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The TRC in Leiden houses a fascinating colletion of samplers. They all have a story to tell. This time I want to look at TRC 2014.0075, which dates to the early twentieth century. Yes, it could be called a sampler, but if so, it is an unusual one. I don’t think I have ever seen one like it.

Sampler from the early 20th century, with stamped outlines for embroidered motifs (TRC 2014.0075).

Sampler dated 1756 worked by Jacoba Jans Adegeest, from the Rijnland, the Netherlands (TRC 2020.3683).Two weeks ago the TRC published a blog about lace caps from the Rijnland based on a photo album with photographs of the Van den Akker family, many of whom lived in Zoeterwoude or thereabouts, in the late nineteenth century. In this blog I more or less return to Zoeterwoude, a small village just southeast of Leiden, in the heart of the Rijnland, following the trail of an eighteenth century sampler now in the TRC Collection (TRC 2020.3683).

The sampler has two alphabets: one in small gothic letters, the other in straight capitals. And one line of numbers. For the rest, the sampler is mostly symmetrical. There are two sets of men carrying a big bunch of grapes, a very common motif on Dutch samplers (the two Israeilis returning from the reconnaissance in the land of Canaan). This motif, it so happens, is also depicted in a stone plaque in the centre of the old town of Leiden (see a TRC blog of 4 July 2020).

For several years now the London-based textile organisation SELVEDGE and the TRC Leiden have been working together on various projects, including the writing of articles, book and exhibition reviews, and the organisation of international events (such as SELVEDGE FAIRS). In addition, there have been various discussions with Polly Leonard, the founder and chief editor of SELVEDGE, about how they can actively support the TRC in its plans for establishing a textile artisan centre in Leiden.

Masako Noda in front of the now demolished ancestral home of her husband's family, March 2021.Between March and May 2021, I received a series of kimonos from my friend Masako Noda (née Shibata) after the demolition of her husband's grandparents' house on the outskirts of Nagoya, in the Aichi Prefecture. I have given these items to the TRC Leiden. Masako values traditional Japanese culture and kimonos and performs traditional dance and tea ceremonies in kimono, and therefore preferred these items to go to an institute that would appreciate the garments and present them to a wider audiencce.

Masako's own family is from the former samurai class in Okazaki. She married Tetsuji Noda, from a family of a former powerful landlord, village headmaster, and later, a city councilor. In the Edo period (around the mid-19th century) the Noda family’s contribution to local farming and to the local Owari Tokugawa domain was such that they were allowed to have a family name – this was very unusual as farmers didn’t normally have a family name and swords which were only for samurai.

Machine embroidered cigarette silk with a pair of birds, set within a heart. The birds are worked in ombré or shaded threads (1920-1930, TRC 2021.2473h).We have just had a question about the colour of yarns and in particular: when is a yarn ombré, shaded or variegated?

By coincidence, these differences can be clearly seen in a recent donation to the TRC Collection of some Dutch cigarette silks (zijdjes) from the 1920s to the early 1930s (see the blog).

Ombré (French: ‘shadowed’) and shaded are the same, and it occurs when a yarn or cloth is dyed so that it includes gradated shades of the same colour. So it may go from dark pink to light pink and back again. The two birds in the TRC Blog about cigarette silks were machine embroidered using shaded threads in various hues of blue and orange (TRC 2021.2473h).

American quilt with the Cactus Basket pattern, timespan quilt, from late 19th century (TRC 2018.3127).Over the last few months the TRC Leiden has been working with The Quilt Index (USA) to add the TRC's quilt collection to their website. This work has been carried out by Beverley Bennett, a TRC volunteer and an enthusiastic and very knowledgeable quilter. The following blog was written by Beverley.

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The Quilt Index is an open access, digital repository of thousands of images, stories and information about quilts and their makers drawn from hundreds of public and private collections around the world. The Quilt Index is a digital humanities research and education project of The Matrix: The Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences at Michigan State University

There are literally thousands of quilts to be discovered on their website, along with essays, stories, journals, even lesson plans.

Machine embroidered cigarette silk with a pair of birds, set within a heart, 1920s-1930s (TRC 2021.2473h).A few weeks ago the TRC in Leiden was given a wide range of textiles and garments that came from the collection of Joop and May Hobijn-Roth (for a blog on the donation, click here). We have been slowly putting all these items online.

As part of the donation we were given a plastic bag with hundreds of textile patches, of various cloth types and made with different production techniques. Some of them I could place, but the majority were ‘just’ patches, but why so many and so diverse?

A little research has revealed that they are all cigarette silks, also known as premiums or inserts. Cigarette cards made from paper date from the 1870s and were produced by various cigarette companies to encourage people to buy specific tobacco products. The textile silks, however, are later and date from the 1910s onwards. The examples we have been given are actually Dutch in origin and were locally called zijdjes (lit. ‘little silks’). They were all probably produced for Turmac, the Turkish Macedonian Tobacco Company based in Zevenaar, Gelderland, in the east of the Netherlands.

On the 6th August there was a Study Day at the TRC on the topic of Indian an Pakistani embroidery. It quickly became apparent that these two countries are truly extraordinary centres for hand embroidery in all manners and forms.

An example of Agra ‘garden’ embroidery using silk and semi-precious gems, date: 2017 (TRC 2017.2786).

A relevant theme that is often explored at the TRC is how important trade and other dynamics across history have promoted the development of hand embroidery. One would obviously and immediately think of the Silk Road, colonial influences or even grand power structures such as the Mughal Empire when we discuss how textiles, skills and styles travelled across and towards the subcontinent, but these are far from being the only notable dynamics in this field.