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Shelves in the TRC Library.At the moment I am writing this, we have a library at TRC consisting of 6282 books. This is not including the books from new donations that have come in and are yet to be registered, or the immense magazine collection we still have in the depot; we are getting these ready to be registered.

Since December 2022 I have been the librarian of the Textile Research Centre. My main focus has since then been to get through the backlog of the hundreds of books that are donated yearly.

Every Monday I spend most of my time cataloguing new books and placing them in the library. In 2024 I have managed to get through most of the backlog and started putting away the newer donations. In 2024 this amounted to some 1200 books.

Besides registering the backlog and new books, I have also spent my time in 2024 on researching how to restore books, mainly torn pages or loosened spines. The reason for this is that during the course of 2024, we have received a considerable number of books from the mid- and late 1800s. Most have been in excellent state, but some have seen their fair amount of use. Since it’s unlikely that we will receive duplicates of these books.

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 Board has recently approved the Annual Report for 2024. We are very pleased to present an overview of what happened in the last year and in particular to highlight all the TRC blogs that were published and represent the diverse nature of all the many activities that take place at the Hogewoerd 164.

Detail of an embroidered top for a Ukrainian woman, early 21st century. Acquired in 2024 (TRC 2025.0149).

Many changes have taken place and many more are due to take place. it is clear from the report that we may be small space wise, but we are big in activities and in our support of textile and dress studies in all their myriad of different forms.

The TRC Annual Report 2024 can be accessed here.

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.

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).