New Leiden Cloth

Leiden has been home to a woollen cloth industry for seven hundred years. The last factory to produce the characteristic Leiden Cloth closed its doors in 1977, but Museum De Lakenhal will now breathe new life into this age-old craft. For New Leiden Cloth, a new designer will be commissioned every year. Graphic artist Christie van der Haak was selected to design the first edition of this new cloth in 2014. At the end of that year, the museum issued an Open Call for designers under the age of 35. A professional jury subsequently singled out three remarkable entries: those by Mae Engelgeer, Thomas Eurlings and Remi Veldhoven. The jury consisted of: Milou van Rossum (NRC Handelsblad), Ingrid Oomen (The Woolmark Company), Guus Beumer (Het Nieuwe Instituut) and Nicole Roepers (Museum De Lakenhal). The three finalists were asked to develop test designs, which were displayed in the museum where visitors could critically review them. And it wasn’t just the museum who finally chose Mae Engelgeer, as the public also overwhelmingly supported her design. Of the more than 1800 visitors that voted in the competition, more than half picked the fabric of ‘Archive as fabric / fabric as archive’.

Exhibition

The historical exhibition Seven Centuries of Leiden Cloth is open to visitors of Museum De Lakenhal until 31 January 2016. This new fabric by Mae Engelgeer has been incorporated into this exhibition, which focuses on the city’s long history of textile manufacturing. Meanwhile, Museum De Lakenhal is preparing for a large scale restoration and expansion programme, which is set to begin in the spring of 2016. In the new museum, the fabric by Mae Engelgeer will be sold per full meter by 2018. This edition, as well as the other New Leiden Cloths, will be given a prominent place in the completely redeveloped museum store.

Studio Mae Engelgeer

Mae Engelgeer (1982) studied at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute (AMFI) and at the Sandberg Instituut. With her strong, yet delicate graphic signature she quickly caught the attention of a wide and international audience. Her work was just exhibited at the Design Week in Tokyo in October 2015, while Studio Mae Engelgeer will also be represented at the prestigious Salone del Mobile in Milan in April 2016.

EDITOR’S NOTE

Museum De Lakenhal is a museum of the arts, of artistry and of the history of Leiden. Among the highlights of our collection you can find works by many old masters, including Lucas van Leyden, Rembrandt van Rijn and Jan Steen, but also pieces by modern artists like Theo van Doesburg, Jan Wolkers and Erwin Olaf. Museum De Lakenhal develops high-quality exhibits of (inter)national importance using Leiden as its source. The museum sees itself a renewing network museum that ties the past and present together and seeks to inspire its visitors using old and new interpretations.

For more information, please contact:

Public Affairs of Museum De Lakenhal, Minke Schat.

Telephone: 071 5165 360 / 06 11 01 88 31 or via pr@lakenhal.nl

Museum De Lakenhal, Oude Singel 28-32, Leiden

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