A costume sketch showing the original of the FOLKLORE kerchief. 
By Martin Ciszuk.

Durán Textiles presented the woolen neck kerchief FOLKLORE in the newsletter No. 7-08 (Dec. 2008). One of our observant Swedish readers and customer Gun Hilmerby, who has gathered great knowledge about Swedish folk costume and is preparing a book on the subject, made us aware of this picture.

It shows a woman in from Vingåker, Södermanland, in central Sweden, in winter time, wearing her archaic regional costume with sheep skin fur coat and a red woolen scarf tied around her hair. As we all can see the design of her head kerchief is the same as the hand printed reproduction FOLKLORE in Durán Textiles historic textile collection. We here have an excellent illustration of how the original garment was worn in the mid 19th century. The artist Bengt Nordenberg (1822-1902) is renowned for his water color pictures of Swedish folk costumes and painting of Swedish rural life from Scania and Dalecarlia. He belonged to the Düsseldorf school - a group of artists educated in Germany who made great success in late 19th century Sweden. The motifs in their art are often sentimental and full of national romanticisms. Often they contain dramatic landscapes, fantastic rocks and rural motifs - commonly mendacious peasant and archaic.

The costume depictions, however, particularly the sketches like this one, are invaluable for the research of Swedish folk costume, because they were made on place on the country side and not in his studio. The artist lived for some years in Vingåker and made many drawings of the people he met there in their local costume. The picture is also a proof for the wide distribution of these woolen kerchiefs – The original we used for the reproduction is in the collection of Skansen open air ethnographical museum and was worn in Delsbo in Dalecarlia in northern Sweden. Neck kerchiefs and shawls were sold by peddlers traveling through the whole country. The original of the picture is in the collections of Kulturen in Lund, southern Sweden.