Hidden stories #5
23 April 2025
Uncovering our collection
In our collection, you will find much more than works of textile art. This time, we take a closer look at the oldest part of the collection, namely nearly 70 handwritten manuscripts with samples from the Leidsche Katoenmaatschappij. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, like competitors, they industrially recreated batik. In this blog, librarian Jantiene van Elk explains more about these practices and the ongoing research into the sample books.
Telling new stories about the colonial past
Description of the LKM weaving mill in 1907
In 2024, the TextielMuseum launched a study of the Driessen collection. The acquiring of the collection was the beginning of the TextielMuseum in 1954. The collection consists of sample and recipe books, textile objects, books and archive material such as correspondence collected by the Driessen family. The Driessen family owned the Leidsche Katoenmaatschappij (LKM). This company produced plain and printed cotton for trade within Europe and imitation batik for export to Asia, Africa and Suriname. The LKM produced until 1932 and was officially dissolved in 1936. Scattered around the Netherlands, interesting objects from this company can be found in various collections, such as in Leiden at the Museum de Lakenhal and Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken. The Driessen collection at the Textile Museum in Tilburg mainly contains sample and recipe books, textile objects and archive material such as correspondence written and collected by the Driessen family.
Several members of the Driessen family and company employees have described the process of textile printing in large and small notebooks with samples. The sample books were made during trips around Europe to learn the craft and during research in their company's laboratory. Sample books were collected from other companies for their own collection. This large collection of sample and recipe books is an interesting source for research
Through all these manuscripts, we know a lot about the technique of industrial printing of cotton, of the dyes and auxiliaries used in the process. However, much more information can be gleaned from the manuscripts. The story of cotton printing is often written from a Western perspective. What is missing are the stories of the people whose patterns were copied and the people who bought the textiles in different places in the colonial world. To make this scholarly research possible, the sample books need to be digitally accessible worldwide, with good access to the texts.
We are currently researching the collection at the TextielMuseum together with three artists. They are each creating a new work for the collection, which will be on display at the museum in 2027. More information about this collective, decolonial, and artistic research will follow soon.
Van verborgen naar zichtbaar met AI
Screenshot of editing a manuscript in Transkribus
The Regionaal Archief Tilburg has digitised over 50 sample books of the Driessens. We make the handwritten texts readable with the Artificial Intelligence (AI) programme Transkribus. This automatic transcription is not error-free. Also, AI does not recognise which terms are important for research. Therefore, more than 20 volunteers help improve the transcriptions from home.
The Driessens described in detail the process of textile printing, but not all the information is in the text. Samples of the printed textiles from the factory also contain a lot of information. Textile samples are difficult to “read” because the information in them is not conveyed with words, but with patterns, texture and material. A digital scan already partly conveys this visual information, but the physical books remain important for a sensitive experience.
The sample books are stored in acid-free covers, in acid-free boxes in dark depots. This means the textiles are optimally preserved. Physical research is only possible in the library itself, and therefore inaccessible to a lot of interested people. By digitising and transcribing, we make the information available to people all over the world. We are building further on the experience of digitising and researching the nineteenth-century dye recipe books from Tilburg for the 2022 exhibition Kleurstof.
Imitation
Tjantings in the collection of the TextielMuseum
In the LKM sample books you will find printed fabrics for the European market, but also many imitation batik. Batik is a technique that uses hot wax to apply patterns to cotton with a wax pen (canting) or a stamp (cap). The textile with the wax is dyed and the paint adheres only where there is no wax. By repeating the process of applying wax and dyeing, you can create intricate patterns.
Imitation batik was made with industrial roller printers or with stamps. Imitation batik, or ‘Batik Belanda’ was originally developed for the Indonesian market, but never really caught on there. European manufacturers found a large market in West Africa. This textile is known as ‘Wax Print’. Besides imitation batik, you can also find imitations of Kasuri (Japanese Ikat), Tjandies (woven fabric), Kangas (cloths for East Africa), Plangi and Shibori (tie-dye techniques). You will also find Suriname cloths in the manuscripts, intended for the regional dress of women in Suriname.
LKM textiles mimic patterns from other cultures in an industrial way. The local meaning disappears and textiles become commodities rather than an expression of a culture.
Collecting textile terms
BTMM0142 Prices of various treatments: Sarongs, Bang, Lassem and Solo and Djogya Sarongs
In researching the sample books, we collaborated with Sabine Bolk, artist and batik researcher. Bolk has extensive knowledge of the companies that made imitation batik. She has published about them, for example the story “Imitation batik” on Things that talk (a website that tells stories about the tangible world around us, objects, things, tools, buildings).
The sample books from the LKM laboratory contain very much, very technical information about textile dyeing and printing. They also contain many textile terms, such as Lapis, Kanga, Lulo. There are also geographical indications, dyes, names of companies or people. Sabine Bolk helped us with her knowledge of the patterns, techniques and origins of batik.
While the volunteers were transcribing, they emailed the terms they came across to Sabine Bolk. From the textile terms the volunteers mailed, Bolk created a glossary of nearly 500 textile terms: dyes, technical and geographical terms. The geographical terms are mentioned in the manuscripts because the design came from there and/or was intended for that market. A small selection of the terms:
|
Textile terms and techniques |
Geographical terms |
Natural dyestuffs and additives for dyeing |
Synthetic dyestuffs and additives dor dyeing |
|
Calicot Caseïne Drukpap Indigomachine Javaprint Kanga Kunstzijde Mastiek Patola Sarung Slendang |
Jakarta Makassar Myanmar Patna Solo Surabaya Suriname Zierikzee Zürich |
Biancaea sappan Blijsuiker Bloedloogzout Kurkuma Notenbasten Raapolie Turks rood |
Coeraline Congorood Kaliumpermanganaat Saranine Snelkleuren Waterstofchloride |
This glossary is important because both the words in contemporary spelling, as well as those in the spelling as we encounter them, are included in the manuscript. In addition, geographical places, dates, people and companies and samples have been tagged in Transkribus.
BTM0144, one of the notebooks from the series of Analyses by Louis Driessen from 1917-1921
Sabine Bolk and I have made a selection of the manuscripts that will provide the most information. We have paid attention to the occurrence of samples and the information in the manuscript. Our focus is on printed textiles for colonial markets. Most have now been transcribed by AI and enthusiastic volunteers are busy checking the manuscripts. We still have some interesting manuscripts to check, such as a review of articles from the De Heijder & Co cotton factory at Leiden 1860-1870 (forerunner of the Leidsche Katoenmaatschappij) and a manuscript on Batik technique. There are also three Books of Errors to check from 1916-1927; the laboratory of the Leidsche Katoen Maatschappij also kept records of what went wrong.
More research
We are making these manuscripts accessible because we think there are so many more stories to tell about them. Research has been done in the past, but the focus has been on the technical innovations of machine imitation batik. Much has been written about the textiles for Africa produced by the company Vlisco, a competitor of the LKM, but there were so many more European companies producing for colonial markets. As I wrote above, in the past, cotton printing has been written about mainly from a Western perspective. Historians also wrote mainly a national narrative
Strands of cotton
II think it is time for a Global history on cotton printing in Europe, telling the broad European story of all the different companies in England, Switzerland, France, Germany and the Netherlands, alongside a non-Western perspective on cotton printing. An example of such a Global history is the book Cotton : The fabric that made the modern world / Giorgio Riello. - Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2013. Riello shows in that book that the Industrial Revolution in Europe cannot be separated from the large cotton sector in different parts of Asia through the centuries. I would love to collaborate with researchers from other continents to examine the LKM's collection in a global historical context and from multiple perspectives.
Do you want to know more about the manuscripts of the Leidsche Katoenmaatschappij? Please contact Jantiene van Elk at [email protected].
More reading:
Sabine Bolk wrote an extensive blog on the project with many angles for new research, such as the synthetic dyes used:
Evi van Stiphout (TextielMuseum intern) researched Suriname cloths, textiles for women's regional costume in Suriname, in the LKM sample books:
