Devon has had problems posting to Arachne today. Now, I am trying for her, but it seems that AOL may have me locked out, too. Hope this reaches our members! Jeri Ames in Maine USA Lace and Embroidery Resource Center ____________________________________ From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: 11/3/2015 4:23:16 P.M. Eastern Standard Time Subj: Fwd: Fashion and Virtue: Texile Patterns and the Print Revolution 1520-1620
____________________________________ From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: 11/3/2015 12:24:51 P.M. Eastern Standard Time Subj: Fashion and Virtue: Texile Patterns and the Print Revolution 1520-1620 Dear Friends, Susan Hottle has been kind enough to draw attention to the new exhibit Fashion and Virtue, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I think this is a very interesting exhibit. In the 16th and 17th century printing evolved in the direction of printing pattern books for lace and needlework. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an excellent collection of these early pattern books which curator Femke Speelberg has paired with textiles that show the patterns in use. For people who are interested in the history of lace and embroidery this is really a stunning show. In the 1930s the museum put on an exhibition pairing patterns with textile samples, most of them lace, and this entire exhibit appears on one wall as a side light. These are very interesting study cards which are frequently consulted by early lace enthusiasts in order to understand the translation of the patterns to lace. This is an intellectually exciting exhibit in which you have to read the labels to get the entire effect. The textiles were chosen to demonstrate the patterns in the books, so they were not chosen on the basis of being world class textiles, although several of them are quite nice. It is really incredible that she found as many textiles as she did to match with the patterns. My hat is off to her. Some of them are loan objects. Details of the exhibit can be found here: http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2015/fashion-and-virtue Of interest to lacemakers there is a 1557 copy of Le Pompe on display. I counted 35 pieces of lace in the exhibit, but many are small samples on the study cards. There is filet, cutwork, burato, needle lace and bobbin lace. Notable among the bobbin laces are a gold lace around a collar, and a fascinating piece of bobbin lace that is a tour de force in technique that I dealt with in an article in the Bulletin of the International Old Lacers, Inc., winter 2007-8. There are actually more pieces of lace in this Prints exhibit, than have simultaneously been on display in the museum for quite some time. The last major lace display was in the 1950s and I don't know if there were that many then. Our lace display several years ago in the Ratti Gallery had only 13 pieces. My husband, who is not a lace enthusiast found the woodblock carved by Durer of a design by da Vinci to be the most interesting thing in the exhibit. According to the curator, it has not been outside of Germany since the 18th century. I was lucky to be invited to the opening of the exhibit. After everyone else had left, I got the idea to make a video of it with my phone just as a memory aid to myself. It has occurred to me that posting this on youtube might help some of my fellow lacemakers to decide whether they want to make the expensive and time consuming journey to the exhibit, which is, after all, a Prints exhibit. Unfortunately, the video is of terrible quality and really doesn't capture how interesting the exhibit is if you carefully read the labels. About 4 minutes into the video, my husband who after nearly two hours in an exhibit that everyone else had already left, had been pushed beyond his endurance level, and who didn't realize I was taping, gave me my coat check tag and announced he was going to the car. This certainly gives this otherwise very poorly done video some pathos. When he realized what I was doing, he didn't actually leave me. People who know my husband can see him dodging behind a chasuble in the final seconds of the film. Hope the film doesn't put anyone off, since it is an excellent exhibit. Here is the link. https://youtu.be/5sC20kXwa1Y Devon - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
