Museum Het Leids Wevershuis

Museum Het Leids Wevershuis consists of one of the last remaining "weavers' homes" in Leiden, Netherlands.

Built around 1560, the exterior, the large antique loom (1830) and the interior, are testimony of the once flourishing textile industry (and trade) around Leiden, in particular during the 16th and 17th century, when many home weavers supplied the draper's guild with high quality woolen cloth.

Located on a spot which had always been used as a laborer's home, the house fell almost victim to a great plan to modernize the city in the 1960s (which never materialized due to opposition).

The mostly intact interior reflects living arrangements for workers in the early 20th-century in Leiden.

[1] 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.

Ms. Jager, museum guide and weaver, demonstrates weaving with a historic loom at the museum
Museum guide and weaver Ms. Fennema demonstrates the loom. Here she battens the fabric (where the weft is pushed up against the fell of the cloth by the reed). In her left hand is the shuttle (which she will propel across the loom in an instant)
Social history of the house since 1561, written on the wall (216 x 90 cm)