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A hand embroidered woman's wedding blouse from Croatia, early 20th century. This blouse was the first external donation to the TRC Collection, which was started in 1997 (TRC 1997.0067).The Textile Research Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands, was established almost thirty years ago, on 19th December 1991. Since then it has grown into a internationally recognised centre of excellence with a large collection of ca. 36,000 objects, a textile library of more than 5,000 books, and an extensive  programme of lectures, workshops and courses aimed at strengthening and inspiring craft and artisan skills in the intercultural world of textiles and dress. Despite the corona crisis, the TRC is thriving and optimistic about its future.

Next month, on 5 February, the TRC wll open its new exhibition American Quilts. To introduce you to the intriguing history of quilts and quilt making in America, we present to you the provisional text boards that will go with the exhibition. The texts were written by the two curators of the exhibition, Susan Cave and Beverley Bennett. A PDF file with the texts can be downloaded here. Enjoy!

It has been suggested that the writing and publishing of printed books will stop as a result of the internet, the use of ebooks and so forth. But we see little signs of this! The reverse, in fact. More and more books about textiles, dress and accessories are being published. It is the diversity of subjects that is particularly increasing. This diversity of subjects is highlighted in the following book recommendation for September 2019. These include books recently published and/or recently added to the TRC library.

• ARNOLDI, Mary Jo and Christine Mullen KREAMER (eds., 1995). Crowning Achievements: African Arts of Dressing the Head
• BERNER, Christoph, Manuel SCHÄFTER, Martin SCHOTT, Sarah SCHULZ and Martina WEINGÄRTNER (eds., 2019). Clothing and Nudity in the Hebrew Bible
• GHELERTE, Donna (ed., 2017). Marguerita Mergentime: American Textiles, Modern Ideas
• HAMILTON, Roy W. (1994). Gift of the Cotton Maiden: Textiles of Flores and the Solor Islands
• HOLLBERG, Cecilie (2017). Textiles and Wealth in 14th Century Florence: Wool, Silk, Painting
• RICHMOND, Vivienne (2013). Clothing the Poor in Nineteenth-Century England
• SPINAZZI-LUCCHESI, Chiara (2018). The Unwound Yarn. Birth and Development of Textile Tools between Levant and Egypt
• SUMMERFIELD, Anne and John (eds., 1999). Walk in Splendor: Ceremonial Dress and the Minangkabau
• TAKEDA, Sharon Sadako, Kaye DURLAND and Clarissa M. ESGUERRA (2016). Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear, 1715-2015
• YANIV, Bracha (2019). Ceremonial Synagogue Textiles from Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Italian Communities

Handwerklieden in de Straat van de Tentmakers, Cairo, Egypte.Met enige trots presenteert het TRC zeventien online tentoonstellingen, van een voorgenomen serie die de enorme collectie van het TRC voor het voetlicht zal brengen. De laatste toevoeging is: Textile Travels.

Alle online tentoonstellingen zijn gebaserd op de TRC Collectie en op TRC tentoonstellingen in het verleden. Tentoonstellingen kunnen op verzoek worden uitgeleend aan musea of andere geschikte lokaties. Als u belangstelling heeft, neemt u dan Dit e-mailadres wordt beveiligd tegen spambots. JavaScript dient ingeschakeld te zijn om het te bekijken. met ons op.

De zeventien titels zijn als volgt:

• Afghan dress
• Ancient Greek loom weights
• Appliqués from the Street of the Tentmakers, Cairo, Egypt
• Berlin wool charts
• Chinese lotus shoes
• Dressing the Stans
• For a few sacks more
• From Kaftan to Kippa
• From Buteh to Paisley; The story of a global icon
• Lace identification: 7 examples
• Maltese lace
• Out of Asia
• Textile Tales from the Second World War
• The 1920s from head to toe: Fashion from 100 years ago
• The Rainbow People: Celebrating 50 years of Stonewall
• Silk Embroidered Postcards from the First World War
• Textile Travels
• Velvet!

The new list of some of the books recently added to the TRC Library is very varied with respect to languages! It includes items in Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Russian as well as English. This variety is partly due to the fact that the director of the TRC attended a conference on handlooms at the National Silk Museum, Hangzhou, at the end of May 2018. During the course of the conference she was given, as well as purchased, a number of books about looms, textiles, clothing and embroidery. Some of these books are described below.

But the range of languages is also due to the fact that more and more people and indeed publishers are sending books to the TRC. The list reflects this growing interest in ‘real’ books about textiles, clothing and accessories in all their many and varied forms.

The number of textile books being produced is steadily increasing and it is clear from the range of subjects covered in the following list that authors from diverse academic and non-academic backgrounds have become involved in placing textiles and dress within their well-earned positions in cultural studies - in all its many forms. To make it easier for the reader, the TRC librarians are in the process of putting all the recommended books, discussed in the preceding years, into a single list based on author and title, which will then be linked to the TRC Library catalogue. Anyhow, below is a varied list of some of the publications recently added to the TRC library. For the online catalogue of the library, click here. For the list of reviews published in December last year, click here.

• ADAMS, Katherine Jean (2016). Comfort & Glory: Two Centuries of American Quilts from the Briscoe Center
• BUNN, Stephanie (2010). Nomadic Felts.
• DREWALL, Henry John and John MASON (1997). Beads, Body, and Soul: Art & Light in the Yoruba Universe.
• GRIFFITHS, Carolyn (2017). ‘Woad to This’ & the Cloth Trade of Frome
• HARLOW, Mary and Marie-Louise Nosch (2014). Greek and Roman Textiles and Dress: An Interdisciplinary Anthology
• THE KOREA FOUNDATION (2013). Hanbok: Timeless Fashion Tradition
• MATHUR, Saloni and Miwon Kwon (eds; 2015). Making Strange: Gagawaka + Post-mortem by Vivan Sundaram
• MENTGES, Gabriele, Lola SHAMUKHIDINOVA (eds., 2017). Textiles as National Heritage: Identities, Politics and Material Culture: Case studies from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Peru
• NIXON, GLORIA (2015). Rag Darlings. Dolls from the Feedsack Era
• SODE, Torben (2011). Perlen aus Glas: Farbige Geschichten