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A moving donation (TRC 2022.2233) came to the TRC recently that immediately caught our attention. Light and delicate, the print on a silky scarf was easily recognizable as a map. Though extremely faded, it came with an incredible story.

British evasion map from WWII, mainland Southeast Asia (TRC 2022.2233). Sheet D.

Homemade St. John's Wort Oil (Hypericum perforatum oil), Wikipedia commonsA previous blog about Polish lac or Polish cochineal got me thinking. Specifically, I was intrigued by the importance of the colour red, and the alternative name for the Polish lac dye produced from the cochineal larvae, namely "Saint John's Blood".

This struck a chord in my memory as I know another plant that goes by this name, and for the very same reasons.

St. John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum) is a small plant with yellow flowers found native in Eurasia, but it is also an invasive weed in North and South America,  South Australia and South Africa. The plant blooms annually, peaking around the summer solstice, close to June 24th, St. John's Day (St John the Baptist), hence the name.

Do you like this piece of machine embroidered seersucker cloth from the TRC collection (TRC 2020.1709), with a dancing cat and another moggie playing a cello? It is a 20th century piece of cloth from Europe, and very appropriate for today: International Cat Day!

A piece of embroidered seersucker cloth with two cats. Europe, 20th century (TRC 2020.1709).

The feline importance of today may have escaped you. To be honest, I forgot as well, but today's entry in DailyArt (marvellous daily mailing!) pushed me to have a look in the catalogue of the TRC collection and try and find illustrations of cats. Well, among the nearly 40,000 objects, most of them with photographs, that search proved to be very easy and successful.

We are very pleased to announce the inclusion of Amy (AJ) Salter's recent MA thesis in the Leiden University Student Repository. AJ Salter has been an intern and volunteer at the TRC since the end of 2021, and she wrote her MA thesis partly on the basis of her work at the TRC. Her thesis has the title: Handling Museum Objects:. Encouraging Touch in Cultural Heritage Institutions in the Netherlands (2022).

Congratulations, AJ!

In her own words:

AJ Salter, intern and volunteer at the TRC, recently submitted her thesis on museum and collection studies."My name is AJ Salter and I am a Canadian currently living in the Netherlands. I completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in Art History at the University of British Columbia where I focused on textiles and sustainability through the medium of photography. I moved to the Netherlands to pursue personal connections as well as a Masters at Leiden University where I majored in Museums and Collections.

As a lover of textiles I had the pleasure of following an internship during my studies at the Textile Research Centre in Leiden where I am continuing my volunteer research work after graduation. As an international in the Netherlands I appreciate the interdisciplinary work of the TRC and the diverse topics that can be covered by textiles. I hope to continue my research about museum collections and textiles in the Netherlands and maintain my ties with Leiden University and the TRC."

AJ Salter at work at the TRC, Leiden.

Amy's thesis is published for the Leiden University Faculty of Humanities, with the specialistion of Museums and Collections. Her supervisor was Dr. M. Keblusek.  A brief introduction is given below:

In June we had an intense time at a special TRC study-day looking at the various basic types of velvet and how to identify them. One of the participants, Monika Gimblett, has a Polish/Dutch background and when we were talking about natural red dyes - cochineal, kermes, lac, madder - she started talking about the name for the month of June in many Central European countries, and the link with cochineal. It's a story that we thought that a lot more people would like to know. Monika sent us the following blog. More information about Polish lac or Polish cochineal can be found in the relevant Wikipedia pages.

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Life cycle of the Polish cochineal, as portrayed in Breyne's 'Historia naturalis Cocci Radicum...', published in 1731.Some stories are hidden deep in language, in words that we use every day but the origins of which have long been forgotten. Such is the case with Polish cochineal, also known as Polish lac or Polish grain, produced by a small insect known in Polish as Czerw.

Here is how it happened: this small bug known as Porphyrophora Polonica or Margarodes Polonicus was once common in central and eastern Europe, from Lusatia along the German border, through present-day Poland to the Baltic countries, Belarus and Ukraine to the northern borders of Romania and Moldova.

The insects (the females in their late larva state) were collected and boiled in water with vinegar, then dried in ovens or in the sun, and ground with some bread acid. The dye prepared this way could be used to dye cotton, flax, silk and wool. To dye 1 kg of silk, 15-20 gr of red powder was needed, but to dye the same amount of wool, 50 gr was used. However, to produce 1 kg of dye it was necessary to collect as much as 155 thousand of insects!

No wonder that Polish cochineal was very expensive, and only monarchs, nobility and high clergy could afford to buy cloth dyed with this substance. To some extent this explains why red was reserved for secular rulers and bishops for many centuries. Colour symbolism is another matter entirely.

Long length of leheria cloth with a colourful design of diagonal stripes in various widths and bright colours. Udaipur, Rajasthan, India, 1980 (TRC 2022.2119).A few weeks ago a collection of Indian and Indonesian textiles was given to the TRC Leiden by Mies Spée, from the small village of Noord-Beemster in the western part of the Netherlands.

She is a textile artist and designer who, when she was a student, became fascinated by resist-dying techniques, especially batik from Indonesia. She went to various places in South and Southeast Asia to learn more about the technique by working in various batik ateliers.

It is not surprising, therefore, that her collection of textiles includes many pieces of batik, ikat, leheria, plangi and tritik, which were bought in India and Indonesia in the 1970s, 19080s and 1990s. We have nearly finished cataloguing the 170+ items and they should all be online within a couple of weeks.

Mid-20th century, hand embroidered postcard from Greece with a man in a Greek fustanella outfit with red cap standing in front of the Acropolis (TRC 2019.2145).Who hasn’t seen them, either in real life in Athens, or in films, photographs or postcards (TRC 2019.2145)? The strikingly dressed guards in front of the presidential palace and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Greek capital.

And what strikes most people (and is made into a popular tourist attraction, something like the Scottish kilts), is the fact that the guards are wearing a pleated skirt. I remember first seeing them in the summer of 1974, at the time that a military regime (the colonel's junta) was pushed aside and replaced by a democratically elected government. I recall joining a demonstration against the regime in the streets of Athens, and how I lost my sandals when we were chased by the police, by that time still protecting the junta.

The Dutch flag, red-white-blue, hanging upside down just outside of Leiderdorp, 1 August 2022 (photograph Willem Vogelsang).The TRC Collection includes a somewhat banal, typical farmer's kerchief from the Netherlands (TRC 2019.1998). Such cloths have always been linked to the Dutch countryside. They are used as handkerchiefs, cloths to contain all sorts of goods, and also to affix to objects that may cause accidents, such as long protruding bars or pipes loaded onto a truck. But for the last few weeks they have taken a very different role, namely as a symbol of protest.

For hundreds of years many people have used textiles and garments as a symbol of protest. Just think of the purple/green of the women’s suffragette movement in Britain the early 20th century, the white garments and the hand spinning of cotton (TRC 2021.2619) associated with Mahatma Gandhi in India in the 1940s, or the wearing of red, white and blue garments and accessories during the Second World War and the German occupation of the Netherlands (TRC 2020.3711).

Hand-made brooch in red-white-blue, the colours of the Dutch flag, worn during the German occupation of the Netherlands, 1940-1945 (TRC 2020.3711).

We can also point at the use of traditional, sal sepik outfit (1998.0284a and TRC 1998.0284b) currently worn by some Kurdish men in parts of Turkey and Iran.

An example of textiles used for sending a silent, yet very loud, message is taking place in the Netherlands at this very moment. During the last few weeks more and more Dutch flags can be seen throughout the Netherlands hanging from street lights, motorway bridges, as well as tractors and bales of hay. Why?