In a message dated 5/15/2006 11:22:29 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Now for the question. I have been asked to speak about Bobbin Lace at a meeting of the Coutiere Society. I have never spoken to a large group about lace but do a lot of demonstrating. I would love to have some information from those of you who do speak to groups about what you include in your talks. Dear Barbara, I guess that you should try to figure out what the Couturiere Society's interest in bobbin lace would be. I think this is harder than we may realize since, in my experience, people involved in Couture think that hand made bobbin lace might actually have some role in Couture, but I have yet to find it. We actually had a young lady Couturier come to the museum with the thought in mind of finding hand bobbin lacers to make hand made lace to use on Couture clothing. Her idea was that she wanted to make a skirt with a couple dozen pieces of handmade Chantilly, each about 4 inches square in size and wanted me to provide her with the names of people who would be willing to make the lace. It was very hard to explain to her that making Chantilly lace was so time consuming that this would be unsuitable even for a very expensive skirt and that there was no established mechanism for ordering up new hand made Chantilly in New York and New Jersey, since the only people who made it were hobbiests. I think that you may find that you have to focus on couturier clothes of the past if you want to link them with bobbin lace and even this is not particularly straight forward since the lace was often distinctly separate from the dress. (In fact, I am thinking the entire concept of Couture is sort of a 20th century concept and past the era of hand made bobbin lace in fashion. Perhaps I am wrong.) However, since the Lehigh Couturiere Society (is that the one?) professes its interest as Fashion and Design, you could provide some slides of lappets, and collars and flounces of different eras as examples of "fashion". I am casting my mind over the Chanel exhibit and other recent couture exhibits and drawing a blank in the field of handmade bobbin lace. The AngloMania exhibit has some interesting references to lace, but none of it is handmade bobbin lace. Perhaps the entire talk could be in the realm of how future courturiers could exploit beautiful modern handmade bobbin lace by designing dresses to go beneath it which wouldn't distract from the lace or the couturiers could design beautiful handmade modern lace. Unfortunately a lot of better material about bobbin lace seems to go toward the ethnic and folkloric, ie, lace tells, bobbins from lovers, globes of snow water perched around candles in thatched cottages, etc. and you would be better advised to address a group interested in folk tradition on these points. Is there any chance you could change the group at this point? :-) Devon - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
