17th c dress from Dutch shipwreck 17th c on display Kaap Skil museum, Texel Island, North Dutch coast. until May 16

The dress, along with other items such as a lice-comb made from cow horn nestled in its red velvet holder or a perfume bottle to be filled with flowers and worn around the neck, is part of an exhibition called "Garde Robe" (Wardrobe) on show until May 16 at the Kaap Skil museum on the island of Texel off the northern Dutch coast. © Kaap Skil. 


THE HAGUE (AFP).- A 17th century silk dress found perfectly preserved with hundreds of other objects in a shipwreck swallowed below the seabed off the Dutch coast has gone on display in a unique exhibition. 

"The clothes are so intact, you could wear them," enthused Dutch archaeologist Rob van Eerden, saying the discovery was almost like the opening of "Tutankhamen's tomb". 

The dress, along with other items such as a lice-comb made from cow horn nestled in its red velvet holder or a perfume bottle to be filled with flowers and worn around the neck, is part of an exhibition called "Garde Robe" (Wardrobe) on show until May 16 at the Kaap Skil museum on the island of Texel off the northern Dutch coast.

They were all part of a discovery by an amateur diving club, which found the three-masted sailing ship dubbed the "Palmhoutwrak" lying some five metres (15 feet) below the sandy seabed. The ship appears to have been immediately engulfed by sand when it sank off the remote Dutch coast "creating an environment lacking in oxygen, perfect for preservation," Van Eerden told AFP. 

Five members of a local diving club had been exploring the wreck since first discovering it in 2009. But on one "exciting" chance dive in the summer of 2014, they saw something new. "The sand which had been covering the ship had been swept away by the sea. And in the hull we discovered fragments of wooden caskets in which fabric had been stowed," said Gerrit Jan Betsema, a 58-year-old who has been diving for the past three decades. Some of it appeared to be a kind of damask, a glorious heavy silk with a flowery embroidery. It unfolded to reveal a long-sleeved, tight-waisted dress, with a high-neck collar, and a wide, full-pleated skirt, dating back four centuries. 

Catherine Howard, by William Larkin. 

Royal cargo? 
It resembles a dress worn by a noble lady called Catherine Howard, the wife of a prominent English landowner, in an early 17th-century painting by William Larkin.  "All the clothes are the same size and may have belonged to one woman, who was likely fleeing the Civil War," said Van Eerden. Early analysis of the wreck shows it was built and sank in the mid-17th century -- a time of great turmoil in England when King Charles I was pushed off the throne during the rebellion led by Oliver Cromwell. 

The treacherous waters off the northern Dutch coast are strewn with shipwrecks from different epochs.  But mystery abounds over who was on board this boat when it sank, and speculation has deepened as a book cover was found among the belongings bearing the seal of the English royal family, the Stuarts, which had links to the Dutch royal house of Orange-Nassau. 

A team of some 10 experts at the North Holland provincial archaeological centre, the Huis Van Hilde, have been entrusted with the task of dating the hundreds of objects brought back to the surface. It is a painstaking task carried out by comparing the objects with paintings and tracing back the origins of the materials. 

Some of the fabric seems to have come from Turkey, India or even as far away as Persia as it is embroidered with flowers and animals unknown in Europe at the time. "It is such an exceptional discovery and so unexpected that we are calling on different disciplines to determine what type of research to undertake," said Van Eerden. 

As for the wreck -- which remains almost intact at the bottom of the shallow Wadden Sea stretching

from the Netherlands to Denmark -- it is to be re-covered in sand to protect it from erosion until better excavation techniques are developed to allow it to be safely hoisted to the surface. 

Carol Bier's website for 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning play "Disgraced "at Berkeley Theater

• Professor Carol Bier, who now lives in Berkeley, California, and who I know from the Textile Museum in Washington DC in years past , --- a historian of Islamic art, created this website on geometric symmetry and pattern—key elements characteristic of much Islamic art, and central to Disgraced’s Emily’s artwork—focused on oriental carpets.  The website is:  Symmetry and Pattern  The Art of Oriental Carpets. 

Tracing Patterns of Textiles in Ancient Java TAC DE Young Museum .

Saturday, October 10, 2015, 10 a.m. TRACING PATTERNS OF TEXTILES IN ANCIENT JAVA (8TH-15TH CENTURY) With Sandra Sardjono, PhD Candidate, History of Art, UC Berkeley 

This was an illuminating effort on the part of someone who has served as a conservator of Javanese texiles in a museum, and then as a curator at LACMA, and now is doing her Phd at U Cal Berkeley.  She is seeking to make connections between archaeological discoveries of stone relief carving, sculpture and what it has to tell us about textiles.  So far, she simply finds continuity, and illustrates by the consistency of certain patterns.  Her research needs completion, and so far she has found 20 samples of textiles in the sculpture at Premamben, which tells the story of The Ramayana. Marsha Reichle, curator at the Asia Museum, gave a presentation, "Reading" the Ramayana Through Javanese Temple reliefs, guiding us through each relief at Candi Prambanan this friday, October 16.    I am especially interested as I will visit this site in late December. 

I was reminded of my own publication, of a Mesopotamian textile, based on sculptural and archaeological evidence, which was presented and well received at the national meeting of the Textile Arts Society in America, in Madison, WIsconsin.    ARS TEXTRINA A Journal of Textiles and Costume  Volume Twenty-Two December 1994.  Winnipeg, Canada.  pp. 193-216   "My Lady":  Weaving a New Thread of Connection in Ancient Sumer".   I look at Queen Napirasu from Susa highlighting embroidery and spangled tunic,  as reflected on a bronze sculpture.   I focus on the detail of a figure of Enheduanna, with a flounced gown, a sculptural disc found in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. 

Shawls at the philadelphia Museum of Art

Saw a lovely exhibition of shawls at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in March.  More details later; check back!

Miao and Dong Textile Treasures Kali Guizhou Asian Art Museum

Pam Najdowski, who specializes in Miao silver work and fine embroidered and batik textiles, along with Chinese Children's hats, antique baskets and wooden tools, has travelled widely and to Guizhou many times.  She has an extensive knowledge of the Miao peoples and their costumes.  I met her at the Tribal Arts Fair.  She has a gallery at Travelers Market in Santa Fe's DeVargas Center.  :  1810 Paseo de la Conquistador, Santa Fe, Mexico  87501  Her e-mail:  pamnajdowski@yahoo.com

The presentation she elected to give to the Asian Art Museum, Society of Asian Art members focussed on her visits to remote villages where she has befriended weavers who gather antique materials to sell to her, so she is always welcome.  

Her representation was beautiful and focussed on Kali and surrounding villages, all of which I had visited.  My jacket which I wore is from this region, and I have one other, which I wore to lecture on Friday; both were well received by other members, who commented favorably.   I bought in my own embroidery example from Guizhou, where I visited the home of embroiderer, and where she told me her story.  She and her husband botrh worked in a factory for a decade after marriage until she had enough money to pay for their two children's education and to buy an apartment, which I visited.  She has so many wonderful objects for sale. We met when she came to the International Womens Club in Shanghai.  She invited me to visit her so I am finally able to do so.

(Images to follow) 

Yoshiko Wada' hosts " Threads of Life"

Threads of Life, with William Ingram, located on Bali, spoke to us about their project which began in 1998.  The gallery opened in 2002.  The project encourages mico economic production and organizes all the small workshops into collaborative participation.  It has become so successful that it is nearly an independent enterprise, with them as overseers.    The plant mordrant project employs natural dyes 100% from plants.

The Bebali Foundation makes sustainable livelihoods for indigenous peoples.
info@ypbb.org    The address of the organization is in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.   Other sites are:  bebali.org and plantmordant.org

  Jean Howe relating the narrative of their creation of a foundation, and their creation of a community.  Conservator, Joyce Ertel Hulbert is in the immediate background, with Jean Howe in the foreground.

I bought a silk shawl with Silk Thread and natural dyes and its debut was at the reception with the donors to the Yosemite Conservancy in Yosemite in late March...the Spring Celebration.  The chair of the event from Ross, California, introduced herself, as she admired my shawl!

Here is the description, and when I have a photo, will post it.  "This crepe shawl is designed and dyed by the Bebali Foundation with additional dyeing by traditional dyers with whom  the Bebali Foundation and Threads of Life work .  The Bebali FOundation's primary work over the past 15 years has been to recover traditional dye recipes, teach sustainable methods of harvesting and cultivation of these dye plants in the communities that Threads of Life weavers work.   In creating this wearable art, the Bebali Foundation's dye team uses only sustainably harvested plants.  This cloth has been mordanted with a plant mordant, Symplocos sp (www.plantmordant.org) and dyed with Terminalia catappa as the base and an over dye of Indigo - Strobilanthes cursia.  "  

COVERING THE MOON Face Veils by Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood

My veils in the Leiden Institute published in this book.  The Leiden Institute bought my collection of more than 20 veils including a horse hair padjara, and Gillian, the wife of the director included a couple in this book of veils throughout the Islamic world.  Thanks to Carol Bier, who gifted me with the book, I am now able to see my beloved veils in print.  I collected them while consulting with the museums of Uzbekistan, in particular the Samarkand Museum of Fine Arts, which no longer exists, and the museums in Bukhara and Kiva.  It was wonderful to help them develop business sponsorship, to upgrade their exhibition spaces and their administration of the museums.   They also developed gift shops for support of the museums and to discourage illegal sale of items in the collection to visitors.

I found the veils in the market place; at the time, they were an overlooked object so I was able to purchase examples used in weddings in particular, but also on a daily basis. Somewhere I must have images of all the veils sent to Leiden.  




to pson.