Rigtersbleek N.V.

Textile sample album.

Netherlands (Enschede), circa 1960–1970.

Folio binder (ca. 47 × 33 cm), Ca. 500 fabric swatches on 26 pages with each 30 sections for samples. With an additional ca. 50 loose fabric samples.

Cloth-covered boards with screw-post binding allowing removable pages.

Large commercial Dutch textile sample album containing approximately 500 mounted fabric swatches together with a group of loose printed manufacturer sample sheets. Produced within the Twente cotton industry, the principal centre of textile manufacturing in the Netherlands during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Comprising 13 heavy card leaves ruled in grids and filled with pinked-edge textile swatches, each annotated in manuscript with pattern or stock numbers in blue and red pencil. The mounted samples represent a wide range of printed cotton designs, including florals, geometric patterns, paisley motifs, novelty prints, ginghams, and checks, many executed in the vivid mid-century colour palettes characteristic of European printed textiles of the 1960s.

Accompanied by a quantity of loose manufacturer presentation sheets printed with full-scale pattern illustrations and mounted fabric swatches. Several sheets bear the printed heading “Favorita,” indicating a fabric line 90 cm wide, together with the imprint “Verkoopmaatschappij Rigtersbleek N.V., Enschede,” the sales company of the Dutch textile manufacturer Rigtersbleek, part of the Twente cotton industry centred in Enschede. Additional manuscript notes and stock annotations appear on several sheets.

The album appears to have served as a working reference for a textile agent or retailer; an ownership inscription naming Hendrik Ponz (?) is present on the inside of the front cover. The screw-post binding indicates a modular commercial sample binder, allowing pages to be replaced or updated as seasonal collections changed.

A substantial surviving example of mid-20th-century Dutch textile sales material documenting design trends and distribution practices in the postwar European cotton trade.

Condition: some wear to the binding and edges from commercial use, occasional minor discoloration to pages, otherwise in very good condition.

Literature:

Nijhof, W. (2008). Kunst, katoen en kastelen : J.H. van Heek (1873-1957). [Thesis, externally prepared, Universiteit van Amsterdam]. Waanders.