Blog

Dress from Namibia (TRC 2022.3119a).by  Ann Cable, 13 December 2022

When I mentioned to Gillian, the director of the TRC in Leiden, that I was returning to Namibia for a visit this year, she commented that the TRC had almost nothing from there, and so I started a fascinating journey into the history of a particular style of Namibian dress.

My husband and I have a very good friend in Namibia, Vincent, who has guided us on all our visits and he and his wife, Jacoline, arranged to have a dress made especially for the TRC. He educated us about the traditions behind it too. In pre-colonial times the various people living in Namibia wore skins, but with the coming of Christian missionaries in the late 19th century, this was frowned upon. It became the practice to adopt the clothing of the missionaries in your particular region.

17th century portrait of Adriana van Nesse, a sister of Maria van Nesse, painter unknown. Photograph by Shelley Anderson.By Shelley Anderson, 14 December 2022. 

The TRC’s Van Gerwen Collection includes silk velvet samples from the 17th century. I had some of these beautiful velvet patterns in mind when I visited a new exhibition at the Alkmaar Stedelijk Museum (City Museum) in the northern Dutch town of Alkmaar.

“Rich and Independent: Maria van Nesse’s Memory Book” is a small exhibition dedicated to a very unusual 17th century woman. Maria van Nesse (1588-1650), born and raised in Alkmaar, was unusual for several reasons: she was a Roman Catholic in a Protestant town and she was fabulously wealthy. At her death she possessed 78,000 guilders, or 800,000 euros in today’s currency. But most of all, she was an unmarried, independent woman, who spent her money as she wanted.

What Maria wanted, it seems, were fashionable clothes, expensive shoes, and fine paintings. We know this because Maria kept a ‘memory book’, a combination account book/diary in which she recorded the details of every purchase she made between 1623 to 1646.

We have just been to Copenhagen for a two-day conference entitled ‘Current Research in Textile Archaeology along the Nile’ (5-6 December 2022). The conference was organised by the Centre for Textile Research (CTR), part of the Saxo Institute, the University of Copenhagen. More specifically, it was organised by Chiara Spinazzi-Lucchesi. I was invited to be the key-note speaker to round off the first day.

Replica of a beaded tunic with discs, reconstructed with the help of Jolanda Bos. The original was discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun. Part of TRC-led project on the study of Tutankhamun's wardrobe. Photograph courtesy Textile Museum of Sweden.

Angora goat.2 December 2022: The last few days at the TRC have had a rather Turkish feel to them! On Tuesday we welcomed a group of Turkish scholars, namely Dr Arzu Beril Kirci, Dr Alev Ayaokur and Dr Mehtap Türkyilmaz, from Koç University in Istanbul. More specifically, our visitors came from Koç University’s Ankara Research Centre, which is carrying out research into the history of this ancient Turkish city.

Part of their research includes understanding and tracing the history of sof, or mohair, which is a fibre that traditionally comes from the hair of the Angora goat. For hundreds of years Ankara was a major international centre for the breeding of Angora goats for the fibres, yarns and woven items, all of which were particularly popular in various West European countries including Britain, France and the Netherlands.

For a small place, the island of Tenerife, part of the Canary Islands, has a fascinating textile history. During a recent visit to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, I tried to track down some Tenerife lace (known as roseta canario or calado canario in Spanish) to add to the TRC’s collection. The TRC already has some examples, such as a beautiful late 19th century Tenerife lace collar (TRC 2020.0462) and two doilies (TRC 2015.0281 and TRC 2015.0282), but those examples are from the UK, reflecting the technique’s widespread popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The TRC correspondingly also has an early 20th century DMG pattern book with Tenerife lace patterns (TRC 2020.0393).

Tenerife lace collar (TRC 2020.0462).

On a recent return visit to Namibia my husband Neil and I were lucky enough to visit an extremely remote area in the northeast of the country, where a group of Ju/’hoan San Bushmen are still able to live a semi-traditional life. This is now very rare as most groups live on land where hunting is not allowed and their traditions are dying.

Two women from among the Ju/’hoan San Bushmen in Namibia preparing ostrich shells for making them into jewelry. Photograph by Ann Cable.

Empire-style dress, early 19th century, recently donated to the TRC (2022.3163).Last week an interesting donation was brought to the TRC by Liesbeth Hesselink. She described it as some of the clothing that was worn by her grandmother, Quirina Cornelia Jacoba Böhtlingk, née Baning (1886-1984), when she lived in the Dutch East Indies / Indonesia with her husband, between 1914 and 1921. The donation consists of several white cotton blouses of Indonesian origin, and another made of white silk, as well as a long, hand-sewn white cotton dress.

This white dress (TRC 2022.3163) was described by Ms Hesselink as a plain underdress, but Gillian and I were uncertain due to the high position of the waistline. If this dress was worn underneath a dress typical of the 1910s or 1920s (with a low waistline), then the waistline seam would cut uncomfortably across the chest.

We therefore started to think this dress may be older than we first thought. The waistline sits only a few centimetres below the hem of the neckline, and this corresponds to a French fashion style known as an “Empire silhouette”, which was popular from around 1800-1815 after the French Revolution of 1789.

It's only Tuesday and I am already feeling tired, but at the same time excited and inspired! Yesterday David and Bonnie Smith popped in on their way home from Georgia. Earlier in the year they donated their extensive collection of Albanian, Georgian and other textiles and garments to come to the TRC. We spent a very busy six months getting all of the items catalogued, photographed and online. There were numerous blogs about these pieces and their meaning for the TRC.

Bonnie and David Smith, with Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood in the middle, TRC, 8 November 2022.