I so enjoyed reading that speech. The Hon. Richard Mcgarvie sounds like a very
human person with a great sense of humour as well as appreciation of the lace
exhibition.

I wish I had seen the exhibition. Are there any pictures on the net for us to
see? I only joined arachne in 1999 after my children clubbed together and got
me a start-up kit to get online.

Lace greetings from

Janis Savage in South Africa (where the postal system has still not delivered
my much anticipated bookmark)


________________________________
Subject: [lace] About OUR Exhibition of 1998

Dear Friends,

Today I was looking through some old files on Arachne and was reminded of
the Exhibition I organised back in 1998. It was held here in Montrose
Cottage, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia and I'm sure was the first such
exhibition organised solely through the internet. I thought you might be
interested to read the speech given by The Hon. Richard McGarvie when he
opened the exhibition, so I'll reproduce it here in full. He did this all
off the top of his head. In another email I shall post the details of the
lace work for your interest.

David in Ballarat, AUS



The speech made by The Hon. Richard McGarvie at the opening of the
International Lace show, January 14th, 1998. Richard was a former Governor
of Victoria and my mother's 2nd cousin.



"Thank you  Brian, thank you Tom. Lesley and I are always delighted to be in
Ballarat, we are particularly delighted today.   We think that this unique
International lace show could not have found a better home than Ballarat, in
all of Australia it is the obvious place to be held.



"Lacework is a craft of great beauty, we all come to have what today will be
for us a feast of beauty which has quite definite indications of pleasure.
Lace has been part of our culture for many, many years and that famous
supreme court judge in the United States,  poet and philosopher, Oliver
Wendell Holmes wished to illustrate discord he said "discord is like
hedgehogs dressed in lace, a great contrast".   When Samuel Johnson wanted
to emphasise Greek, he said: "the great value of Greek, sir, Greek is like
lace, a man gets as much as he can."



"This exhibition is symbolic of world cohesion. The fact that it is being
held here in Eureka Museum and Montrose Historic Cottage reminds us that
there is on exhibition today lacework which was made in Australia in the
1850s and modern lacework from all around the world, modern lace from
Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, from Israel
and Denmark.



"The Macquarie dictionary  tells us that lace is a net-like ornamental
fabric made of threads and that makes us reflect that we have had very great
advantage of a net like communication fabric made of electronics, because
without the internet and without Arachne, the internet association, it would
not have been possible to organise this.



"It's not only part of our culture, lacework  is part of world culture, and
when Lesley and I in October 1983 were in that beautiful city of Bruges in
Belgium during the Festival of the Canals, one of the things we delighted in
seeing was the laceworkers of Bruges doing their work out on the footpath;
men, women with centuries of experience behind them.



"When we read the programme we learn a bit about laceworkers. One can't but
read those biographical  details in the programme without realising that
laceworkers enjoy making lace. There's another feature; lace of course is
used in another way: to lace someone's coffee is to put spirits in it either
with their knowledge or without, and we find from those biographies that
there is a very real spirit that permeates laceworkers, and it's a humourous
self-mocking spirit. You can't help reading those biographies without
realising that those people are very  good people who enjoy laughing at
themselves, and I suppose there is  nothing more valuable for us all than to
realise how inherently ridiculous we are, and enjoin in the general laughter
about that.

It is I think very fortunate that people like that have been brought
together through the Arachne organisation that is involved and we all owe a
great debt, the whole community not only those of us who are here, to David
Collyer who has been the moving spirit in  getting this together and we owe
a great deal to co-operation which has come from well around the world.



"Now, it's always useful in opening an exhibition of some craft or some
particular skill if one can claim to have some connection.   I can claim to
have a connection to lace. I was a judge of the Supreme Court for 16 years
and on a formal occasion, the opening of the legal  year when the Supreme
Court judges went in their robes to St Pauls, in addition to our full bottom
wigs, and our Windsor breeches and our black stockings we had a lace jabot
(Brian has one got almost the same) and lace cuffs. So I have had the
benefit of lace workers over the years.

I congratulate everyone who has been involved and with great pleasure I now
declare open the International  Lace Show and I will now be led inside and
symbolically I will lift the chain so that you can all go into see the
exhibition without being pole vaulters."

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