Blog

Another ‘quiet’ week at the TRC Leiden! We have been involved in giving the 5-day Intensive Textile Course, which as many of you will know, is a basic and yes, intense, introduction to textiles.

In just a short time, a wide variety of subjects are discussed and actually practised, ranging from fibre identification to what is embroidery via weaving (including velvet making), not to mention natural dyeing, resist-dyeing, leather and printing….. a tiring week but fun to be immersed in textiles for a short period of time.

Fig. 1. Sample of Siberian, woolly mammoth hair (Mammuthus primigenius) (TRC 2023.1510).The course wants to help people to understand and be able to ‘read’ a textile and its practical, social, economic and cultural significances. For a participant's impression of the December 2024 version, click here.

This week’s course participants included museum curators, academics, commercial world people, students, as well as people who are ‘simply’ interested in textiles. It was noticeable that they all ended up at the café around the corner, some with a beer, celebrating the week (or was it their survival?) and making new textile friends.

A highlight moment? It must be when we discussed a sample of Siberian mammoth hair from the TRC collection (Fig. 1). The fibres had been analysed, DNA’ed and dated by the National Forensic Institute in a joint project with the TRC.

The TRC exhibition on haori (a Japanese garment worn as a short jacket) is a wonderful banquet of colour and design. What I find most intriguing however, are the linings of the jackets, which often display designs not meant for outsiders to see. These for-your-eyes-only designs raise tantalizing questions. What does it feel like to carry these hidden pictures? What do these designs mean to the wearer?

Man's haori with a lining that has a woven design of Mount Fuji. Japan, 20th century (TRC 2024.1052).

These questions make the dozen or so black haori (TRC 2024.1051 to 2024.1066) in the TRC collection so interesting. The haori are mostly made for men, but there are a few for women. These garments are a monochrome black on the outside, sometimes with small, discrete family crests on the back and sleeves.

The linings, however, are another story. Inside are beautiful woven or painted pictures, like two boats sailing in front of Mount Fuji (TRC 2024.1052); or a dragon curved around a volcano (TRC 2024.1054); or a colourful mountain scene and a curled, sleeping cat (TRC 2024.1065). Why did the wearer select these scenes?

Man's haori from Japan, 20th century, with on the lining a painted design of a volcano (TRC 2024.1054).

Many of these haori were acquired last year, when the TRC conducted a crowdfunding campaign to purchase them. TRC supporters are a generous group of people, so the campaign was a success. As a thank-you, many funders, including myself, received a lovely cotton furoshiki.

My orange coloured furoshiki had a lovely repeating fan motif. But I had never heard of a furoshiki before. What was this squarish-shaped cotton cloth used for? I looked up furoshiki in the TRC’s on-line collection to see two further examples. One had a delicate geometric pattern (TRC 2009.0421), while the other was a green cloth with a rather non-Japanese looking paisley, or buteh, pattern (TRC 2021.2150).

Fig. 1. Cotton woman's plastron, hand woven and hand embroidered. Vergina, Greece, 20th century (TRC 2025.0221).I am happy to share my first post for the TRC. My name is Paul Cochet, and I am a Master's student in Design Cultures at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Since early February, I have been an intern at the TRC.

Shortly after my arrival, I learned that the TRC had recently received a collection of garments and textiles from the former Yugoslavia. This immediately piqued my interest, as my grandmother was Slovenian.

However, I found the term 'former Yugoslavia' somewhat unsatisfactory—while the region shares many cultural similarities, national and regional identities remain strong. On Gillian Vogelsang's suggestion, I set out to identify the precise origins of each piece, secretly hoping to find some Slovenian artifacts among them.

This collection of 58 items, which included complete garments, but also embroidered panels meant to be added to such garments, as well as cords used to fasten them, was generously donated by Annelies van Eijk-Kuiper.

Fragment of a block-printed cotton cloth dyed with a resist technique. India, 14th cenury, excavataed in Quseir al-Qadim, Red Sea coast, Egypt (TRC 2020.0272).During the last few weeks I have attended two international meetings about archaeological and historical textiles, clothing, and how to present them to different audiences.

Göttingen meeting

The first meeting was held on the 6-8 March 2025 in the Dept. of Archaeology, University of Göttingen, Germany and was organised by Dr. Berit Hildebrandt, a Classicist. The theme of the meeting was the Silk Road and had the title: The spread of sericulture and fine plant fibres along the Silk Roads in Antiquity, with outlooks on later epochs.

The Göttingen meeting was inter-disciplinary in nature and included linguists, classicists, historians, archaeologists, museum curators and conservation groups. Trying to understand ancient references to textiles, and in particular cotton, dominated the 1.5 day meeting.

There was an interesting range of short talks given about textiles, techniques, tools and uses from Egypt, India, Central Asia, China, etc. These included a short lecture about excavated textiles from Bukhara, Uzbekistan, and about the use of Chinese sources to work out where textiles were being made and how they were distributed. I also enjoyed a presentation about the history and role of the Krefeld Textile Museum (Germany) and learning about the origins of the museum as a teaching institute for textile techniques and design.

Small fagment of silk cloth (warp-faced compound cloth), China/Silk Road, c. 2nd century AD (TRC 2000.0009).

Over the last few months we have been looking at presenting more information about specific textiles or groups of objects to the public. In this context, we have been talking with various groups about a range of scientific analysis techniques that can be carried out at the TRC or elsewhere.

A slightly domed metal button with an alpha-type shank, with flowers within flowers inside a dotted border on the front. The Netherlands, 15th-16th century (TRC 2024.2582).We are already working with various techniques. Emilie Lambert, a TRC volunteer and archaeology student (Leiden University), for example, is examining a group of 15th to 19th century metal buttons that were found in the Netherlands. She wrote a separate blog on the subject, published on 16th October 2024.

Emilie is studying the buttons with XRF (X-ray Fluorescence). This non-destructive technique sends radioactive signals through an object, and quickly provides precise ratios of its elemental components.

The knowledge gained is often used for provenancing. With respect to the TRC buttons, this work is being carried out in order to identify what exactly they are made from and perhaps determine their provenance, but also to see if there are similarities that might indicate  if any have the same profile, suggesting they might even have been made in the same workshop. The aim is to have some of the metal analysis results appearing in the TRC Database from May onwards.

My name is Mayte Van den Broeck, an MA student of Heritage and Memory at the University of Amsterdam, who started an internship at the TRC in early February. As my first month as an intern at the TRC has flown by, I wanted to reflect on the experiences I have had so far by describing what a day at the TRC can look like as an intern.

Fig. 1. An impression of the depot with the TRC collection.A typical day starts at 9am with a cup of tea, as I organise what I plan to do that day. One of my main tasks as an intern is to go through the Chinese collection in the depot (Fig. 1), box by box, to make sure that each textile piece is in order. This means checking each piece for issues such as mold or damage, as well as making sure all the information on each piece is present and correct in the database.

When I started with this particular work, the very first box I chose from the Chinese collection, picked at random, was full of shoes, particularly lotus shoes (see the TRC online exhibition on the subject). The practice of foot binding started over a thousand years ago in the Early Song Dynasty (960-1279) and lasted until the early 20th century.

The girls and women whose feet were bound, in accordance to this widespread practice, would wear these finely decorated lotus shoes. The colours and decorations would depend on the wearer’s social status and the symbolism that they wished to emulate through the decorative designs on the shoes.

As part of the TRC’s work on the history, techniques, designs and uses of textiles, we are working quietly and steadily on making the TRC and Leiden an international centre for the study and teaching of embroidery in all its multiple forms. We currently have nearly 5,000 examples of embroidery from all over the world. 

Fig.1. Fragment of linen with an embroidered design worked in wool, probably from a child's tunic Egypt, 5th-6th century AD (TRC 2000.0014).

Fig. 2. Fragment of linen with an embroidered design worked in purple, orange and blue wool, probably from a child's tunic. Egypt, 5th-6th century AD (TRC 2000.0015).

by Emilie Lambert, TRC volunteer and archaeology student at Leiden University

Last February marked a year since I joined the TRC as an intern and a part-time volunteer. In that time, I had the opportunity to do a large number of personal projects and I came to fully appreciate the TRC as a place of learning. This piece is a short reflection on the variety of work I have been doing.

Fig. 1. A pair of temple pendants from Afghanistan (TRC 2024.0637a-b).