I have just returned from our day of lace at Yale British Art Gallery. It was really great. The event was inspired by an exhibit that is not in the Yale British Art Gallery, but rather in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The exhibit is called Text and Textile. While waiting for the event to begin I found myself talking to Katie Trumpener who told me that she had taken a week long bobbin lace course in Le Puy in 1980. It seems, if I am understanding this correctly, that Katie Trumpener is the person who is behind the Text and Textile exhibit. In the afternoon, while Elena was teaching, my husband and I went to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library to see the exhibit. It was excellent. I almost felt like Katie Trumpener and I had been living parallel lives in that she appears to focus on every mention of textiles in all the books someone of our age might have read in a lifetime. There were actually two instances of referencing Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose little house books were my favorites as a child, and probably more impactful on my life than I would like to admit. The exhibit starts with a 13th century illuminated manuscript showing Eve spinning. Next It has the three fates in in an illustration about mythology from the D'Aulaires. Before we know it, there is Pat the Bunny, also a poem by Langston Hughes about red silk stockings. Another case dealt with the mill girls of Lowell, and the Lowell Offering, the Patterson silk strike, Laura Ingalls Wilder making the shirts with Mrs. White and the first sewing machine she ever saw. Then there were some drawings of sewing machine design. Next, there was a book with patterns for a 12 inch doll's clothes for children to make so they would learn to sew. Trumpener hit on Jane Austen with quotes from Northanger Abbey, also the incident where Jane Austen's aunt was accused of stealing lace. Then it is on to Edith Wharton, including her enterprise during WWI to help Flemish children by employing them in textile activities. Unfortunately the photo chosen for this was not my favorite one, the one with all the children working on lace pillows. Also, from Wharton, references to the House of Mirth, and the Buccaneers. On display was an actual sumptuary law from the Duke of Norfolk, with an explanation of sumptuary laws.There was an entire case devoted to lace, with two Renaissance pattern books, also a poem written by Archer M. Huntington, called the Lacemakers of Segovia, a piece of lace, and a book called Threads: from the Refugee Crisis, "a graphic novel where lace becomes an emblem both of national pride and of economic inequality. Calais's traditional bobbin lace forms barbed wire borders and fences, separating todays destitute refugees from European civil society." Although not exclusively lace, this was a very enjoyable exhibit. One nice touch was that the labels were all resting on textile samples which related to the topic. There is a 77 page catalog that accompanies the exhibit. The catalog has a jacquard weaving pattern on the front cover. I think I would have passed the catalog by because of the choice of the cover, since it looks like bunch of x's on a grid. I think that I might have dismissed the entire exhibit thinking it to be about machine made textiles because of this cover image. I am so glad that I didn't do that, though, because the exhibit had tremendous depth and human interest appeal. In sympathy with this exhibit, the Yale British Art Gallery had collected a lot of its lace paintings to hang together, which was fun. Also they had a new painting, the Larkin painting that was the emblem of the Lace Unveiled event. In the morning we were divided up into three groups. My group started in an archive area where the Chief Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts had put out quite a selection of items including lace sample books, a rare book of salt print photos which had a piece of lace that had been photographed in this early photo technique, and a Napoleonic era book about traveling in Flanders which had a painting of a lacemaker in it. It was this image that had intrigued the curator so much that she started learning about lace and collecting these interesting items. The second stop for my group was at the newly acquired Larkin painting. A painting curator gave us an admirably well informed description of the painting including a description of the yellow starch craze and the clerical opposition to it. Then for the "workshop" we were divided into groups and stationed in various places in front of painting with lace on them and we had to pick something out of the painting to draw. We were each given a clip board with paper and a pencil . Then we had to explain the drawing. This was an interesting activity that doesn't take that long, but it makes people focus on the lace and the paintings. The final stop was the room where Elena was demonstrating bobbin lace. Also, I had put ten pieces of lace from my collection out as a small display. I tried to choose pieces that went from the earliest reticella to a late 19th century point de gaze. Elena described the pieces and then did the demonstration. There was a great deal of enjoyment of the lace when I showed people how to hugely magnify it by using the olloclip that I put on my phone to make microscope like enlargements. At the conclusion of the visit to Elena demonstrating, it was lunch time. Elena grabbed a quick lunch because she had ten students to teach a beginning lace workshop to in the afternoon. She reports that they were a group that caught on very well. I believe they were all museum professionals. They showed a great deal of interest and enthusiasm. Incidentally, I was told that the morning event which could accommodate 45 people had filled in a week and had to have a waiting list. So, the museum was gratified with the interest on the part of the public. Devon
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