Dear Lace Enthusiasts Hi! My name is Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi. I am a historian as well as an occasional needlecraft maker.
I'm 57 years old. Since I was a girl I wanted to write fiction. I have finally started on a longish bit of fiction. I don't know yet if it is a novella or novel. The main protagonist is called Bobby Hiller, a graduate student who wants to write his PhD thesis (in cultural studies) on lace and lace-making. He has read historical and academic literature, has toyed with a number of different theories and approaches to lace-making. He is not finding anything to anchor in -- he decides to turn close attention to lace-making itself. Many kinds. He applies to and is accepted at a summer internship at the Textile Conservation Laboratory at the Met. I am deliberately locating the story in the *mid-1980s*, *before* the advent of portable laptops, iphones, digital photography, wikipedia and social media. My reason is that I want to stress the exclusivity of a particular sub-culture of collecting and making. In the story, my character visits a wealthy woman who inherited a major lace collection which her grandmother had assembled in the first part of the 20th century. Would lace collections be differently stored in the 1920s and 1930s then in the 1980s? Also: how would the extremely rare items be handled when showing them? Would they be picked up with cotton-gloved hands, or with rubber-tipped tweezers? When being inspected would they be placed onto some kind of special viewing stand or cloth? Would a goose-necked lamp be allowed to shine light on the lace or would this be considered too strong? Devon Thein has graciously extended an invitation to me to join this discussion list. I will probably not be contributing very much, but I am very pleased to listen in on your expert conversations! Yours warmly Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
