Meeting Karin: A weaver with incredible collections | 遇见Karin：拥有绝佳收藏的织造者

On a sunny Friday, I visited Lejre Land of Legends (Danish: Sagnlandet Lejre) with my colleagues Magdalena who is an archaeologist from Poland specialized in spinning with ancient tools, Elodie who is a visiting PhD student of archaeology from Switzerland and Claudia who is a singer from Italy continuing a Master’s study, also a visiting scholar here in Copenhagen.

一个晴朗的周五，我和同行Magdalena、Elodie及Claudia一起拜访了莱尔史诗之地（丹麦语：Sagnlandet Lejre）。Magdalena是来自波兰的考古学家，专攻古代纺纱；Elodie是来自瑞士的考古学访问博士生；Claudia是一个意大利歌手，现在继续硕士学习，也是在哥本哈根的访问学者。

While we were practising spinning wool following Magdalena, Claudia said a woman who went to our research centre and listened to her presentation on Wednesday would come to visit Lejre with us and drive us back at the end. Then we met Karin and her friend, both of whom have retired from their original jobs and become weavers with a huge passion for traditional woven textiles.

当我们跟随Magdalena练习羊毛纺纱时，Claudia说有一位周三来我们研究所听过她报告的女士会来找我们，并会在结束时开车把我们带回去。于是我们见到了Karin和她一个朋友，两者都已从各自的本职工作退休，现在都是热衷于传统织物的织造者。

First talking with Karin, I thought she was a professional textile researcher or artist because she asked every one of us about our specialized area and research topics on textile history. And after knowing my research topic and interest, she told me she just visited a flax museum this week and promised to find me its Danish name and information after arriving at her home.

初次与Karin交谈时，我还以为她是个专业的纺织研究人员或艺术家，因为她问了我们每个人在纺织史方向上的专攻范围和研究主题。知道了我的研究课题和兴趣点之后，她跟我说她这周刚好参观过一个亚麻博物馆，还说待会去她家之后会把那个博物馆的丹麦语名称和信息都找给我。

Finishing our visit in Lejre, we were driven to Karin’s home.

结束在莱尔的参观后，Karin和她的朋友开车带我们去了她家。

It is a clean and cosy house located in Greve, a town around 20km away from Copenhagen near the east coast of Zealand in Denmark. It was my first time to be a guest in a local Danish house. What impressed me first was a big wooden loom in the living room with unfinished woven products on it, and artwork mostly textiles everywhere. It was hard to imagine the owner of this house was not professional on weaving.

Karin的家位于丹麦西兰岛东海岸附近一个叫格雷沃的小镇，是一栋干净舒适的房子，距哥本哈根市区约20公里。这是我第一次到丹麦本地人家里做客，最先让我印象深刻的是是客厅里一架巨大的木织机和随处可见的纺织艺术品，织机上还有一些没完工的作品。难以想象，这栋房子的主人不是专业做织造的人。

I could not stop looking around and seeing every corner of Karin’s house with beautiful and lovely objects, not only textiles but also antiques from other parts of the world including a Tang-style ancient Chinese ceramic sheep said to be bought in Sweden. Karin generously allowed us to walk around seeing and taking photos of her collections. She also showed us her favourite private collections of textiles after our enjoying nice food, drinks, music played by Claudia and conversations around a table in her yard.

我忍不住到处看Karin家里美丽可爱的物件，不仅有纺织品，还有世界各地的古董。其中有一件唐代风格的中国瓷羊，她说是在瑞典买的。Karin十分慷慨，允许我们四处观摩她家里的收藏并且拍照，还用美味的食物和饮品招待我们。大家在院子里围坐一圈，边吃东西边交谈，还享受了Claudia动听的弹唱。随后Karin向我们展示了她最喜欢的私人纺织品收藏。

We were all amazed at Karin’s collections. She collected a lot of rugs and carpets with fantastic colours and incredible designs, most of which were made in the last century from different countries in Europe. Karin took out and introduced her precious textiles one by one and allowed us to take a close look and touch.

我们都为Karin的收藏所惊艳。她有许多色彩精美、设计精良的地毯，大多织造于上个世纪，来自欧洲各地。她一件一件拿出她的宝贝纺织品向我们介绍，还允许我们近距离观察和触摸。

Among all her collections, what surprised us most are a group of cute pieces of textile crafts from Peru she took out at last. They were cut into tiny garment shapes from colourful patterned wool fabrics and pasted on white cardboard with other materials. Karin conserved them carefully in layers of cloth in a folder.

在她所有的收藏中，最让我们惊讶的是她最后拿出来的一组秘鲁纺织品，是用带彩色图案的羊毛织物剪成小衣服形状，又加了些别的材料贴在白纸板上做成的工艺品，相当小巧可爱。Karin非常小心地将它们保存在一个文件夹的层层布料中。

As was introduced by Karin, she bought these small crafts in the Sacred Valley of Peru in around 2002. After coming back to Denmark, she happened to see similar fragments with her Peru crafts in a book named Pre-Columbian Woven Treasures in the National Museum of Denmark, in which pre-Columbian fabrics conserved in the National Museum of Denmark are shown. Then she took her crafts bought from Peru to ask the staff at the National Museum. They identified and told her these are made of pre-Columbian fabrics from ancient tombs in Peru.

据Karin介绍，这些小工艺品是她2002年左右在秘鲁的乌鲁班巴山谷买的。回到丹麦后，她偶然在一本名叫《丹麦国家博物馆前哥伦布时期织造珍宝》的书中看到了与她从秘鲁带回的纺织品相似的东西，而这本书展示的是保存在丹麦国家博物馆的前哥伦布时期的织物。于是她拿着自己从秘鲁买的这些工艺品去问国家博物馆的工作人员，他们鉴定后告诉她，这些是用秘鲁古墓出土的前哥伦布时期的织物做成的。

What a pity that people in Peru didn’t take their textile relics as treasures but cut them into small pieces to make handicrafts, simply pasted them on white cardboard and sold them to tourists for money. Magdalena said as an archaeologist she could neither see these pieces nor hear the story.

非常可惜，秘鲁人民没有将他们的纺织文物视为珍宝，而将它们剪成小块，简单贴在白纸板上做成了工艺品，卖给游客换钱。Magdalena说，身为考古学家，她见不得这样的东西，也听不得这样的故事。

It was time to say goodbye. Karin put her small crafts made of ancient fabrics back into layers of cloth carefully and closed the folder she used to store them. I got the information about the flax museum she mentioned and the permission of my writing this blog with her name and pictures of her collections. The idea of writing this article didn’t come up until we were going to leave so I didn’t take many photos of objects at her home. However, you would never feel the authentic charm of them from photos.

说再见的时候到了，Karin小心翼翼地将她那些用古代织物做成的小巧工艺品放回层层布料再封入文件夹中。我获得了她提过的那个亚麻博物馆的信息，也得到许可将她的名字和藏品图片用于我的博客。在我们准备离开Karin家之前，我还没有萌生出写这篇文章的想法，所以我并没有在她家拍很多照片。不过，你们也永远无法通过照片感受到那些物件的真实魅力。

Before we took the train back to Copenhagen, Karin led us to the coast and showed us the seaside of Greve. I highly appreciate all things she shared with us and I have to visit the flax museum she told me soon.

坐火车回哥本哈根之前，Karin带我们去了格雷沃的海边。我十分感激她为我们分享的一切，近期也一定要将她告诉我的亚麻博物馆提上日程。