National Museum of Scotland

 

I spent a fascinating few days in Edinburgh last week as a guest of the National Museum of Scotland. On the first day we went to the Museum’s lace and dress archive and were shown flat lace in the morning and lace on dress in the afternoon. Some of the pieces were beautiful and others unusual and we spent time discussing the types and ages of the lace and how they were constructed. The second day was spent at the Museum where several of the participants gave presentations. Jamie Mulherron, who had organised the event, opened the day, then Melinda Watt from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York spoke about lace collecting at the Met. Bruno Ythier described lace in French public collections and Gail Baxter talked about the gaps and absences in museum collections. In the afternoon, Margo Graham from the lace manufacturers MYB discussed over 100 years of lace production at the company. I then described my research into net curtains and showed how I use them in a contemporary fine art setting, and finally Judy Clark talked about her modern fashions that include lace. It was very interesting discussing lace from so many viewpoints with experts in the field both in the scheduled events and over supper, so many thanks to Jamie for organising the event.