Today’s world is fast paced and full of conflict or at least thats how I feel quite a lot of the time! There’s a demand to be “on” all the time and keep up with the steady stream of emails hitting our inboxes, to keep up with the steady stream of information we are bombarded with, to keep up with our never ending to do lists so it’s no wonder we all feel a little overwhelmed at times.

My antidote to this is to loose myself in my lace! Making lace is my therapy -  bobbin lace is mostly a combination of twists and crosses and the patterns are repetitive so it’s easy to loose yourself in a lace pattern, the repetitive action of twisting and crossing threads or wire is very meditative.  It doesn’t matter if the pattern is simple or more technical, when you are making lace you have to focus solely on what you are creating and be completely in the moment. There is no room for screens when you are in the zone or flow of creating. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy watching TV or a good box set whilst I’m making lace but you can’t look at your phone or laptop if your hands are full of bobbins and pins!  

Making lace can also help with our tendencies towards perfection. Because we are human we will make mistake even after we have completed our 10,000 hours and become so-called experts in an area. The interesting thing about mistakes in craft work is that we tend to notice our mistakes when it’s unlikely no one else will. When you are making lace if you notice you’ve made a mistake you have two options, you could go back to fix the mistake or you could just decide to live with it. When you go backwards in thread lace you have the potential to weaken the thread which might lead to issues further on with threads snapping. When making bobbin lace with wire you have less options if you make a mistake as wire isn’t very forgiving at being reworked. If you do choose to reverse your wire you will need to gently straighten out your wire as kinks are made in the wire as you make lace. You need to consider reverse lace in wire very carefully as the wire you’ve gently manipulated will always be a little more fragile and prone to breaking. Often it’s not worth going backwards in wire and you learn to embrace and celebrate your mistakes and with time and practice you will find that you make less mistakes and you find ways to solve problems that come up.

We all want to create perfect works, but some of the most interesting hand made works aren’t perfect, and we love them for that very reason.  We mustn’t let our search for perfection hold us back from making stuff.

As part of Jane Atkinson’s exhibition Ebb n Flow, Jane organised a number of workshops for a host of international lace artists such as; Pierre Fouche, Denise Watts, Ann Allison, Lauran Sundin.

Lauran Sundin creates beautiful and unique pieces of statement jewellery using gold and silver wire and I was lucky enough to attend Lauran’s wire lace workshop.

Garden Party - one of Lauran’s masterpieces (Photo courtesy of Lauran Sundin)

We had a great weekend learning wire lace techniques from Lauran and seeing Lauran’s “ballet fingers” in action. One of a Lauran’s favourite sayings is “if you never make anything you’ll never make a mistake “ a good mantra to live by, whatever you choose to do in life.

At the end of our first day we were treated to a personal tour of Jane’s Ebb n Flow exhibition. It was lovely to hear where the inspiration for the exhibition came from and learn about Jane’s design process. On display with the exhibition pieces were some of Jane’s sketchbooks which showed how each design was created.

The Walford Mill was a great location and the learning loft was a lovely space to spend the weekend and was very well equipped with everything we needed.

Selvedge is an artisan magazine which contains articles covering a wide range of subjects all related to makers and hand made creations and is a really lovely read. I was excited to see that Selvedge had published an complete edition of their magazine devoted to Lace!

Some of the things I enjoyed in this edition included :

A Hat Trick - Christine Matthieu Cite Dentelle Mode Museum Exhibition 

This article is made up of photographs of fantastical head pieces made from various types of lace and worn by young dancers from an exhibition of Christine’s photographs featured in the Citie Museum. Initially, I was so focused on the magnificent head pieces I completed missed the transparent faces wearing the head gear. Although the exhibition has finished you can still see some of the photographs from this exhibition on the museum website: http://www.cite-dentelle.fr/en/home/Exhibitions/Current/installation/5a0f12f072e7e5367b80f71d/apparitions---photographs-by-christine-mathieu

Trouble in Paradise - article by Liz Hoggard

Not a lace article but still interesting article on the Hand and Lock embroider, Juliet Ferry. Juliet joined Hand and lock in 2016 as their Head of Embroidery, her work sounds fascinating with every day bringing different projects. Some of the projects she has been working on include;  Hand monogrammed perfume pouches for a fashion brand,  monogrammed initials for Vivienne Westwood and a wedding dress. Hand and Lock has more than 250 years experience embroidering and monogramming garments for royalty, the military and various fashion houses. Their Instagram is definitely worth a look as is their website. You can see more of Juliet’s work here: http://handembroidery.com/meet-the-team/juliette-terry/

Straight-Laced - article by Kate Cavendish

This article is highlighting how lace has not always been worn exclusively by women and is inspiring modern menswear collections from Burberry, Alexander McQueen and JW Anderson. Some designers are using lace subtly whilst others are embracing and showcasing lace more obviously in their designs, such as Burberrys’ 2016 spring/summer collection which featured a white lace gentleman’s coat and Alexander McQueens’ Spring/Summer 2014 collection which included a cotton set of trousers and shirt featuring lace and skulls. Whilst these designs looked amazing in the collection lace for men hasn’t made its way to the high street as yet.

Curtain Twitchers - article by Nicola Donovan

An article about net curtains doesn’t sound very exciting but this was a interesting read and included a whistle stop history of the industrialisation of lace in the UK which has seen demand for lace curtains dwindle and fall out of favour, the new millennium has bought vintage and hand crafted items back into fashion. Timorous Beasties have begun creating unique lace net curtains using old Nottingham lace machines. They also produce a range of other hand crafted products; fabrics, ceramics, furniture, lampshades and rugs. You can check out their shop at https://www.timorousbeasties.com/

Guiding Hand - Tuulikki’s Chompre’s Lace Collars

A page of beautiful lace collars collected by Tuulikki Chompre, Tuulikki is a Finnish textile collector. When she first started collecting collars they were easy to find and have now become much harder to source. Tuulikki stores her collars in a file cabinet, stitching each collar onto black paper. Her pursuits of collars has led to learning about different lace characteristics and she now has one of the finest collections in the world.

Drawn Thread Work - article by Bradley Quinn

The content of this article was not as you probably expect from the title! Lace is inspiring architecture and is being used to design walls, bridges and make fences. Examples of Lace being used in architecture included; the Lace Fence created by Joel and Jeroen Verhoeven with Judith Graauw, Shell Lace created by Toinkin Liu and Arup and The Urchins created by Jin Choi and Thomas Shine. I’d love a Lace Fence over my lovely but slightly boring wood panel fence.

Incidentally, the sculptural piece ‘The Urchins’ was featured as part of the Lace, Not Lace exhibition held at the Hunterdon Museum in New Jersey, USA.

Black Holes - article by Amanda Briggs-Goode

Amanda article explores the work of three artists that are using lace and the notion of absence, these artists all use lace or imitate the look of lace;

• Mal Burkinshaw http://www.beautybydesign.org.uk/mal-burkinshaw/4586840261

• NeSpoon https://www.behance.net/NeSpoon

• Cal Lane http://callane.com/

Point D’Alencon - Sarah Jane Downing

This was a really interesting article about French lace. Back in the seventeenth century the desire for lace led designers to be competitive and try to outdo each other by finding the most ingenious new places to adorn with lace. This led to headdresses, ruffles and lace being worn from head to foot by women and men. Lace was even included as part of the French Military uniform!

The articles also touches on sumptuary laws and the development of the French lace industry and how this impacted the Venetian Lace Industry and vice versa.

I enjoyed the special Lace edition of this magazine and hope they do another edition dedicated to lace again. It was really interesting to read all the articles and see how artists and designers are still being inspired by lace. You can buy back copies of Selvedge at https://www.selvedge.org/

The Ebb ‘n’ Flow exhibition was a spectacular story of climate change depicted in a number of lace panels created by Lace artist Jane Atkinson. The exhibition was held at the Walford Mill and Priest’s House in Wimborne.

Jane’s panels depict many different elements of nature some feel familiar such as flowers, trees and birds.

Other aspects are more unexpected such as oxygen bubbles and ice. I hadn’t really give oxygen bubbles much thought until I saw Jane’s four panels Oxygen 1 - 4 which captures the bubbles of life so beautifully.

Jane was inspired by her daily walks through nature to create many of the pieces in this exhibition, and she has used her art to give us a very personal and intimate view of the changes she has seen, and this is relatable to us all as we are all seeing similar events and the impact of climate change in our local areas and homes.

I loved how the exhibition had been assembled and how some of the pieces were hung from the ceiling so you could walk in between them and others were framed within acrylic/perspex.

The catalogue accompanying this exhibition is beautifully produced and as well as containing detailed notes for each piece, explaining the inspiration for them contains good quality photographs of each piece. I loved the ‘Healing the planet’ suggestions at the bottom of each page which were interesting and sobering. One read that “3° of global warming, raising the sea by 2m, would devastate capital cities worldwide. Coal burning must stop, but Dorset rejected a 970 MW coastal wind farm in 2015.”

Other lace artists work was also on display at the Mill including Lauran Sundin, Denise Watts and Ann Allison.

We live in a society where we are lucky enough to be able to purchase our clothes pretty much immediately from a wide range of shops selling an abundance of ready to wear apparel depending on the style and fashion we want to achieve. When our clothes have served there purpose we will pass them onto charity or recycle them. In years gone by it wasn’t so easy and to purchase new clothes you had to go to your tailor, be measured, choose your design and fabric and then wait for your new clothes to be made.

As a result we became very good at recycling, reusing and repurposing clothes. This is one reason why so little lace has survived today. Hand made lace was not cheap and was considered a status swymbol. You would make best use of what you had by moving it from article to article, and repurposing/reshaping it time and time again. This applies to both thread lace and metal lace. Because metal lace was made from precious and expensive metals such as gold and silver and an items usefulness had been served they were melted down and this beautiful work disappeared into the ether.

So how do we study these laces? Many lace researchers use old portraits which often have exquisite detail of laces in fashion at the time the portrait. Rosemary Shepherd’s book ‘An Early Lace Workbox’ is a great resource, Rosemary shares details of her travels around the world and the laces she has studied in museums and portraits to understand how early laces were made.

One of the samples in Rosemary’s book comes from one of Janet Arnold’s ‘Patterns of Fashion’ book. This is a diamond net reconstruction which was originally used to trim the bodice of a gown.

It is a lovely simple sample using picots and plaits to great effect. I have used this sample to create a wire lace pendant using early lace picots. Rosemary’s sample is also created using early lace picots.

My second wire pendant is the same pattern but with modern day picots and some beads added over the roseground.

Lace is a versatile fabric, there are so many different types of lace you might find it hard to believe that lace is primarily made from just two stitches, half stitch and whole stitch. These stitches are constructed from a series of crosses and twists. 

Some good resources to start to learn bobbin lace making include:

• The Techniques of Bobbin Lace by Pamela Nottingham - this is a good introduction to learning lace covering Torchon, Bucks Point and Buckinghamshire Lace techniques

• The Technique of Torchon Lace by Pamela Nottingham

• Torchon Lacemaking by Elizabeth Wade

• Bobbin Lace Making by Doreen Wright

Some good resources to learn more about different types of lace and lace history:

• The Illustrated Dictionary of Lace by Judyth L. Gwynne

The dictionary definition of lace is that "it is a fine open fabric of cotton or silk, made by looping, twisting or knitting threads in patterns and used especially for trimming garments."

Whilst technically this might describe what lace is, it is so much more than this. Its a beautiful fabric and can be made using various techniques; needle lace, bobbin lace, knitting, crochet, open work, netting and tatting to name just a few. I love the process of making bobbin lace. 

In 2015 the Heritage Craft Association (HCA) researched the state of crafts in the UK and using a conservation status system agreed with the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust Watchlist, a system of four categories of risk to assess the viability of heritage crafts. A heritage craft is considered to be viable if there are sufficient craftspeople to transmit the craft skills to the next generation.

• Extinct

• Critically Endangered

• Endangered

• Viable

Luckily Lace Crafts classified as ‘currently viable’ are those which are in a healthy state and have sufficient craftspeople to transmit the craft skills to the next generation. They may include crafts with a large market share, widely popular crafts, or crafts with a strong local presence. A classification of ‘currently viable’ does not mean that the craft is risk-free or without issues affecting its future sustainability/viability.

The HCA;s definition of Lace making is "The making of an openwork fabric by the manipulation of a single thread (needlelace) or multiple threads (bobbin lace) by hand."