Excerpt from 2005 letter about the Willet-Holthuysen Museum

......The only tourist stop we made was to a canal house museum. When the canals were built in Amsterdam, the wealthy built houses on the canal-front. One such house was occupied for the first 300 years of its existence by seven different families. Since the late 1800’s, it has been a museum. The last owners had no children, and when they died, the house was bequeathed to the city of Amsterdam on the condition that it become a museum. We went to see the Willet-Holthuysen Museum so we could view a canal house from the inside. As an added attraction, there was a very complete and interesting exhibit on clothing styles in the past. The house itself was very impressive and the displays of the collections of porcelain, glass, silver and the other "collectibles" of the era were beautiful. Whenever we see old buildings, we are interested in seeing how the inside is arranged, and this house is carefully preserved and annotated so that visitors will understand the lifestyle of the people who lived there.

An added attraction of an exhibit of upper class women’s clothing was even more fascinating. They not only displayed the beautiful dresses, but had exhibits of how the garments were made – showing the various styles of hoops, bustles, petticoats and corsets that women wore over the years. One little video screen showed a young woman being helped to dress. She must have worn 30 pounds of clothing in eight or ten different pieces. You really did need a maid to help you dress in those clothes. All that beautiful clothing must have been painful and difficult to wear, but knowing that still does not detract from its beauty.