News

On Wednesday 10 April 2020 Gillian Vogelsang wrote:

Even though the TRC Leiden is currently closed, this does not mean that donations for the TRC Collection have ceased!  This week some items have been arriving at my home, including the generous donation of a large number of samplers that were given by Betteke Boele-Vogelesang (no relation). We would like to thank her for the donation and for feeling the TRC Leiden is a suitable home for the collection she spent many years building up and enjoying.

School sampler from Amersfoort, The Netherlands, dated 1900 (TRC 2020.1599).

Among the items in the donation are over fifty school samplers, which date from the 1860’s to the 1920’s. They are small samplers that have the alphabet and numbers, and often the name or initials of the maker, their school and a date. The samplers in the Boele-Vogelesang collection come from various countries, including Belgium, England, Germany, France, the Netherlands and possibly Spain. Among the Dutch examples are pieces from Amersfoort, Amsterdam, Schagen and Utrecht. In addition there are several Berlin wool work-style samplers from the 1860’s and 1870’s, as well as sewing samples, darning samples and hand knitted samples (including some very small socks).

Onlangs ontving het TRC een aantal quilts die zijn gemaakt door de Mennonitische gemeenschap. In Nederland zijn zij beter bekend als de Doopsgezinden. Twee van deze quilts dateren van de Tweede Wereldoorlog of vlak daarvoor. Het zijn zogenaamde Relief Quilts (Hulp Quilts), die in Noord-Amerika werden gemaakt en vlak na de oorlog naar Europe weren gestuurd voor hulp aan de talloze ontheemden en andere behoeftigen. De derde quilt is recentelijk in Europa gemaakt voor hulp aan de vluchtelingen in Syrië en Jordanië.

We hebben twee blogs gepubliceerd over dit onderwerp. Een daarvan is geschreven door Gillian Vogelsang (klik hier). De andere is geschreven door Lynn Kaplanian-Buller van de Mennonitische gemeenschap, waarin zij meer ingaat op de achtergrond van de Relief Quilts (klik hier).

AUTONOMOUS HEMSTITCH panel by Rikke Ruff, 2019On Sunday, 19 January 2020, Gillian Vogelsang reports:

We are currently working on Volume 3 of the Encyclopedia of Embroidery (Bloomsbury, London), which is about embroidery from Scandinavia and Western Europe. In particular we have been working on embroidery from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. So I was very pleased last year when we had a visit from Rikke Ruff, Hundested, Denmark, who is a professional embroiderer. 

She has developed a form of cutwork embroidery that she describes as Autonom Hulsøm (‘Autonomous Hemstitch’). It is a lovely form that combines pulled thread work, needleweaving as well as beads and backgrounds in other materials. Rikke has just very kindly donated a piece of her work for the TRC Collection (TRC 2020.0059).

BÜHL, Gudrun, Sumru Belger Krody and Elizabeth Dospel Williams (2019). Woven Interiors: Furnishing Early Medieval Egypt, Washington: The Textile Museum, ISBN 978-87405-040-0. Soft back, fully illustrated in colour and b/w. 124 pp., bibliography, no index.

A catalogue to a travelling exhibition initially held at The Textile Museum, Washington D.C., between August 2019 and January 2020. The exhibition included a range of public space and household objects made from various types of material, including curtains, wall hangings, cushions and floor coverings. Most of the items are woven, but there are also some less well-known resist-dyed pieces that include religious scenes and figures (pp. 67-68). The range of objects on display include some very famous items from the Dumbarton Oaks collection, such as the Hestia Pikyolbus (no. 29) and the Nereids and Dolphin hanging (no. 13), as well as many lesser known items. The text is supported by relevant, contemporary objects such as stone tiles, spoons, containers, etc. The objects come from various North American museum collections, including The Textile Museum, Washington DC; Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

There are six essays included in the catalogue that cover various subjects, including architecture, public buildings and the use of space; private buildings and their spaces; Christian sacred imagery, as well as comfort in the home, an appraisal of textile aesthetics in the early medieval period in Egypt, and finally continuity and change in textile production, trade and use. There are some technical details, but not very much.

Recommendation: Well worth having if you are interested in early medieval Egyptian textiles, the use of religious textiles, textiles used for interiors of public and private spaces. It is also a must for any library dealing with early medieval archaeological material from the Middle East.

Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, March 2020.

CONTESSA, Andreina (2016). The Jewish Court of Venice: The heritage of Jewish Venice 500 years after the establishment of the first ghetto, Jerusalem: National Museum of Italian Jewish Art. ISBN 978-965-572-097-6, soft back, 55 pp. in English, 35 pp. in Hebrew, fully illustrated in colour and black/white.

A small catalogue to an exhibition held at the National Museum of Italian Jewish Art in Jerusalem [see TRC Blog]. There are many synagogue (notably scroll covers) and private textiles illustrated and described in the book. In addition, it looks at the role of women in making, using and in some cases, re-using textiles. It includes woven, embroidered as well as lace forms (including needle laces). In addition to the textiles, various other items such as scroll crowns and finials, contemporary illustrations, manuscripts, and so forth, are illustrated and described.

Recommendation: There are various books on Ashkenazim and Sephardim Jewish textiles, but comparatively very little about another important group, the Italian Jews. This booklet helps to redress this imbalance. It will be of interest to anyone working or interested in the role of textiles in Jewish synagogues, Jewish life in general, as well as those specifically interested in the Italian Jewish tradition.

Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, March 2020.

MASKARELI, Draginja (2019). МОΔΑ (Fashion in Modern Servia), Belgrade: Museum of Applied Art. ISBN 978-86-7415-217-1, soft back, fully illustrated in colour and b/w, 143 pp., bibliography, no index.

This is a catalogue to an exhibition held at the Museum of Applied Art, Belgrade from November 2019 to the end of January 2020. The text is in Serbian with an English summary. The exhibition is based on items in the collection of the museum and includes a wide range of items for women from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition at the back of the book there are a few items for men, but not many.

For historical and geographical reasons there are items of Ottoman and Balkan styles, as well as West European fashions. Some of these garments were worn together. In addition, a wide range of accessories are illustrated including hats, glasses, hair combs, shawls, parasols, belts and footwear. The boots, shoes and slippers show a wide range of influences, including knee-high boots decorated with Central Asian suzani-style embroidery and ankle boots in the French style.

The whole exhibition stresses local, national as well as international forms worn by urban women in what is now Serbia. Not a remote part of Europe, but a cross-roads between Asia, the Balkans and Europe.  

Recommendation: A book that will be of interest to anyone intrigued by fashion, and what may now be called fusion fashion, the combination of various traditions brought together by political, economic and geographical reasons. A visually inspirational book.

Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, March 2020.

For more information, click on the illustration.ESGUERRA, Clarissa M. (2019). Power of Pattern: Central Asian Ikats from the David and Elizabeth Reisbord Collection, Los Angeles: LACMA Collator. ISBN 978-1-943042-13-5, hardback, 112 pp., fully illustrated in colour, bibliography, glossary. Price US$ 50.

An exhibition catalogue to a lovely exhibition about ikat garments and textiles from Central Asia that date from the 19th and early 20th centuries. These garments formed part of the David and Elizabeth Reisbord collection that is now in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The exhibition was well worth seeing [see the TRC blog about the exhibition].

In general, the book is based on the main types of motifs (ram, tree, etc.,) associated with Central Asian textiles, including ikat forms. In addition, the exhibition and book stress the aesthetics of ikat textiles, which is always a difficult subject as what is acceptable in one culture may not be deemed correct in another. The grouping of some of the objects in the exhibition and the book was deliberately meant to challenge Western (American) viewers.

Recommendation: This book is worth having in any library dedicated to Central Asian textiles and ikats in particular. There are some very interesting and visually pleasing garments presented in the publication. It should be noted, however, that there is very little information about how ikats were physically produced and by whom. In addition, this is a print-on-demand publication and it looks it: there are many blank pages, etc., in the copy now in the TRC Library.

Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, March 2020.

Amerikaanse quilt van ca. 1840, uit de collectie van het TRC (TRC 2018.3119). Voor meer informatie, klip op de illustratie.In bijna alle Amerikaans huizen is wel een quilt te vinden. Quilts zijn ook te zien in films, boeken en verhalen over het leven in de VS.

In de tentoonstelling worden de geschiedenis en de betekenis van quilts, en het ambacht van het maken ervan getoond.

De tentoonstelling vertelt over wat quilts zijn, hoe ze worden gemaakt, waarom en hoe quiltblokken worden gemaakt en welke andere technieken worden gebruikt om de variëteit aan vaak kleurrijke ontwerpen te maken.

Aan de hand van enkele quilts reflecteert de tentoonstelling ook op economische, religieuze, politieke en sociale veranderingen in de VS, evenals op de rol van vrouwen in het huis en op het werk.

Het TRC herbergt een van de grootste Amerikaanse quiltcollecties in Europa, en naast volledige quilts zullen ook quilttops, quiltblokken, materialen, gereedschappen en aanverwante artikelen te zien zijn.

De tentoonstelling bevat quilts van vóór de Amerikaanse burgeroorlog (1861-1865), het late Victoriaanse tijdperk, de Grote Depressie van de jaren 1930 en de heropleving van het quiltambacht in de jaren 1970.

Voor een foto-impressie van de tentoonstelling, klik hier.