At the end of February 2022 the Textile Research Centre in Leiden was contacted by Karin Scheper and Anouk Mansfeld of the University Libraries Leiden (UB), about the proposed donation of a large collection of personal letters, documents, publications, photo albums, as well as furniture, statuettes, textiles and garments. The department Bijzondere Collecties of the UB was seriously thinking about accepting many of the items, but not the textiles and garments. Was the TRC interested?
Official hand-over by the Ottow family of documents and textiles to the University Libraries and the TRC: Sitting behind the table: Prof. Annetje Ottow (Chair, Leiden University Board, second from the left), and her husband (to the far left), sister (right), and brother (far right). Standing behind them, from left to right: Dr Alette Stas-Bax (Chair Leids Universiteitsfonds), Dr Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood (Director Textile Research Centre), and Dr Kurt De Belder (Director Leiden University Libraries). Photograph by Guus Janssen, Leiden University Libraries.
The items originate from a number of families connected to the former Dutch East Indies. Max Velsing was the assistant-resident in Atjeh, Sumatra, after 1918. He was married to Thecla Caspari. Her sister was married to the assistent-resident of Surakarta, in Java. Their daughter was married to Samuel Ottow, also assistent-resident. Most of the items and documents of the Ottow collection, as the donation came to be called, date to the 1920s.
After the sudden death of Max Velsing, his grieving widow, Thecia Velsing-Caspari, shut down their Indonesian home, shipped everything back to the Netherlands and just about all of it was then put in boxes and left because the memories were too painful. The textiles and garments, for example, were placed in three steamer trunks that were seldom opened again over the ensuing 75 years.
On the Wednesday, 2nd March, I went to the UB to have a look at the textiles and garments. I must admit I was not expecting too much. But it soon became clear, as the three trunks with textiles were opened by Anouk and Karin on behalf of the library and myself, that there was a lot of potential, especially as it was known who owned the pieces (‘Tante T’ as Thecla Velsing-Caspari is still known in the family), when and where they were acquired (1920s, many in Indonesia) and how many of the pieces were actually used (thanks to the photographs).
Having the context and the story behind an object is extremely helpful when dealing with a single or group of items. It means we can understand them far better than if they were ‘simply’ beautiful or technically interesting items.
Another story that emerged while looking at the textiles and garments was that the pieces were not all Dutch or Indonesian in origin. Some of them came from the Eastern Mediterranean, others from Yemen, India, as well as some pieces that were Chinese in style. In other words, they represented the Velsing family’s ocean liner trips between the Netherlands and Indonesia.
A typical voyage of the time from Holland to the East saw the ship passing through the Suez Canal, down the Red Sea to Aden in Yemen, then across the Indian Ocean and visiting various ports in India, before traveling onto Malaysia and Indonesia. There, due to trade, social, economic, and political connections, there were many craftspeople from China, India and Malaysia. All of these aspects are represented by the Velsing-Caspari photographs and travel documents, as well as the textiles and garments.
The next visit to the collection took place on 21st March when we met members of the Ottow family, including Prof. Annetje Ottow, who is the Chair of the Leiden University Board, her brother Juriaan and sister, Willemijn, as well as UB staff. It was agreed at this meeting that the TRC would be given the textiles, garments and accessories.
The next meeting was on the 24th June when there was a formal signing and hand-over of items both to the UB and the TRC. As part of the event the UBL made a display of photo albums open at the pages where textiles and garments were prominent. To complement the photographs the TRC staged a display of three outfits from the collection, namely a Dutch-style white, afternoon dress, a Dutch-style evening dress in black lace, and a pink, more or less ‘Chinese’ style outfit. Based on photographs, we know that the latter outfit consisted of a pair of red velvet, Western style shoes with block heels (very 1920s!), embroidered trousers of apparently Indian origin, and a Chinese style skirt and blouse.
Signing the agreement: from left to right Willemijn Goosen-Ottow, Prof. Annetje Ottow and Dr Gillian Vogelsang- Eastwood.
As part of the proceedings various speeches and talks were given, including one by Anouk Mansfeld about the photographs, and another by Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, concerning the textiles and their significance.
So what is the TRC going to do with the textiles and garments? We want (a) to put everything online, together with photographs, in the digital TRC Collection catalogue by the autumn of 2022, (b) to highlight via blogs various aspects of the donation, such as the global nature of the pink 'Chinese' outfit mentioned above, (c) to work on an online exhibition about the Holland-to-Indonesia sea trip hinted at by the range of textiles in the donation, (d) to use the ikats from the donation for the TRC’s reference collection of Indonesian ikats currently being worked upon by an TRC intern from Amsterdam University, Kelly Wong, and (e) to start a similar reference collection for batiks.
All of these projects will be carried out in conjunction with the UB as the documents and photographs form an invaluable and unique collection of illustrative materials. These images include official portraits, family events, costume moments (‘Tante T’ liked to wear ‘exotic’ outfits), as well as ‘room-scapes’ that show various locations inside the family's home and how these rooms were decorated.
As noted above, in various cases we can identify particular textiles and garments in the photographs with items in the collection.
Together these facets of the Ottow collection will add more depth and colour to our understanding of life in Indonesia during the 1920s, as well as illustrate artisan textile techniques of the period, and the movement of textiles as part of Asian Globalization.
Anouk Mansfeld and Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, 4 July 2022
