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Part of a costume gallery with local clothing. Courtesy Museum of Ethnography, Krakow, Poland.On Wednesday, 5th June 2019, Willem Vogelsang wrote:

I am just back from six days in the beautiful town of Krakow, Poland. It was an academic meeting that took me there in the first place, but fortunately I had the chance to stay a few days longer to get to know Krakow a little bit better.

I was really taken with the ethnographic museum, which houses a large and beautiful collection of regional clothing from Krakow and surroundings. To be precise, the name of the Museum is the Muzeum Etnograficzne im. Seweryna Udzieli w Krakowie. It was established in the early 20th century, and its holdings are very much based on the folk art brought together by the collector, Seweryn Udziela. The Museum is currently housed in the former town hall of Kazimierski, a suburb of Krakow. Most of the collection, as said, reflects Polish culture, and in particular that of southern Poland.

Ribbon shirt commissioned for the TRC from textile artist Jennie Kappenman.On Saturday 25th May, TRC volunteer Shelley Anderson wrote:

Two new TRC acquisitions are good illustrations of the diversity of the TRC collection. The first is a ribbon shirt that was commissioned expressly for the TRC from textile artist Jennie Kappenman (Red Lake Ojibwe). A ribbon shirt is a pan-American Indian garment “worn by men and women, generally on special occasions or ceremonial purposes. It's a way for us to represent ourselves in a nice way to our communities or spiritual practices,” writes Jennie.

The shirt’s origins are thought to be in North America’s Great Lakes region. French and English traders introduced silk ribbons in the 1700s, and also open neck, pull-over shirts originally of linen or cotton. By the 1800s many indigenous men wore ribbon shirts rather than the traditional buckskin shirt. The TRC’s shirt is black polyester, with ribbons in the colours of the Four Directions: red, yellow, black and white. A machine-stitched appliqué of a buffalo represents the Ojibwe and Dakota territories that make up the US state of Minnesota.

Teddy donated to the TRC by Jennifer Hopelezz, drag-queen from Amsterdam.The second acquisition is a donation from the Amsterdam drag queen Jennifer Hopelezz. Or rather, the drag activist or ‘dragtivist’, as Jennifer uses the attention she gets as a man dressing up as a woman to promote LGBT+ equality and to fight discrimination against people with HIV. The drag costume featured is a teddy made of factory produced black net, embellished with a floral design of silver-coloured sequins. It was made for Jennifer by Spanish designer Sergio Pedrero Santos, who also known the drag queen Lola Veneno.

This costume and others will be featured in an upcoming TRC digital exhibition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. In June 1969, when police raided the New York gay bar called Stonewall, customers unexpectedly fought back. The area around the bar was barricaded and traffic shut down for almost three days as more gay, lesbian and transgender people from around the city gathered to protest discrimination. The modern movement for LGBT+ rights was launched. The first LGBT+ Pride March took place the next year, to mark the first year anniversary of Stonewall.

Photorgaph showing two pieces of lace. The one on top (TRC 2007.0559) is handmade, the one below (TRC 2007.0595) is machine made.On Saturday 25th May, Lisa Dilitz wrote:

My name is Lisa Dilitz, and I am from Innsbruck, Austria. I am in Leiden for one year while I study for a Master's in Arts and Culture at the University of Leiden. As I am particularly interested in textiles I have been working as a volunteer at the Textile Research Centre since October 2018.

Initially my main work was to help digitalise the Iranian textile and dress collection. However, for my Master’s Thesis I wanted to focus on digital fashion and textile exhibitions, therefore my task at the TRC changed a bit. Digital or virtual exhibitions are a relatively new approach to curation, which is conducted in cyberspace.

New technology has the potential to make collections of cultural institutions accessible, visible, broadens the audience reach, expands the physical exhibition space and provides new learning opportunities. Digital exhibitions are a credible method for cultural institutions to reach out, present their collection and share knowledge.  

The TRC began to publish online exhibitions in 2017 and uses this curatorial approach to interact on a global scale. I was given the chance to create a virtual exhibition myself, which helps me to develop my own research. I have teamed up with Olga Ieromina, a volunteer at the TRC and a lace specialist. We are working together on a digital lace exhibition for the TRC website.

How did we work? Olga and I have been meeting once a week at the TRC, starting from the beginning of February. The first question was: What do we want to exhibit? We decided on presenting a juxtaposition of handmade lace and their machine made imitations. We went through the TRC collection and found some suitable matches. For multiple sessions we were narrowing down the examples to seven pairs and carried out the necessary research. Thereafter we wrote the text labels.

I discovered that after writing the labels, the processes of implementing a physical or digital exhibition take a different path, and we started on the digitalisation process. Olga and her husband took high quality photographs of the laces. The images of the objects were uploaded on a computer, named and ordered into categories corresponding to the examples. We adjusted the images if necessary and balanced out the light and colour. Currently we are deciding on the best layout for the exhibition and doing some last refinements. The digital lace exhibition will go online in June.

A St. George ribbon, produced and distributed in Russia to mark the end of World War II (May 2019). TRC collectiomOn Saturday, 18th May 2019, TRC volunteer Shelley Anderson wrote:

I visited St. Petersburg (Russia) on a national holiday. Victory Day, 9 May, celebrates the end of the Second World War, or, as it’s known in Russia, the Great Patriotic War. Millions had gathered in St. Petersburg to participate in a massive parade. Many carried placards with photographs of relatives who had fought and died during the war and the brutal siege the city had suffered. You could spot some people in 1940s-style military uniforms. Thousands of people also wore a ribbon on their chest.

I was curious about this wide ribbon, tied in a bow. It’s called the Saint George ribbon, after a patron saint of Russia, and has three black stripes and four orange ones. It is worn on the left side, closest to the heart, as a symbol of respect for those who  died during the war and as a symbol of pride in being Russian. Its history goes back to 1769, when Empress Catherine the Great first established the prestigious military decoration, the Order of St. George. The black stripe symbolised gun powder, while the orange symbolised the fire of war.

Postcard with two German soldiers and two women in Volendam-style costume, 1943 (TRC 2019.1436).On Friday night, 17 May 2019, Willem Vogelsang wrote:

Tonight Gillian and yours truly watched a music show by André Rieu (we are not proud). What struck us was a group of supposedly Dutch girls in folkloristic costume dancing on the stage. They looked perfect. That is, from a distance. Long blond hair, blue eyes, and you could imagine tulips sticking out of their ears.

But a closer look revealed that their costume was rather weird: they covered their head with the Volendam cap, which, I know, appears to be world-famous and for many is The cliché of Holland. That is fine, but they also wore bright yellow and painted clogs, which again seem to be very Dutch (although I have never worn them and I am afraid my Dutchness is beyond doubt). A little detail, however, is that the Volendam cap and yellow clogs do not go well together. Women in Volendam wore black, carved clogs during the week, and shoes on Sundays. A little detail, but still...

That was not all. In between the Volendam cap and non-Volendam clogs the girls on André Rieu's stage also wore what looked like South German / Austrian Dirndl outfits. I like these costumes, and all they contain, but not really what one would expect to see anywhere in Holland. 

TRC sheet of embroidered designs for WW1 postcards, on display in Kansas City (TRC 2015.0422).The National World War 1 Museum and Memorial of the United States, in Kansas City, USA, has mounted a special exhibition called 'Colour of Memory'. It includes souvenirs from the war front, but also an item from the TRC Collection (TRC 2015.0422).

It is a sheet of embroidered designs for decorated postcards, to be sent home by soldiers fighting in the war. The sheet was identified by the museum after looking at the TRC's digitial exhibition on WW1 postcards. The interesting detail about this sheet is that the designs are dated to 1919, and were obviously prepared before the war was ended on 11th November 1918.

Detail of an Elizabethan (late 16th century) British embroidery (Cotsen collection, Los Angeles).On Sunday, 28th April 2019, Gillian Vogelsang writes:

My recent trip to Los Angeles was also intended to help with the TRC/Bloomsbury series about the history of world embroidery (the first volume came out in 2016, another on Central Asian, Iranian Plateau and Indian sub-continent embroidery will be available within 12 months).

I was invited by Lyssa Stapleton of the Cotsen Family Foundation to see an amazing group of embroideries. These form part of the Cotsen textile collection that will shortly be leaving LA for their new home in The Textile Museum, Washington D.C. They are to be the core of a new textile study centre that is going to be opened later this year.

I was able to examine a group of medieval embroideries, as well some fantastic 17th century English stumpwork and more ‘normal’ embroidery (tent stitch). We hope to study these embroideries in greater detail in due course.

Central and Eastern Europe were not forgotten, as the Fowler Museum has a wonderful collection of textiles and outfits from this part of the world. Marla Berns, the Director of the Fowler Museum, has very kindly agreed to allow me the use of their collection and to provide high resolution photographs of the objects for use in the relevant volume.

Two developments that mean that the Encyclopaedia of Embroidery series is going to be really well illustrated, which is so important for texitle and embroidery lovers!

Entrance to the Fowler Museum and exhibition, with in the centre a poster of the 'Dressed with Distinction' exhibition.On Sunday, 28 April, Gillian Vogelsang writes:

I have just spent a very busy week in Los Angeles, US, working at the Fowler Museum, UCLA, and talking with textile enthusiasts and visiting various collections, museums and art gallaries. In particular, thanks to the kindness of David and Elizabeth Reisbord, I also went to the amazing Huntington Gardens and Galleries and had High Tea in the Rose Garden.

One very unusual aspect of the trip was that David and Elizabeth currently have two exhibitions running, about very diverse groups of textiles originally from their private collection, at two different LA venues. There is a Central Asian ikat exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) called 'Power of Pattern‘ (curated by Clarissa Esguerra) and the 'Dressed with Distinction' exhibition at the Fowler Museum, about Ottoman Syrian clothing.

My trip was the culmination of several years of work by various members of the Fowler Museum, co-ordinated by curator Joanne Barrkman, with David and Elizabeth Reisbord and myself. The project revolved around a donation of some Ottoman Syrian garments to the museum by David Reisbord. They included items of attire from the late 19th century to the 1930’s.

The main focus of the collection is a range of abayas, which are cloak-like garments that are worn in both public and in private by men, women and children. The garments are on display in the Fowler Museum from the 17th March to the 18th August 2019. They also appear in a beautifully illustrated catalogue (with some amazing garment photographs taken by Don Cole), which will be available from June.

David and Elizabeth Reisbord, Los Angeles, April 2019.As part of the celebrations around the exhibition I was asked to give various presentations at the museum, including an informal talk for museum staff and a formal lecture on the 27th of April for a general audience. Over 150 people came to the lecture and many, understandably, were stunned by the beauty of the garments, but also very surprised about the long history of Syrian textile production, the international nature of the trade in raw materials, textiles and garments, and the sad fact that due to the current civil war in the country, this ancient tradition has probably come to an end. The events on Saturday ended with a reception in the Davis courtyard of the museum and a light buffet of Middle Eastern food. Perfect.

In addition to the activities surrounding the Ottoman Syrian garments, I was also asked on Wednesday (24th April) to give a talk about Levantine embroidery, namely the embroidery styles, techniques and uses from Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and northern Egypt. I could talk about a colourful, surprising and stimulating range of embroideries (not that I am biased of course).

An unexpected bonus of seeing David and Elizabeth, is that David has very kindly given the TRC a selection of mainly Syrian textiles and garments. These items will really help in building up the Cultural Ark for Syrian textiles, which the TRC is actively engaged in building up. These and the other items given by David will be photographed and catalogued by the end of May and can be viewed via the TRC Online Collection. I would like to say a very big ‘Thank You’ to both David and Elizabeth for all their help and kindness to me, they are lovely people!