TRC 2023.0004), for example, depicts a woman knitting with four knitting needles, while a cat plays with a ball of knitting yarn and a dog and a parrot look on. The print comes from Costumes de différents pays by the French encyclopaedist Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (1757-1810).

Another group of prints depict various trades in late 17th century Amsterdam from the famous book by Jan Luyken (1649-1712) and his son Casper (1672-1708), called Spiegel van het Menselyk Bedryf (1694, Amsterdam).

Following donations of another forty quilts to the TRC last year from David and Bonnie Naifeh Smith of Arizona and Sherry Cook of Seattle, I have now finished documenting them and they have been added to the Quilt Index website (see a previous blog of 16 August 2021). The Quilt Index (Michigan University) is an online depository of thousands of quilts from collections all over the USA and they have been expanding their remit to include collections in Europe and further afield, such as those of the TRC.

We now have a total of 152 quilts documented on their site – these can be accessed via quilt index.org and the TRC page can be found under Museums. A few highlights from the new quilts are illustrated below;

A child’s quilt embroidered with baby animals including rabbits, chickens, kittens and puppies from about the 1930’s (TRC 2022.1147).