Odd coincidence - part 1 being posted virtually as Devon posted the preview of the IOL visits planned for early August. Hope this acts to whet appetites rather than spoils any surprises (some changes made with that in mind).
During our lunch break we looked at the few, but superb, pieces of lace in the public areas - a very elaborately raised piece of Venetian gros point, an eighteenth century French flounce or similar, and also a case with some superb stump work. In addition to the casket and pictures, there was a very spectacular looking glass with a stump work frame, much larger than anything similar I have seen, and the pieces of stump work were really 3D, overlapping the frame. After lunch, on to the viewing - 8 pieces of lace in two hours, but such pieces! Far too little time! By now we had been joined by IOL's Lee, and Kay, an antiques dealer who is interested in textiles in general, and lace in particular. She had spent the morning examining the data base for textiles in general. The pieces of lace were laid out on tables for us to examine, and while we could not touch them, Lesley, the Ratti's curator, made sure we could see all we wanted, moving them, and even arranging ladders for getting into position to take photographs (no flash, but apart from that, no restriction provided just used for one's own study). The best resource though was an e-microscope linked up to a computer monitor. This allowed every possible detail of the lace to be seen, down to the ply, spin, and individual fibres. It was amazing how this brought out the beauty of the thread. The old linen seemed to regain its lustre under the magnification and become whiter, even when to the naked eye the piece looked a little dry and brown. In addition to enabling us to see how some technical matters were negotiated, I would suspect that this may well enable historical studies to go a stage further. I have often thought that mysteries such as what was made where and when would be solved by thread analysis rather than stylistic analysis. Deciding that good quality is Flemish, not English, enables one to characterise some pieces as English on grounds of quality, but the argument is a little circular! Similarly, I have often thought that deciding on the complexity of braids and fillings whether a piece is Flemish or Milanese is equally arbitrary. It seems to me that this microscope could, in the hands of the right researcher, get all this put on a more scientific basis. It does remain the case that thread can travel before being made up, but Celia Fiennes, in the late seventeenth century, said the only way she could tell the difference between Honiton and Flemish lace was by the quality of the thread (Honiton's being, I'm afraid, "bad"). Not sure if the IOL visit will include it, but not an opportunity to miss. Next part - the lace itself. __________________________________ 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]
