Museum De Lakenhal
- Museum De Lakenhal is the visual arts, history and crafts museum of the city of Leiden. The museum is housed in the former Leiden Cloth Hall, a building that dates back to 1640. The collection includes highlights by old masters such as Lucas van Leyden, Rembrandt van Rijn and Jan Steen, alongside works by modern and contemporary artists such as Theo van Doesburg, Charley Toorop and Erwin Olaf. Leiden's illustrious past is covered in collection presentations such as The Siege and Relief of Leiden (1574) and Seven Centuries of Leiden Cloth. The production of woollen cloth has determined the identity and position of the city of Leiden for seven centuries. The textile industry made Leiden the largest city in Holland in the 15th century and the most important textile centre in the world in the 17th century. Thousands of textile workers from the Southern Netherlands, England, Germany and France, who fled their countries for political or religious reasons, found work here. The strong, woollen fabric is very popular all over the world and the cloth weights, with which the fabric is given its hallmark, can be found all over the world. In order to guarantee quality, the city council set up seven hallmarking facilities for cloth, saai, baai, grein, ras, warp and fustein. The most important, the Laecken-Halle, opened in 1641. This building is now part of the building sections that house Museum De Lakenhal. The façade of the old cloth hall is full of references to the textile industry: five tables depict the production process in nine stages, and there are sheep on the roof.
| URL: | https://www.lakenhal.nl/en |
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| Publisher: | Museum De Lakenhal |
| Place of publication: | Leiden |
| Document Type: | Museum |
| Country: | Netherlands |
| Tag: | textile history; textile production; woollen fabric |
| Languages: | english; dutch |
| Subject: | Technology |
| Access (Germany): |  Freely available |
