Acknowledgments
First and foremost, our sincere thanks go to the museums and institutions involved for all their help, photographs and patience.
We are indebted to the estate of Elisabeth Kalf, Leiden University and the Vereniging Oud-Dordrecht for their valuable help in financing the project, and to Het Cultuurfonds for the publication in RKD Studies, thanks in part to the Barbas-van der Klaauw Fonds and the Carolijn Jongsma Fonds, the Hendrik Muller’s Vaderlandsch Fonds and the Ottema-Kingma Stichting.
Many thanks for the recent, beautiful digital colour photography of tapestry interiors in situ by the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (RCE) in Amersfoort, which we have been able to use for the Corpus of Tapestries in the Netherlands and the kind assistance we received from Eloy Koldewij and the RCE photographers.
Also we are grateful to ICAT Textielrestauratie for their help, especially for the access into their archives.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the RKD, particularly to the management and the enthusiastic members of the project group: Sabine Craft-Giepmans, Yvonne Bleyerveld, Jos Beerens, Vera Hendriks, Hans van de Willige, Richelle Brink, De Jing Hams and Rinke Nijland for the realization of this project and their continued help and cooperation. We also thank Rudi Ekkart, former director of the RKD, for housing the Corpus of Tapestries in the Netherlands’ material, including Elisabeth Kalf’s estate, following Willemijn Fock’s retirement from Leiden University.
Our warm thanks go out to Titus M. Eliëns and Erna Fock for the caring and diligent settlement of Willemijn Fock’s estate.
A special thanks goes to Esther Verkaik for our long and enjoyable collaboration on the project and for her work on the biographies of artists and tapestry weavers.
I am grateful to so many people, among whom many colleagues, for their encouragement, support and help. In particular, also for making valuable information available: Ebeltje Hartkamp-Jonxis, Erik Löffler †, Pascal-François Bertrand, Irene Groeneweg †, Wim Mertens and Ingrid de Meûter.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Nicholas Devons for all his loving support.
I would like to dedicate this work to my parents, Sijke (Siety) Smit-Boonstra (1932-2000) and Auke Smit (1928-2021), who both, in their own way, not only gave me their unconditional love but also passed on the love for textiles; more importantly, the life lesson to finish what you start, which is now a fact for the Corpus of Tapestries in the Netherlands!