Hand embroidered bride's dress from 19th century China, decorated with wisteria flowers woven in a delicate tapestry weave (TRC 2018.2840).Saturday 8th September. Gillian Vogelsang, director TRC, writes:

The last two weeks has seen a very diverse group of textiles and garments being donated to the TRC Leiden. These include nineteenth century Chinese garments, some of them for court officials, another for a bride, and also a number of Zoroastrian textiles and garments from Yazd in Iran and dating to the early 20th century (see below). The Zoroastrian garments are part of a donation by the Katayoun Keyani and Mehraban Bondarian family in America.

There is also a group of Peruvian hand knitted caps form the 1970’s (compare TRC 2018.2913). Some of these will appear in the TRC’s exhibition about hand knitting, planned for the autumn of 2019. And from the Indian subcontinent we received a donation of ralli quilts from Pakistan/western India, and these date from the 1960’s and 70’s (compare TRC 2018.2896, TRC 2018.2897, TRC 2018.2898 and TRC 2018.2899).

Small pouch with a drawstring from the Zoroastrian community in Iran, early 19th century (TRC 2018.2907).In addition, we were given a lovely late-nineteenth century Ottoman wedding dress (TRC 2018.2895) in dark red velvet with gold thread embroidery. This type of dress is called a bindalli and was something we were looking for in order to improve the Turkish presence in the collection. So it was a lovely surprise when we received an email asking if we wanted it. The dress will be included in the TRC’s exhibition about 600 years of velvet that opens in February 2019 in the TRC Gallery.

Several other velvet items have been acquired over the last few days for the same velvet exhibition, including a sumptuous red silk velvet decorated with gold paint. All of these pieces, and many more, are now online – please go to https://trc-leiden.nl/collection to see these and the other 22000 registered items in the TRC Collection. These items range in date from 7000 years ago to yesterday and will eventually cover the whole world of textiles and dress.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Prince Bernhard Culture Fonds the TRC is now in the process of updating and re-organising its website, and in particular its digital collection, online exhibitions, and access to the library.

Gillian Vogelsang, Saturday 8th September 2018