Willem and I have just been to see the Medieval church embroidery exhibition at the Catharijneconvent Museum, Utrecht. The exhibition is called "Het Geheim van de Middeleeuwen in Gouddraad en Zijde" (The Secret of the Middle Ages in Gold Thread and Silk) and it runs until the 16th August. TRC Needles now has a separate entry for this event.  If you have a chance to see it, please go! The garments are displayed in such a way you can really see them - on podiums and without glass. The light is subdued and diffused through thin paper, so it is easy to see the objects rather than trying to see 'something' in a blackened room with few bright spot lights. The Utrecht display is good for the garments and the viewers.

Catharijneconvent, Utrect, The Netherlands. Exhibition: Het Geheim van de Middeleeuwen.The embroidery itself is divided into various sections, following the range of Catholic liturgical garments that were and are normally embroidered - chasuble, cope, dalmatic, mitre and stole. There are also some brief details about where the cloth, etc, used for making the garments came from. A particularly interesting section deals with the various gold work techniques used, with some commissioned examples on display so that the technical details can be seen on the front and back of the ground cloth.

There is another section on liturgical embroidery since the re-organisation of the Catholic Church (Vatican Two) between 1962-1965. There were numerous examples in this section some of which with the original art work. Actually, this section is a different exhibition, which focusses on the work of the Atelier Stadelmaier, in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, which between 1930 and 2010 was the world's largest producer of liturgical clothing.

The exhibition is a treat for the eye, a source of inspiration for embroiderers, as well as making various historical aspects of Catholic liturgical clothing much more understandable. My favourite piece: a single, embroidered shoe for a bishop is tucked into a corner. Totally unpractical, but saying a lot about the role of embroidered garments in a powerful medieval institute.

And now for something totally different ...... Next door to the intense medieval embroidery exhibition, was another clothing exhibition created to celebrate a modern institution, the Tour de France, which started this year in Utrecht. The exhibition is called De Heilige Trui (The Sacred Jersey) and is on display until the 28th July. on show are the '"Sacred Jerseys" worn by various cyclists over the years, some of which were signed. For some, these jerseys are the equivalent of religious relics from a particular annual event that joins together thousands of people all over the world - sounds familiar? The exhibition is a bit of fun, but one that makes you think about the role of clothing, and institutional clothing in particular, in our lives.

We had one night in Utrecht's smallest hotel (one room, in an old storage cellar next to one of the many canals that crisscross the city). Then onto Amersvoort, whose medieval centre is well worth a visit. We actually went to see Paul Spijker of Toguna (click here for more info) to pick up a collection of Yemeni jewellery that he has very kindly agreed to lend to the TRC for our next exhibition about Yemeni textiles, clothing and jewellery (opening on the 17th August 2015). There are going to be some spectacular items on display as well as more daily life items that tell different stories. There will be town, village and Bedouin garments and jewellery in the exhibition, as well as a wide range of decorative techniques for textiles. Some of the pieces were especially commissioned for the TRC from embroiderers in Yemen itself.

See also TRC Needles

Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, 19 July 2015