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Many museums and similar institutions, as well as private collectors, are concerned with The Beautiful, with rare, aesthetically pleasing items that stimulate the delicate feelings of the connoisseur. I have to confess to something that may shock you a little, but the TRC in Leiden does not work with the criteria of ‘The Beautiful’. Instead, we are collecting and studying items that are interesting, namely textiles and garments that reflect technical developments and/or illustrate stories that provide information about past, present and future aspects of social, economic, religious, personal and group identity. And all the many variations that come with this vast concept.

So what has all this to do with a very recent acquisition of the TRC Leiden? Well, it's a Christmas jumper, which is a story in itself. You can hardly describe it as beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. To the contrary, it is, for many of us, simply ugly. But it is meant to be!

A 'wrong', and 'orrible Christmas jumper, the latest addition to the TRC collection (TRC 2020.5178).

A quilt made c. 1850 in the USA, possibly by a slave (TRC 2019.2402).Earlier this year the TRC published a blog on an American quilt (TRC 2019.2402), dated to c. 1850s, which was probably produced by an enslaved person (see the TRC blog 'A slave quilt in the TRC collection?". The TRC collection also contains a sample of Dammur cloth from Sudan (TRC 2016.0034; see also the TRC blog 'Dammur cloth from Sudan' and 'Dammur cloth from Sudan, continued'). This was a type of locally made, relatively rough, cotton material used by Arab merchants for dressing slaves, as well as being a currency to buy them. These finds took me on a search to find out more about the role of textiles in the slave trade.

Textiles were one of the main currencies during the transatlantic slave trade, and were part of an international trade system that also saw Virginian tobacco, Danish guns, Spanish wines and cowrie shells from the Maldives traded for the lives of African men, women and children.

More and more people are wearing interesting, plain, colourful, funny, gruesome, as well as symbolic face masks as the corona virus situation drags on and on. There are fashion designers producing matching garments and masks, Gothic black forms  with lace and feathers, to local groups supporting various charities by making and selling suitable masks. See the recent TRC blog on the variety of face masks.

Face mask designed by the firm of Hand&Lock in London, 2020 (TRC 2020.5176a).

It has been a while since we have published some embroidery charts via the TRC Blog, so I have been looking for some suitable items.

As we are working on the volume about Sub-Saharan African embroidery for the Bloomsbury World Encyclopedia of Embroidery series, it seemed appropriate to include some African embroidery patterns. These particular examples are based on the darned embroidered bands from a series of men's caps now in the British Museum, London. The caps come from Senegal and were acquired by the Museum in 1934.

Cover of a 1944 women's magazine, called Stella, published in Doetinchem (TRC 2020.5174).Last week the COVID-19 crisis led to a semi-lockdown of the Netherlands, at least until 19th January. This means that we have had to shut the TRC for visitors for much of the rest of December and early January. It does not mean that we stop with our work. The TRC staff and its many volunteers and student interns will continue with a plethora of activities, as we partially also discussed in a blog of yesterday. In the days and weeks to come, we would like to keep you informed about what we are doing:

The TRC Leiden has just extended its exhibition called Textile Tales from the Second World War until Thursday, the 4th February 2021. This means, despite the TRC being currently shut due to the lockdown, that you still have a chance to see the exhibition from the 20th January to the 4th February 2021. But please be aware, as it stands now you probably will have to announce your visit in advance!

In the meantime, we have recently received several donations that are related to the theme of the war, textiles and dress. Some of these pieces will be added to the actual and to the online exhibition on the same theme. We have been given, for example, by Esther van der Valk, some rare examples of women's fashion magazines from the period. These include one from the summer of 1940 that was in Dutch (TRC 2020.5173), one from the summer of 1944, in Dutch and German (TRC 2020.5174) and two from just after the war (1946/7 and 1948, TRC 2020.5171 and TRC 2020.5172 respectively), which were both in Dutch and French and produced in Belgium and the Netherlands..

Volume 2 of the Bloomsbury World Encyclopedia of Embroidery will be published in January 2021.In early January 2021 the second volume of the Bloomsbury World Encyclopedia of Embroidery will become available. It is about hand embroidery from Central Asia, the Iranian plateau and the Indian Sub-Continent. More details can be found here.

In the meantime the TRC in Leiden is working on two more volumes, namely, embroidery from Scandinavia and Western Europe, and hand embroidery from Sub-Saharan Africa. We were just wondering if anyone has examples of African embroidery they would be willing to donate to the TRC Collection? Or could you send photographs?

Any 'stories' behind the suitable embroideries and textiles are also needed. Who made the pieces, what materials, threads and techniques did the makers use, and were the designs symbolic? What did the piece mean to the makers and users?

Last Wednesday (9th December) I took part in the TRC workshop on pre-industrial sewing stitches, given by by Dorothee Olthof. I’m interested in archaeology and in all sorts of hand stitching, and I was not disappointed.

Dorothee focussed on early medieval styles of hand stitching for garments. She introduced the subject with a PowerPoint presentation and showed us some modern replicas of early medieval garments, especially head coverings from various museum and archaeological collections.

Photograph of the TRC workshop on pre-industrial sewing techniques, 9 December 2020.

Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894), American dress reformer and suffragist, in the costume named after her.The weather is becoming cold and grey here in the Netherlands. But there’s a 1920s white summer dress (TRC 2007.0710) in the TRC collection here in Leiden that reminds me of warmer days, and tennis and tea parties in the garden. This dress looks simple and light-weight, but there is a long history of controversy and social change behind it.

Women won the right to vote in the Netherlands in 1919, and in 1920 in the US. Alongside decades of struggle for the vote was a fight for dress reform in women’s clothing. In 1850s America, the suffragist Amelia Bloomer scandalized society by throwing away her whale bone corsets, petticoats, tight long sleeved bodices and long heavy skirts. Instead she wore a more comfortable short dress over loose trousers (sometimes called Turkish trousers). This costume may have been based on the loose dress and leggings of some Native American women. Though Amelia did not invent the costume it was immediately dubbed the ‘Bloomer’, as she wore it publicly and popularized it through her newspaper, including publishing a pattern of how to sew the dress.

Women who wore the costume were called ‘Bloomers’. They were ridiculed and accused of mannishness and subversion. Yet they also found friends among health reformers and those in the medical profession who criticized tight corsets and restrictive clothing as dangerous to women’s health. In the Netherlands, too, there was a Vereeninging voor Verbetering van Vrouwen (-en kinder) Kleding (Union for the Reform of Women’s and Children’s Clothing), which published a monthly magazine from 1899 to 1909.