Modern American quilt with scalloped edge. Size: 234 x 204 cm (TRC 2018.3133).Sunday, 30th December 2018: Gillian Vogelsang, director TRC, announces a new exhibition at the TRC, to be opened in February 2020.

Almost four hundred years ago, in 1620, a group of 102 English Protestant Puritans left the town of Leiden where they had found refuge some ten years before, and sailed via Plymouth in England, on board the Mayflower, to Massachusetts in America. The Pilgrim Fathers, as they were to be called, are traditionally regarded as the founders of the United States. A daughter of two of the Pilgrims, namely Myles and Barbara Standish, has become famous for producing the first extant embroidery sampler in the USA, commonly known as the Loara Standish sampler. For more information on this physical link between Leiden and the Pilgrims, see the entry in TRC Needles.

To mark the 400-year anniversary of the Massachusetts settlement, in 2020, Leiden is organising the Mayflower 400 programme with a series of exhibitions, theatre productions, sports meetings, and many other events. For more information, see https://www.visitleiden.nl/nl/ontdek-leiden/specials/pilgrim

As part of the Mayflower 400 programme, the Textile Research Centre (TRC) in Leiden will be setting up an exhibition and series of workshops about two hundred years of American quilt making. This has been made possible by the recent donation of over fifty American quilts and quilt tops by Mrs. Sherry Cook and others. Examples of quilts dating from the 1830’s to the present day will be on display. A series of lectures on (American) quilts and quilt making will accompany the exhibition. There will also be practical workshops, during which various technical aspects of quilting will be explored.

The exhibition is being organised in conjunction with Sherry Cook from Washington state, USA; Susan Cave (New Zealand/The Hague) and Beverley Bennett (UK/The Hague).