Painting the hands with henna. Photograph courtesy Shutterstock.On Sunday afternoon, January 28, the Güney Foundation and the Textile Research Centre will organize an introduction to the Turkish Henna Festival (Kina Gecesi).

In Turkey, the henna evening is a symbolic ritual in which the henna has a deep meaning. Henna represents joy, beauty and protection against evil spirits and negative energy. The deeper the colour of the henna, the stronger the bond between the couple is considered to be, because the red colour of the henna represents love. It also symbolizes fertility and a prosperous future.

Henna party in Turkey. Photograph courtesy Shutterstock.At the meeting on Sunday afternoon it will be explained and demonstrated how the Henna is applied. This is done by a professional artist. The traditional Henna festive wear and other textile pieces will also be on display.

Traditional Turkish music fills the air as women sing folk songs and perform lively dances such as the "oyun havası" or "halay." Guests join in the dancing, creating an energetic and festive atmosphere.

An important year:

In the first place our apologies for the somewhat ‘bare’ lay-out of this Newsletter. The company of Tinyletter, that to date looked after its distribution to some 3,000 subscribers, has announced that it will stop all its activities by February 2024, and it appears that it has already slimmed down its service by no longer including illustrations. We are urgently looking for a new (and affordable) system that will make sure we can update our friends regularly about our activities. In any case, we can assure you that the address file for the current Newsletter will be reused for the new form.

But more importantly, we want to wish all our friends and contacts a happy New Year. May 2024 be a peaceful year, also for those currently suffering violence. Here in Leiden we sometimes take our untroubled and harmonious surroundings for granted. But how dreadful the situation elsewhere!

Looking back, 2023 has been a busy, exciting and at times frustrating year! It is clear from the number of visitors to the TRC that local, national and international recognition of the role that the TRC is playing in the world of textile studies is growing. The TRC is actively expanding its role as an international hub for textiles and dress in all their many and varied forms. We are a centre where skills and knowledge can be acquired via lectures, workshops, courses, exhibitions, research, teaching of BA to PhD students, etc.

Friday, 17 March, I participated in a study day at the TRC in Leiden about identifying the main types of velvet. Below I want to describe what we did during the day and some of the things we learned about.

TRC study day 'What is velvet?', 17 March 2023. Photograph by the author.

We started in the morning with a do-it-yourself exercise: weaving velvet! This was done in order to understand the basic principles of this type of cloth. We were actually weaving a closely related form, namely velveteen, rather than velvet. What is the difference? Well, velveteen has loops worked in the weft, while 'real' velvet has ‘warp’ loops.

Rens Heringa, 1932-2022We have just heard the sad news that Rens (Renske) Heringa (1932-2022) died on 14 December last.

Rens grew up in Twente among textile producers, and from the early 1950s lived for many years in Indonesia. She has long been a grande dame in the field of Indonesian textiles and Indonesian batiks in particular.

She was involved in helping to build up the TRC collection of Indonesian items with advice, suggestions and actual objects. Her presence will be missed.

by Caroline Stone – Seville, December 17th.

Indigo from one of the indigo bearing plants has been a favourite dye-stuff for millennia. Caucasian Georgia, with its rich textile tradition and intersected by major trade routes, was no exception.

Lurji supra ('blue table cloth') from late 20th century Georgia, made of block printed cotton, now in the TRC collection (TRC 2021.2159).

Karen Brown from Ontario, Canada, visited the TRC on the 12th September, particularly attracted by the large TRC collection of North American quilts.

Some days ago she sent us a YouTube film about her visit to the TRC, which she published on her YouTube channel.

The TRC’s latest exhibition (on until the end of December 2022) explores how African, Asian and European textiles and dress have influenced each other. But their influences also extend to North America, as the following example illustrates.

The large tract of land now known as Louisiana (USA) was a French colony, officially until 1803 (the socalled Louisiana Purchase when the remaining French parts of Louisiana were ceded to the Americans). Louisiana included the busy port city of New Orleans, built in large part by enslaved labour. But New Orleans also had a population of between 400 to 800 gens de couleur libres, or free people of African descent. These free blacks spoke French and called themselves Creoles.

Painting of Creole woman in tignon, with lace collar and jewellery. From the Historic New Orleans Collection.For part of the 18th century, much of Louisiana was controlled by the Spanish. During that time, the Creole population doubled. Creole women had a reputation for beauty and for dressing elegantly. They worked as seamstresses and laundresses, kept taverns and boarding houses; wore European fashion and decorated their hair with feathers and jewels.

Louisiana’s Spanish Governor Esteban Rodríguez Miró was disturbed by reports of Creole women’s ‘haughty’ manners, their ‘excessive attention to dress’, and the many relationships between white men and Creole women.

In 1786 he enacted the tignon law: every free black woman in New Orleans now had to cover her hair with a scarf or handkerchief (called tignon, probably after the French word chignon, or hairstyle) in public, just like an enslaved woman. Hair could no longer be elaborately curled or decorated with feathers or jewellery. The law sought to remind Creole women of their “inferior” status.

You can tell the summer holidays are over! All sorts of things are happening at the TRC.

New films

TRC intern Kelly Wong, for example, has made four short films about volunteers at TRC - what they like about their work and their favourite (currently) items from the TRC Collection. The main problem being there are so many items to choose from and with new pieces coming in on a regular basis it can be very hard to choose a favourite! These and other TRC films can be seen at the TRC YouTube channel. You can also click on the individual thumbnails below.

Rekindle your passion / Meet our volunteersLearning by doing / Meet our volunteers

Your favourite project that you have worked on? Ask the volunteers Your favourite item in the TRC collection? Ask the volunteers