For seven centuries, the identity of the city of Leiden was determined by woollen cloth fabric. The last cloth manufacturer closed in 1977, and with it the long tradition of woollen cloth ended.

Between 2013-2017, MUSEUM DE LAKENHAL invited contemporary designers to design a new fabric in order to revive the old craft through making “New Leiden Clothes”. Based on the craft techniques, archived sources of fabric, document, objects from museum, the contemporary designers used the modern techniques to re-interpretate the history, pattern, color, objects related with the traditional wollen cloth. 

On the other hand, when I saw the blue color chips of fabric on display on the second floor, it reminded me of the "New Leiden Clothes". The old fabric was archived, and then the archived became a new fabric but in a contemporary style. As such, the whole experience became a medium to connect history, imagine a craft, sense the color, and connect with the past as well as to think about the future.