Find the books you have long been looking for, and help support the TRC by buying them! 

Following the successful book sale last summer, we organise another textile books sale on Sunday, 8 November, from 13.00 until 16.00. Hundreds of second-hand textile, clothing and accessory books will be on sale, at very reduced prices! 

The TRC regularly receives donations of books. We select them and see whether we can use them or whether the titles are already included in the extensive TRC textile library. If we cannot use the books, we very much want to pass them on to other textiles friends against a low price.

Why don't you pop in and have a look? You may find the book that you have long been looking for. You will also have the chance to see the TRC’s current exhibition about the paisley motif,  as well as seeing the TRC’s premises and garden, and of course meeting TRC staff and others.

Our address is: Boerhaavelaan 6, 2334 EN Leiden, just behind the Leiden Central Railway Station. 

This brief review of the TRC intensive 5-day textile course of 12-16 October, 2026, was written by one of the participants, Dr Tullia Fraser, assistant curator of the Huang Kam Chak collection, Durham University, UK.

Group photograph of the participants of the TRC Intensive Textile Course, taken in the central hallway of Boerhaavelaan 6, 12-16 October 2026

Last week I attended the Five-Day Intensive Course organised by the Textile Research Centre (TRC), Leiden. Delivered by a formidable team who are such knowledgeable custodians of a ‘living archive’ global collection from which there is much to learn. This experience has inspired new questions and made me look at, research, interpret, teach, talk about (etc.) the textiles in the Huang Kam Chak Yee Collection in an entirely new light: from Late Qing pouches, men’s jackets, to qipao tailored in the 1990s.

This experience feeds into ongoing exciting projects around the Huang Kam Chak Yee Collection, so always more to come. In the meantime, if you are curious about Mrs Huang’s collection, including fashion and foodways, please get in touch.

This mini-exhibition at the TRC is curated by Minsook Kang, who is an intern at the TRC from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. She is a visual artist and researcher working across textiles, moving images, installations and publications. She explores stories, memory, and embodied knowledge through forms of care, attention, and material engagement. In the summer of 2026 she visited the island of Buton in Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. For an extentive blog on the subject, written by Minsook Kang, click here.

A Language of the Hands - Embodied Knowledge and Transmitted Memory in Indonesian Buton Sarongs explores the Buton sarong as a form of embodied and transmitted knowledge.

Drawing on TRC collections and fieldwork in the town of Baubau, the exhibition traces how patterns, motifs, weaving practices, and memories that are  transmitted across generations through speech, observation, and the hands. As a strong oral tradition culture, the sarong emerges as a living textile language shaped by everyday life, nature, and generations of makers.

A Language of the Hands can be visited until 20th of November 2026. The TRC is open every weekday from 10.00 to 15.00.

On 31 August, the TRC opened its doors for a new exhibition: Paisley: The History of a Global Icon (by the curator, Augusta de Gunzbourg)

The new Paisley exhibition at the TRC. Photograph by the curator, Augusta de Gunzbourg.We all know the motif, that cone shape that is curved at the top, which is found on Kashmir shawls, men’s ties, 1970’s hippie prints, or even on cowboy bandanas. Paisley is everywhere !

It is so well-known that it is generally accepted as just being one of those patterns that have always been there, but we rarely think think about its origins and why it is so popular all over the world.

The TRC exhibition is a re-edited, expanded version of one of its past, and online exhibitions (interrupted by the COVID-pandemic) about the famous Paisley motif, and this time mounted in the TRC's new premises along the Boerhaavelaan (No.6) in Leiden.

The exhibition explores the history of the Paisley motif, its ancient origins and its development to the present day. It also looks at how it is currently used for a wide variety of textiles and garments all over the globe.

(Emilie Lambert, collection manager, TRC, 17 October 2026) The TRC houses over 300 pairs of gloves, mittens and gauntlets. They are made of leather, wool or silk, in lace or with net work. They may be knitted, and be practical or purely decorative. The sheer variety, both technically and culturally, is fascinating (Fig. 1). Some of the gloves are highlighted in previous blogs, such as one about Scottish examples, written by Hanke van Prooije in 2025.

Fig 1: Assortment of gloves in the TRC collection showing the wide variety in material, shape, and decoration.

Tokyo-based textile designer Hana Mitsui. Photograph: www.hanatextiledesign.com(Flora Kovacs-Wester, TRC Fellow, 12 October 2026) As part of my research into Japanese kasuri weaving (see my earlier TRC blog post), I recently had the opportunity to interview Japanese textile designer Hana Mitsui about her practice and her approach to traditional Japanese textiles.

Drawing on her experience with leading fashion and textile houses in Japan and internationally, Mitsui combines traditional weaving techniques with new approaches to materials, patterns and production. During our conversation, Mitsui generously offered to donate a selection of samples from her experiments with Kurume kasuri to the TRC. The donated samples make a meaningful addition to TRC’s existing collection of traditional kasuri textiles and enable us to expand the ways in which Kurume kasuri can be understood and researched within the TRC collection.

Mitsui’s ability to see new possibilities in fabric caught the attention of the fashion world early in her career. While studying at the Royal College of Art in London, Alexander McQueen selected her graduation textile for its Spring/Summer 2015 Paris collection.

The TRC as seen from the garden.The Stichting Textile Research Centre (more widely known as the TRC) Leiden is an international knowledge centre for textiles and dress studies that works with people and objects from around the world with no artificial boundaries, as culture and knowledge have no geographical boundaries. We are equally interested in huipil from Guatemala to hanfu in China, as well as Dutch lace caps and East African kangas!

Over the last 35 years, the TRC Collection has grown to over 56,000 catalogued items, making it one of the largest textile and dress collections in Europe. It is used on a daily basis for teaching, research and inspiration purposes.

Since April 2026 this diverse collection has been housed at Boerhaavelaan 6, a monumental urban villa, in Leiden, the Netherlands. The building allows for the expansion of educational activities and exhibitions of the growing collection. Become part of our future and join our support network by being a Friend of the TRC.

In order to build up a solid future, we need long-term commitments from as many people as possible who love textiles in all their many varied forms, colours and patterns!

We invite you to become a Friend of the TRC. Friends transfer annually the sum of 250 euros or more, for a minimum of three years. If you want to become a Friend, please contact Gillian Vogelsang, Director of the TRC, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

To show our appreciation you will receive the blogs written by TRC staff and others about textile-related subjects. You also receive a 10% discount on items in our shop, lectures, courses and workshops, as well as advance information about special events such as community days, special talks, evening events based on exhibitions, book sales, etc.

(Gillian Vogelsang, 5 October 2026) A few days ago, Danni Wang, who is of Chinese origin and lives in The Netherlands, came to the TRC with two of her friends, all of whom were dressed in Hanfu. They looked so different and ‘exotic’. And yes, that was the whole point. Hanfu has become more and more popular over the last twenty or so years with many Chinese, both in China itself and among the diaspora, as well as others who love Chinese history and culture.

Our guests in Hanfu clothing at the TRC, 5 October 2026.