Queen Anne’s lace

Alice Kettle’s ‘Flower helix’ currently on exhibition at The Queen’s House at the National Maritime Museum, for which Gail Baxter and I acted as consultants, was based on the idea of Queen Anne’s lace. Queen Anne’s lace is not actual lace at all but is a country term for cow parsley and is featured in the rhyme from Alison Uttley’s book Little Grey Rabbit makes lace (1950 London: Collins):

Queen Anne, Queen Anne
She sat in the sun
Making of lace till the day was done
She made it green, she made it white
She made it of flowers and sunshine and light
She fastened it on a stalk so fine
She left it in the hedgerow to shine
Queen Anne’s lace, Queen Anne’s lace
You find it growing all over the place

The Flower helix was designed to appear as a cloud of white lace-like flowers spiralling down the centre of the Tulip staircase looking like fronds of cow parsley and having seen it on site I think we were successful.