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The TRC is 31 today!

I know it is a cliché, but time really does fly. The TRC started off as a result of an informal discussion over tea and coffee with the then curator for Africa, Rogier Bedaux, at the Volkenkunde Museum, Leiden. At the time I was the editor (and founder) of the ATN (Archaeological Textiles Newsletter, which later became the Archaeological Textiles Review) and was interviewing Rogier about medieval textile finds from the Tellem in Mali, West Africa.

Romanian/Ukrainian waistcoat with white sheep's fleece lining, edged with black looped embroidery. 20th century (TRC 2022.0390).

I mentioned the need for an office, as I had been approached by various students from the archaeology department of Leiden University about the teaching of textiles and he suggested that if I set up a stichting (non-profit organisation), he would organise a room at the museum. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Volkenkunde Museum and the Museum van Oudheden kindly agreed to pay for the legal costs of setting up the TRC, in return the TRC was to help them with questions about textiles and dress. The various pieces of legal paperwork were signed on the 19th December 1991 and the Stichting Textile Research Centre was born.

In 2020, the German Lower Saxony Ministry of Culture approved funding from the UN Sustainability and Development Goals Fund for the international cooperation project "Narrative material - research-based notes on the vestmental memory of the German and Dutch clothing collection in the Textile Research Centre, Leiden" - a project of the Department of Textile Design at the University of Osnabrück and the Textile Research Centre (TRC), Leiden.

The focus was on items of clothing of German and Dutch provenance housed at the TRC. As part of the project, a number of students of Osnabrück University wrote German-language essays on specific items from the TRC collection. A paper brochure will be published shortly; in the meantime, PDF files can be downloaded below.

Jacke (buisje) von der Insel Marken, die Niederlande (TRC 2006.0106).

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.