Fragile threads  

Adya van Rees (Rotterdam 1876- Utrecht 1959) belonged to the Dada movement in Zurich and made many abstract embroideries and paintings. Unfortunately, few of her textile works have survived. It is therefore extra special that the TextielMuseum houses one of her tapestries in its collection, and a figurative no less. Since there is no in-house conservator working at the TextielMuseum, Van Rees' tapestry was sent to an expert: Marijke de Bruijne's textile workshop. As a curator in training, I visited her restoration workshop to see what a textile restoration entails.

At the first inspection, de Bruijne immediately knows what her biggest challenge will be: The works' embroidery is made of woollen yarns. As a result, the tapestry cannot be washed, so to clean the work anyway, De Bruijne uses a special museum hoover and brushes. The woollen embroidery threads are also fairly brittle, causing the yarns to break and protrude from the work. Although it is possible to fix the threads into the ground fabric with a combination of glueing and sewing techniques, it is almost impossible to do this with all of the loose threads.

Marijke de Bruijne at work

The limits of restoration

I learned from De Bruijne that you should not expect restoration to return the work to its ‘original state’. Something like fixing all the loose woollen threads just takes too much time. Moreover, there is no guarantee that a thread will not still be loose or come loose in the future. Besides that, too much exposure to light is the biggest enemy of textile work. Bluntly put, every exhibition contributes to the eventual decay of a textile work. Exposure to light not only causes discolouration of the threads in the long run, but discolouration is often the first sign of loss of strength of the material. The fibres slowly break down, rendering the work unable to hang independently and requiring the underlay to be restored, as is the case with Dieu avertit.

De Bruijne explains that restoring colour differences in yarns for restoration is very difficult. There is little chance of finding the original yarns in exactly the same colour and material, especially in an embroidered work that is almost 100 years old. There is also a high risk that the new yarns will discolour differently from the original yarns in the future, making the new additions visible again anyway.

Before and after the resoration

The beauty of imperfections 

De Bruijne states that traces of previous reparations can actually be seen as something beautiful. They are part of the story behind the work. Thus, each reparation adds something to the rich history of the piece. And in the case of the loan to Museum de Wieger, this is a very special story. The TextielMuseum bought the work in 1993 from Pieter Wiegersma from Deurne, who founded Museum de Wieger in that same city a few years earlier. The work will therefore temporarily return to its historical background. And when the work then returns to the TextielMuseum, it will once again be another story richer.

Adya van Rees' embroidered tapestry Dieu avertit will be on display until 1 December in the exhibition Draadkrachtig. Weef- en borduurkunst 1920-1970 in Museum de Wieger.