Netherlands - Weaver's house, Leiden

Did you know that weaving was a job mainly done by men in Old Holland? And also did you know that the training for that job took four years and was done in Gent, Belgium? Well, stick around to find more.

You know me, I've promised myself that I will go to the Nederlands seaside to rest and enjoy the spare time and sleep and play with Luna and have long walks on the beach and after a day of doing that, I got bored and wanted some action. So I've picked up some leaflets from the hotel lobby and took advantage of a rainy day and went to the museums.

One of the Leiden museums that was to my liking was this Weaver's House. It was one of the last museums suggested by the guide "15 museums of Leiden" and it was a really nice surprise.

The museum opens at 1 p.m. and it's free. It consists of an old house, which was occupied since 2003 in the present condition, that is why it stayed unmodernized among all the other houses. The museum doesn't have a permanent collection, but you can see the front room where there is an antique loom and a modern one. The other rooms and hallways host the temporary exhibition, but the house itself it's interesting. The guide was very friendly and spoke perfect English.

  

Traditionally only the man of the family was a weaver and the woman would help dye the threads and spin them. To become a weaver the man would go to Belgium in Gent where he would learn all there was to learn about this craft in the four years he spent there. The end of this craft came in the 1840 when it was industrialised and the weavers would work in small factories and of course the weaving was not done manually. At that time the women started weaving small textiles used around the house, such as tea towels, shawls, bed covers and others. It was because of this we now have the knowledge of manual weaving. The guide told us that a shawl will take up to 30 hours to make and would cost around 75 euros.

Overall a nice museum, a good way of getting an idea about how the Dutch lived and how they worked. I do recommend this museum. One small thing though, park your car in the supermarket parking close to the house, cause parking on the street it's for the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. 

I hope you loved reading this post as much as I loved putting it together! Also, if you fancy keeping in contact with me, drop a line at Dichisuri.ro on Facebook.

Raluca