Imagine a Lace Challenge on Project Runway. Contestants stand outside a
mysterious room from whence comes clacking noises (remember the wrestling
challenge?). Open the door and you see about fifty bobbinlace makers. And
they could come from USA, England, Brazil, Spain, Russia, all over.
Especially the last three where lacemaking is very much alive and well. Just
look at the LaceNews YouTube collection, these countries break records in
videos. The contestents are assigned a team of lacemakers with which to
work, and in 1-3 days come up with a handmade lace design.
As an alternative, they could all be taken to the Met or somewhere to look
at great examples from their collections.
This has been on my list of top ten desires for several years. How could it
be accomplished?
Regarding the discussion about the demise of lacemaking, which I've been
following. I relate to this in the beginnings of the Minnesota Lace Society
in the late 70's. It was an organization of very strong-willed women, mostly
in their 20's, out to make the best adventure we could, while at the same
time working, going to school, and we were not distracted by the Internet or
Social Media, or gaming or anything like that. We had yet to get careers,
and were only thinking about families. Lacemaking offered a wonderful, broad
challenge.
For my two cents, lacemaking in America is not making use of the Internet
like it should. How can you attract young people if you don't offer them the
learning opportunities they have grown up with? I hear too much discussion
about how to get books published, and distribution of magazines. Every
magazine in the country is under pressure from what you can just get on the
Web, and let's face it; even FiberArts just tanked. Compare and contrast
this with countries like Spain and Brazil and Russia, where there was always
a broad professional industry well into the late 20th century. The skills
are being passed to the children as a matter of course. Somehow I don't
think the computer age has taken hold there quite as well as it has in the
US. This is not derrogatory, I sometimes teach in Lisbon and the University
of Barcelona, and am becoming more familiar with that part of the world.
You wonder why things are dying in the US. We have no professional
tradition, no incentive to pass skills onto the children. And what they can
find on the net are not centers of attraction for their interest. This has
got to change, and it is the primary reason that I'm putting so much effort
into internet resources with the LaceNews sites (more will come).
And you know, every time I see photos of Americans at lace conventions,
etc. - we all look so old. Including me. The advance of computers will kill
lacemaking far more efficiently than anything we can do. Another interesting
thing, in trying to list all the Lace Days in England, it's fairly rare that
a group will have a web site - a little better in the US, but not much.
Lacemakers, who should be passing on their skills, or even just learning
them because they are now retired, and have the time, are not always
computer literate. We need to fix this. We need to make it easy to join an
organization (Paypal Lace Guild!!!). We need to move the discussion into the
present, not speculate about the past. Make this a special topic in some of
the upcoming lace conventions, where ever they are.
Funny - scuba diving is another of my passions, and organizations like PADI
are talking exactly this way - how to move into the computer age.
Laurie
http://lacenews.net
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