Dr. OYAMA Yuzuruha (Tokyo National Museum) and Dr. Melissa M. Rinne (Kyoto National Museum) visiting the TRC, Friday 15 March 2019.On Friday 15 March 2019, Gillian Vogelsang wrote:

We had two very interesting visitors to the TRC today, namely OYAMA Yuzuruha (Tokyo National Museum) and Melissa M. Rinne (Kyoto National Museum). They are on a study tour of various West European museums and private institutes as part of a much larger project to study pre-1939 Japanese textile and dress collections, including those that found their way to Europe.

They came to the TRC in order to see our current exhibition about velvet, and stayed for several hours to see what the TRC actually does (they were particularly taken with the Dutch lace caps), as well as to look at our collection of Japanese textiles and garments. They had a long discussion with Francesco Montuori, a TRC student, who is working on a MA about Japanese culture. He is also cataloguing the TRC’s collection of Japanese textiles and garments.

Various garments were brought out and discussed. We will be amending some of our catalogue entries based on what was said.

There was also an impromptu kimono folding session, which was really interesting and fun. Francesco is now seriously interested in the idea of staging an exhibition about Japanese garments and culture at the TRC. More news about this will be presented in due course.

Needless to say we are now looking for donations of Japanese textiles and garments and funding to stage such an exhibition in 2022 (which sounds a long way away, but it will soon come).

Both Francesco and I are looking forward to working with these colleagues from Japan in due course.