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Reproduction of painting, and table cover in foreground.
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The Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan recently mounted an exhibit featuring lace from the Textilmuseum of St. Gallen, Switzerland. The exhibit is now closed, but many of the items and much interesting information can still be seen and enjoyed at the continuing online exhibit. The exhibit was also reviewed by Roberta Smith, although her review was not published until three weeks before the exhibit closed. This may explain the extraordinary crush of masked museum patrons on the day we visited with our timed tickets.
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Wall text at entrance.
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In addition to examples of lace the exhibit featured reproductions of historical figures wearing lace-embellished clothing, artifacts such as lace pattern books, and videos of hand- and machine-lace making. The first section of the exhibit, The Emergence of Lace in Early Modern Europe, described the evolution of lace, beginning in the late 16th century. Wall text explained the two main types of lace featured in the exhibit: needlelace, derived from earlier forms of embellishment such as pulled thread work, and bobbin lace, a highly evolved from of braiding.
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Samplers of openwork and needlelace inserts, 17th century.
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Sampler, detail.
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In keeping with its history as a purveyor of many luxury goods, Italy became one of the epicenters of sophisticated lace-making. In addition, Italian publishers compiled early patterns books for lace designs, enabling the eventual spread of intricate lace to other textile centers such as Bruges. Lace was produced at this time by aristocratic women for their own use, by women in convents and charitable institutions, and by women seeking to supplement their income, however poorly paid they were for their efforts.
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Bobbin lace border with daffodils, other flowers, 17th century.
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Various designs for lace [my translation] Bartolomeo Danieli, 1639.
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One treat was the inclusion of tools and set-ups for lace making, including this pillow with a narrow band of continuous bobbin lace in progress. The green paper band beneath the lace is the "pricking", which has small holes indicating the placement of pins. Threads, wound on narrow bobbins, are wrapped and twisted around the positioned pins, which are removed when each section of a pattern is complete. Most of the lace in the exhibit was made of linen thread.
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Bobbin-lace pillow with thirty bobbins and in-progress lace, 1897.
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Some of the lace is so fantastically elaborate it seems difficult to believe it is the work of human hands, and indeed, there is an entire folklore of tales surrounding lace-making, including stories of the Virgin Mary arriving by night to assist poor women in finishing a piece of lace. These stories anchored lace-making as an activity suitable for virtuous women, removed any taint of superstition and perhaps substituted the promise of divine favor for adequate remuneration. For more lacemakers' folklore see the scholarly website By the Poor, For the Rich: Lace in Context.
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Needle-lace border, France, ca. 1710.
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Needle-lace border, detail.
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From the exhibit section Lace and the 17th-century French Economy we learn that, during the reign of Louis IV, French aristocrats spent heavily on imported lace. To block this flow of capital out of the country, and to support the French economy, Controller-General Jean-Colbert set up and subsidized a home-grown lace industry, importing lace makers from Venice and Flanders to teach the necessary skills. This effort proved a roaring success with monied French fashionistas.
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Marie Rinteau, Francois Drouais, 1761.
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The Bard Center museum layout is basically two galleries on each of three floors, with a hallway connecting the galleries. It's an awkward exhibition space but the curators did their best. I do have a minor quibble with labels printed in white lettering on a light gray background - there was a lot of bending and squinting. However, the 400+ page catalog is amazing - lots of essay, great images, and a glossary of lace terms that is worth the price alone.
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Displays inn the hallway.
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The hand-made lace industry contracted following the French Revolution, but lace-making rebounded and hand-made lace continued to be a valued luxury item through the first half of the 19th century. Nothing stops the march of technology, though, and the industrial revolution introduced weaving and embroidering machines which could produce near copies of the hand-made items, making these accessories available to middle-class, middle-income women. However, for women like Queen Victoria, who loved English Honniton lace, nothing but hand-made would do.
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Chantilly lace shawl, silk thread, ca. 1860.
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Chantilly lace shawl, detail.
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Ball gown, ca. 1855-1858, assumed worn by Fanny Appleton Longfellow.
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One of my favorite objects in the show is the hand-made lace collar below, designed by Mathilde Hrdlicka (1859-1917) and instructor at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna. The design, featuring Queen Anne's lace, has a modern feel to it. Most lace schools are long gone, and although there were efforts to revive lace-making as a cottage industry in the twentieth century, lace-making is now mainly practiced by skilled hobbyists. As part of the exhibit, members of the Brooklyn Lace Guild volunteered to sit in the fourth floor gallery and give demonstrations of lace-making. The Guild's co-founder Elena Kanagy-Loux, is a textile polymath and Collections Specialist at the Antonio Ratti Center at the Metropolitan Museum. For the Bard exhibit, Ms. Kanagy-Loux designed and made a bobbin lace creation on the theme of Judith and Holofernes, a favorite topic for historical lace makers. I couldn't get an image of the item but you can see it at the Bard Center's website.
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| Hand-made needlelace collar, ca. 1900. |
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Hand-made collar, detail.
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Today most lace used in garments and accessories is machine-made and includes a class of textile called "chemical lace". This doesn't sound too romantic and it isn't - large machines stitch patterns on vertically-tensioned special fabric. The fabric, or substrate, is then immersed in a chemical bath which dissolves the substrate but leaves the embroidered stitches intact. One gallery of the exhibit, Post-War Fashion and Chemical Lace, was primarily devoted to the machine-made lace produced by the manufacturer who collected most of the historic lace in the exhibit - Leopold Ilké, who, with his brother, managed the textile firm of Ilké Frères. His collection of historic lace provided inspiration for their line of machine-made yardage and motifs. The Ilké factory was located in St. Gallen, Switzerland, which has been a center of textile production since the 13th century. Many other manufacturers established factories there too, such as A. Hufenus and Cie, which produced the fabric in the image below.
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Photograph with eyelet embroidery swatch, ca. 1932-35.
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Chemical or other machine-made lace was sturdy enough to be used for apparel fabrics, giving rise to the all-over lace dress, where formally lace was limited to use as an embellishment or accessory. Fashion designers continue to explore new ways to create lace and new ways to use it, as presented in the final gallery.
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Masked visitor perusing modern lace fabrics.
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Chemical lace lurex with hand-applied feathers, Jacob Schlaepfer PG, 1998.
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One of the most famous modern lace dresses is the lemongrass ensemble worn by Michelle Obama to the inauguration in 2009. The ensemble was lent to the Bard exhibit by the Obama Presidential Library. This ensemble, made with a felted wool lace, was made by the late couturier Isabel Toledo. Clearly, lace retains its appeal.
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Photo: Alex Brandon, AP.
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