It's been quite a week! The Amsel Collection arrived on Sunday from Paris and the TRC Gallery became ‘home’ to a group of TRC volunteers who have been sorting, tagging, cataloguing and slowly getting the items photographed. The first batch is now online. Some of the Romanian items will appear in a forthcoming volume of Selvedge, the London based textile group. We will be working even closer with Selvedge in the future, sharing links, articles and blogs.
TRC volunteer processing the large Amsel collection. In the background part of the small pop-up exhibition of Rijnland lace caps.
At the same time, in the TRC workroom, we had a group taking the TRC Intensive Textile Course. The group included people from Canada, Italy, Poland, as well as the Netherlands. The participants had a wide variety of backgrounds, but a similar love and curiosity about textiles. Our Italian participant is a textile archaeologist who dropped everything (not literally) and organised her trip to Leiden within one week! Another participant, AJ Salter (who is also a TRC intern who is doing an MA in museum and collection studies at Leiden University) will shortly be writing a report about the week.
The TRC Intensive Textile Course, 21-25 February 2022.
On Friday the vast majority of the Dutch covid regulations were cancelled , social distancing has been dropped and people no longer have to wear face masks. This means we can now increase the number of people who can come to the TRC, use the library, attend workshops and courses, etc.
Embroidered waistcoat, from the Csangos (a mainly Roman Catholic, Hungarian ethnic group in Romania), newly added to the TRC Collection.On Sunday, for example, we will have the first of a new series of events at the TRC, namely the Sunday Textile Talk. These will be held on the last Sunday of each month and are intended to reflect a wide range of textile subjects. Some will be given as a more formal lecture, other Sunday talks will be much more informal.
The first one (27th February) is about lace caps from the Rijnland region of the Netherlands (Leiden and suroundings). We are fortunate in having a collection of Rijnland lace caps at the TRC that reflect wearers of different social and economic status.
This meeting is being taken by Annie Keijzer-Sarneel and myself and will include a small exhibition of caps, and present information about the various types. Annie will be coming in tradition Rijnland dress and explain how the caps were put on and the various elements of head jewellery were applied. If you want to attend, please let us know (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).
Gillian Vogelsang, Director TRC, 26 February 2022
