Lapkepoepen and Frisian peasant woman (Wijde Burgstraat Sneek)

In 1841, Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer opened a fabric store in Sneek. That was the first store of what would later become the global clothing concern C&A.

On the occasion of its one hundred and fifty-year anniversary, the company donated a statue to Sneek in 1991. The bronze statue, made by German artist Herbert Daubenspeck, was given a place opposite the current C&A branch in the Wijde Burgstraat in Sneek. The sculpture depicts a lapkepoep negotiating the price of a piece of cloth with a Frisian farmer's wife.

The name of the sculpture the Lapke poepen. Poepen is the Frisian name for the Westphalian 'Buben' who migrated in large numbers to Friesland every summer in the nineteenth century to perform seasonal agricultural labor. The linen shirts and other garments that the 'poepen' brought with them from their hometowns were of such good quality that the Frisian farmers' wives asked them to bring some of that fabric with them the next year. Some farm workers saw the value of the fabric trade and applied themselves to it.

It is to these lapkepoepen that we owe the birth of many textile concerns in our country, such as Bervoets, Lampe and C&A. In the Westphalian town of Mettingen, where the brothers Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer came from, there is a counterpart to the statue in Sneek. It represents departure of the men to Friesland. This statue too is of bronze and made by Herbert Daubenspeck.