Museum Het Leids Wevershuis

Het Leids Wevershuis, a small neck gable house

Museum Het Leids Wevershuis is a museum for the history of weaving on Middelstegracht 143 in Leiden, the Netherlands.

The museum is housed in one of the last remaining "weavers' homes" in Leiden and dates from around 1560 during the weaving boom in Leiden when many home weavers supplied the draper's guild with high quality woolen cloth. The museum has a weaver available most days to demonstrate the craft and sells products made during demonstrations.

History of the building

The building was (re)constructed as a house in a neck-gable style around 1900, but an original cellar exists under the house and parts of the interior date back to the 17th-century.[1] Located on a spot which had always been used as a laborer's home, it was almost a victim of a great plan to modernize the city in the 1960s because it was never granted the rijksmonument status. In the 1970s it attracted the attention of a small group of local historians and they formed Het Kleine Leidse Woonhuis in 1976 to save small old buildings in Leiden such as this one. Today it is part of a group of small houses in a neighborhood of mostly cement and modern brick constructions from the 1960s and 1970s. The mostly intact interior reflects living arrangements for workers in the early 20th-century in Leiden.

Museum

Spinning wool, a larger-than-life painting of the wool trade in Leiden with a view of two small workers' homes, 1595, by Isaac van Swanenburg

The museum preserves the language and customs of the old craft of weaving in Leiden and is a short walking distance from the old Draper's guild (part of Museum De Lakenhal today).

References

  1. ↑ De Sfeer van 1900 - Wevershuisje aan Middelstegracht wordt Museum in the Leidsch Dagblad, 1 December 2004, Erfgoed Leiden website

Coordinates: 52°09′36″N 4°29′54″E / 52.15992°N 4.49835°E