Well, after over a month back in the UK after two month stays working in New York, I've nearly caught up with myself, and time to share my day in the Metropolitan's Ratti Center. The first surprise when Devon took me to the Center, which is just off the mediaeval court in the "basement" was how modern and bright it was - certainly not what I would expect in a typical British museum in the stores in the catacombs! A reception area, then the work stations, wired up with the latest museum computer system. We spent the morning there using the computerised database, which had detailed descriptions of the collection with photographs. The descriptions, as one would expect, were of various dates, and reflected the views and knowledge of the cataloguers, and some of the older photographs not surprisingly did not stand up to excessive zooming - but the recent ones done by Devon's fellow-volunteer, Gundrun [sp?], were superb, and she had included detailed photos as well as the general one, so you really could see the details. The search facility enables you to get up, in thumb-nail form, the photos of the laces that fit your search criteria, and then you can enlarge, and get at the detailed pictures and notes in the usual way. This was very efficient, though the usual oddities happened - a search for Valenciennes brought up one or two oddish bits, but then looking at the description, the cataloguer had noted that the piece was NOT Valenciennes, so that was why it was there! Equally, if the cataloguer was more cautious about specific identification, one piece might come up as Flemish rather than, say Mechlin, as a cataloguer of a more certain school would have called it.
The tip of the iceberg I saw in this way did confirm Devon's view of the collection as world class for quality as well as quantity. It seems that it was built up in a large part by bequests and gifts from wives and daughters of the industrialists/financiers (aka robber barons) of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, and they certainly seemed to have chosen the best! We looked at the Jewish/Masonic needle lace that had been discussed some months ago, and could have spent more than one of our few hours on it. The quality of the work quite frankly is not good - it is in the style of sixteenth century needle lace, but simply has not got the style of that shown in the pattern books and portraits of the period, or indeed of the surviving pieces. To be honest, it looks more a "peasant" version of it than the real high class thing. That in itself was interesting - one would have thought that if a reasonably wealthy church, synagogue or lodge had commissioned it, it would have been more stylishly designed, though the actual workmanship is not by any means sloppy. It is a length of reticella, with different scenes or objects in squares, and with punto in aria points along one side. As the top of the figures in the points are towards the reticella, it was presumably designed to go along the edge of a tablecloth or similar, not on a standing collar. We were discussing the possibility of it being Masonic when a colleague of Devon's working in the room said she had studied Masonic symbolism, and had a look. Her immediate reaction was that it was unlikely to be specifically Masonic. While some of symbols might be considered Masonic (eg Solomon, a building that could as well be a temple as anything else, and a lady who could as well be the Queen of Sheba as anyone else), so many obvious symbols were missing which should have been there that it was very unlikely to be Masonic. It seems there should have been pillars in the temple, and an all-seeing eye and set squares and compasses as well. We agreed that the symbols could have been interpreted to fit several contexts, and it was possible that the designer had simply picked significant symbols from several sources without any coherent plan. The piece was more intriguing after this - whoever did design it must have had some purpose in mind, but it seems likely to remain a mystery. Lunch and lace in the thread to follow! Leonard __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED]
