Blog

6lbs bag of extra fancy patent flour with a printed figure of a cloth doll wearing a purple dress. USA 1937 (TRC 2017.3232).Sometime ago we published a poem about the use of feedsacks for making clothes, including underwear in 1930s America. The writer obviously had some very vivid and personal recollections. We described the poem without the name of the author, which until a few days ago remained unknown.

Feedsacks were widely used in the USA and beyond to make garments, and animal feed producers often deliberately printed clothes' patterns on their feedsacks for women to make garments. The TRC dedicated a special online exhibition to this phenomenon: For a few sacks more, which also includes the poem (see below).

What a pleasant surprise, when we recently received an email from Rol Morris in Canada, identifying the author of the poem as his great aunt, Ada Marie Shrope, who lived in southern Kansas in the dustbowl days. He told us the following:

"Not much is known about Ada Marie. She was born in Fairview Township, Cowley County, Kansas the first of October 1899. Her parents were James Washington Shrope (1874-1957) and Ora Estelle Onstatt (1877-1951) and she was the youngest of three children. Ada married Roy Fox, a Collector for the McAllister Transfer Company, in Wichita in 1918. They raised a daughter, Ada Mae Fox (1919-1966).

Throughout history people have always tried to interact with the supernatural as a way to maintain harmony in a world full of the unknown. In order to find some sense of security, societies around the world have developed their own ceremonies and rituals. Textiles are often given magical qualities and they play an essential role in these events.

In the Indonesian archipelago, many ikats are used during rituals such as weddings and funerals. Among the Indonesian ikats in the TRC collection, there are two ceremonial cloths that caught my attention. At first glance they may seem ordinary, but they actually give us a glimpse into the afterlife!

Cloth/shroud from West Sumba (TRC 2020.4734).

(21 Aug.) We are working hard on the next exhibition at the TRC. The theme is Asia-Africa textiles and is being organised as part of an international seminar week organised by the IIAS, Leiden University. The IIAS week is from the 19th to the 23rd September, but the exhibition will be opened on the 12th September and will last until December 2022.

The TRC exhibition looks at various aspects of the Asian-African-European trade in textiles, namely:

Fragment of a block printed textile using a resist technique, 14th century, from India, excavated at Quseir al-Qadim, Red Sea coast, Egypt (TRC 2020.0239).

A moving donation (TRC 2022.2233) came to the TRC recently that immediately caught our attention. Light and delicate, the print on a silky scarf was easily recognizable as a map. Though extremely faded, it came with an incredible story.

British evasion map from WWII, mainland Southeast Asia (TRC 2022.2233). Sheet D.

Homemade St. John's Wort Oil (Hypericum perforatum oil), Wikipedia commonsA previous blog about Polish lac or Polish cochineal got me thinking. Specifically, I was intrigued by the importance of the colour red, and the alternative name for the Polish lac dye produced from the cochineal larvae, namely "Saint John's Blood".

This struck a chord in my memory as I know another plant that goes by this name, and for the very same reasons.

St. John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum) is a small plant with yellow flowers found native in Eurasia, but it is also an invasive weed in North and South America,  South Australia and South Africa. The plant blooms annually, peaking around the summer solstice, close to June 24th, St. John's Day (St John the Baptist), hence the name.

Do you like this piece of machine embroidered seersucker cloth from the TRC collection (TRC 2020.1709), with a dancing cat and another moggie playing a cello? It is a 20th century piece of cloth from Europe, and very appropriate for today: International Cat Day!

A piece of embroidered seersucker cloth with two cats. Europe, 20th century (TRC 2020.1709).

The feline importance of today may have escaped you. To be honest, I forgot as well, but today's entry in DailyArt (marvellous daily mailing!) pushed me to have a look in the catalogue of the TRC collection and try and find illustrations of cats. Well, among the nearly 40,000 objects, most of them with photographs, that search proved to be very easy and successful.

We are very pleased to announce the inclusion of Amy (AJ) Salter's recent MA thesis in the Leiden University Student Repository. AJ Salter has been an intern and volunteer at the TRC since the end of 2021, and she wrote her MA thesis partly on the basis of her work at the TRC. Her thesis has the title: Handling Museum Objects:. Encouraging Touch in Cultural Heritage Institutions in the Netherlands (2022).

Congratulations, AJ!

In her own words:

AJ Salter, intern and volunteer at the TRC, recently submitted her thesis on museum and collection studies."My name is AJ Salter and I am a Canadian currently living in the Netherlands. I completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in Art History at the University of British Columbia where I focused on textiles and sustainability through the medium of photography. I moved to the Netherlands to pursue personal connections as well as a Masters at Leiden University where I majored in Museums and Collections.

As a lover of textiles I had the pleasure of following an internship during my studies at the Textile Research Centre in Leiden where I am continuing my volunteer research work after graduation. As an international in the Netherlands I appreciate the interdisciplinary work of the TRC and the diverse topics that can be covered by textiles. I hope to continue my research about museum collections and textiles in the Netherlands and maintain my ties with Leiden University and the TRC."

AJ Salter at work at the TRC, Leiden.

Amy's thesis is published for the Leiden University Faculty of Humanities, with the specialistion of Museums and Collections. Her supervisor was Dr. M. Keblusek.  A brief introduction is given below:

In June we had an intense time at a special TRC study-day looking at the various basic types of velvet and how to identify them. One of the participants, Monika Gimblett, has a Polish/Dutch background and when we were talking about natural red dyes - cochineal, kermes, lac, madder - she started talking about the name for the month of June in many Central European countries, and the link with cochineal. It's a story that we thought that a lot more people would like to know. Monika sent us the following blog. More information about Polish lac or Polish cochineal can be found in the relevant Wikipedia pages.

****

Life cycle of the Polish cochineal, as portrayed in Breyne's 'Historia naturalis Cocci Radicum...', published in 1731.Some stories are hidden deep in language, in words that we use every day but the origins of which have long been forgotten. Such is the case with Polish cochineal, also known as Polish lac or Polish grain, produced by a small insect known in Polish as Czerw.

Here is how it happened: this small bug known as Porphyrophora Polonica or Margarodes Polonicus was once common in central and eastern Europe, from Lusatia along the German border, through present-day Poland to the Baltic countries, Belarus and Ukraine to the northern borders of Romania and Moldova.

The insects (the females in their late larva state) were collected and boiled in water with vinegar, then dried in ovens or in the sun, and ground with some bread acid. The dye prepared this way could be used to dye cotton, flax, silk and wool. To dye 1 kg of silk, 15-20 gr of red powder was needed, but to dye the same amount of wool, 50 gr was used. However, to produce 1 kg of dye it was necessary to collect as much as 155 thousand of insects!

No wonder that Polish cochineal was very expensive, and only monarchs, nobility and high clergy could afford to buy cloth dyed with this substance. To some extent this explains why red was reserved for secular rulers and bishops for many centuries. Colour symbolism is another matter entirely.