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Paysanne de l'Angoumois (Southwest France), wearing clogs. Costume print, France, late 18th century (TRC 2023.0388).

It's been busy over the last few weeks at the TRC! No surprise there, it's is simply getting busier and busier as we have new activities, visitors, items for the collection, etc.

Some good news – thanks to the efforts of a colleague, Maria Linkogle, the TRC has just been given a grant via the national Cultuurparticipatie programme for working with various groups of people, especially those with Middle Eastern backgrounds living in the Netherlands.

Hand embroidered raffia panel from DR Congo, late 20th century (TRC 2021.2201).We recently published a TRC blog about some Philippine textiles that were made from fibres of the Abaca plant, a member of the banana family. In this blog I would like to draw attention to another interesting type of fibre namely raffia (raphia), which comes from the raffia palm (especially Raphia ruffia and Raphia taedigera) in Africa.

Apart from those two, there are more species of raffia palm that are all native to sub-Saharan Africa, especially West and Central Africa, as well as Madagascar. They grow in marshy or swampy areas, especially in tropical forests or other places with a plentiful supply of water. 

Raphia australis tree. Kirstenbosch Gardens, Cape Town. Photograph by Andrew Massyn.The Raffia palm has long, curving pinnate leaves that can grow up to about 16 m (Rapphia regalis leaves can grow up to 25 m length and 3 m in width), but the best raffia is said to come from the younger leaves of about 1 m in length. The fibre itself is made from the upper epidermis of the leaves, which is removed in the form of long, thin fibres that are bundled together and then allowed to dry slowly.

In most parts of Africa the fibres are used in single lengths, rather than being spun or spliced like other fibres such as flax. This means that the length of the fibres defines the size of the finished product. Most finished products are therefore max. 2 m in size. The main exception is Madagascar where the fibres are spliced and twisted together.

The online BBC News recently (29 March) published a short, but fascinating article by Kan Zhang about the so-called ‘Dream Weavers’ of the island of Mindanao of the Philippine archipelago (to be downloaded here). They are women of the indigenous T’boli people, who live around Lake Sebu in the southern part of the island.

T'nalak cloth of the T'boli people, southern Mindanao, Philippines (TRC 2022.2909).

Costume print, France, from 'Costumes de différents pays' (c. 1797), by Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (1757-1810) (TRC 2023.0004).Over the last few months the TRC has acquired a number of antique prints that will be used to illustrate various mini- exhibitions (actual and digital) as well as publications (notably the Bloomsbury World Encyclopedia of Embroidery), as well as lectures and workshops on the themes of textiles, their production and use.

One of the late 18th century prints (TRC 2023.0004), for example, depicts a woman knitting with four knitting needles, while a cat plays with a ball of knitting yarn and a dog and a parrot look on. The print comes from Costumes de différents pays by the French encyclopaedist Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur (1757-1810).

Another group of prints depict various trades in late 17th century Amsterdam from the famous book by Jan Luyken (1649-1712) and his son Casper (1672-1708), called Spiegel van het Menselyk Bedryf (1694, Amsterdam).

Following donations of another forty quilts to the TRC last year from David and Bonnie Naifeh Smith of Arizona and Sherry Cook of Seattle, I have now finished documenting them and they have been added to the Quilt Index website (see a previous blog of 16 August 2021). The Quilt Index (Michigan University) is an online depository of thousands of quilts from collections all over the USA and they have been expanding their remit to include collections in Europe and further afield, such as those of the TRC.

We now have a total of 152 quilts documented on their site – these can be accessed via quilt index.org and the TRC page can be found under Museums. A few highlights from the new quilts are illustrated below;

A child’s quilt embroidered with baby animals including rabbits, chickens, kittens and puppies from about the 1930’s (TRC 2022.1147).

Kebaya from East Sulawesi, Indonesia, c. 1946, made from bark bast cloth (TRC 2018.0042).At the end of 2022 Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, together nominated the kebaya, a woman’s blouse worn in many parts of Southeast Asia, for the UNESCO intangible cultural heritage list. The results should be heard shortly.

At first glance, you may wonder why should an object you touch be classed as intangible cultural heritage? Such a designation usually applies to music or folk stories, rather than a physical item. However, the nomination is more about the history behind the garment and how it has grown in importance in various diverse countries, rather than about an individual object.

For this blog I thought it might be interesting to add two more stories to the kebaya mix.

Hand embroidered postcard from Spain, with a scene from Valencia, mid-20th century (TRC 2019.2141).During the twentieth century, various forms of embroidered postcards were popular, notably the so-called hand embroidered postcards associated with the First World War (1914-1918). These are in fact machine embroidered (see the TRC online exhibition Silk embroidered postcards from the First World War).

But there were also postcards that were partially or entirely worked in hand embroidery. These come in two main forms, namely those relating to different countries which often have various specific forms of national dress, or general scenes of men and women, such as flamenco dancers.

Secondly, but not as common, are hand embroidered postcards depicting the Virgin Mary or a saint, artistic scenes with items such as fans and flowers, or fantasy images, such as children skating or sledging in winter scenes.

A Karen women in northern Thailand, along the border with Myanmar/Burma. Photograph by Dries Touw, 1965.

Skirt made from a hand woven, hand dyed (ikat), and hand embroidered cloth. Purchased in 1965 in Thailand from among the Karen (TRC 2023.0189).A few weeks ago we were approached by Ria Snoek, Leiderdorp, about an outfit for a married Karen woman living in Thailand, which was originally acquired by her husband, Dries Touw (1935-2021), a bryologist (a specialist in mosses).

The Karen are an indigenous ethnic group from eastern Myanmar (Burma) and western Thailand. A complete outfit is always welcome, but details emerged that make the story of this donation even more interesting.