Dear Devon -- No doubt this will run to several e-mails. I hadn't
realized that my own "modern" pot was boiling over.
Yes, of course, a "traditional Bucks pattern made now" wouldn't be
the "modern" that we are reaching for, no matter how beautiful it
might be, black silk, beads, etc. But nevertheless there is something
lying dormant in the Point de Lille technique that has yet to be
exploited by a design that could only arise in our own time.
Which brings me to my favorite Headache of the Year. I keep thinking
about this all the time. Technique and Design. Technique and Design.
One without the other and all you've got is virtuosity, not a real
plunge into the current current. I guess what started me thinking
about this is the present rage for Binche. Twenty years ago nobody
thought twice about Binche. Just another Flemish lace. In 1988 (20
years ago, good God!) I wrote the catalogue for the Walters Art
Museum's first and only lace exhibit, and I notice how I fluffed off
Binche with the merest mention ("...never fully evolved in
design...now being revived as esoteric studies for accomplished
amateurs..."). It is indeed, and still, not well evolved, designwise,
but the rage for the technique is currently boiling hot and my
patient little cry for better Binche design goes absolutely unheard,
for the moment. I expect that in another decade or two, when the
technique has been well absorbed, and doesn't carry any special
cachet, somebody will quietly float an original Binche design that
could never have been dreamed up in an earlier century. All of a
sudden we will see the endless possibilities of snowflakes. ((By the
way, the Walters catalogue is a beauty; they outdid themselves. If
the Ratti library doesn't have a copy, let me know and I'll send you
one))
What you say about wire lace is very much to my point. Just because
the wire medium is new (or unconventional?) isn't enough to make a
wire piece "modern." Something about the design has to have been
propelled into existence out of the stringencies of wire technique.
So far, all the wire lace I've seen (not very much, as yet) seems to
have derived from thread lace patterns.
I love Jane Atkinson. When I came upon her "Pattern Design" twenty
years ago, I nearly died of joy. I haven't seen any of her later
work, though. Where is it to be seen?
And as to my own work: I don't know how to describe what I do. I
suppose you saw my "Gardening in Winter" (a fan with ferns as the
design) on the cover of the "Bulletin" one or two issues ago. The
ground is made of gold metal thread in a logarithmic pattern, so that
it isn't quiet, but flexes and relaxes in waves (I guess my idea was
to give it life; or something; I don't know what I had in mind, I
just galloped slowly along). The ferns in the pattern are made of
various green silks in needle lace. How naturalistic they might be I
don't know. I did get a letter from a reader inquiring whether they
were real ferns that I had glued on!!
My son, a cardiologist in Michigan and a virtuoso lace knitter (200/2
silk knitted with angioplasty wires!) is just now taking up bobbin
lace (no, not at his mother's urging), so we'll see what the next
generation produces. I made the attached wall-hanging for him. Also
needle plus bobbin.
Let me know what you think (and I have more to say!) -- Aurelia
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