Exhibition of Peter Collingwood’s macrogauzes

 

I went to see the exhibition of Peter Collingwood’s macrogauzes at Margaret Howell in London at the weekend and was delighted to see so many of them on display. Although he was a weaver, Collingwood’s macrogauzes tend more towards lace than traditional weaving because the warp threads do not remain vertical, which allowed him to move away from rectilinear shapes. The other lace-like feature of his work is that much of it is three dimensional. He is quoted as saying ‘All along my weaving has depended on finding and exploiting new techniques’ and these are certainly unusual weaving techniques.

Although this image is a bit fuzzy, because it was taken through the shop window, the macrogauze at the back shows exactly how the vertical warp threads move. The warp threads in this case are hung in a line together across the header, but are then separated and moved at angles to cross and twist with each other, to form the geometric patterns, until they finally merge on the lower rung, in a line, in the same alignment as the header threads.

It was also interesting to see so many of Collingwood’s drawings, notes and photographs in a separate display, exploring his designing and working methods. The shop window image also shows how the pieces are made into three dimensional structures with the help of fine steel rods placed diagonally from one integrated steel rod to another. This clever engineering solution also means that the pieces are woven flat, can be stored flat and potentially displayed flat until the diagonal steel rods are put in place.

Some of the details of the macrogauzes reveal how carefully they were designed and worked. The exact nature of their construction and the thread placement is stunning. If you want to find out more about Peter Collingwood and his work, he wrote several books about weaving and his archive is held at the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham.

 

Queen Mary’s Honiton lace handkerchiefs

 

A report about Queen Mary’s collection of lace written for The Connoisseur magazine of October 1928 highlights some beautiful lace made in the British Isles. Much of the lace was inherited by the Queen from her royal predecessors but we will focus on three Honiton lace handkerchiefs; two made for the Queen and one for her mother. The main image shows a handkerchief presented to the Duchess of York (later Queen Mary) as a gift, at her wedding in 1893, by the Honiton Lace Guild. The vandyke shape of the handkerchief, made from fine linen, would have been difficult to work accurately and the numerous flower and leaf motifs of the lace would have taken many hours to work. Honiton is a pieced lace, which means that each motif is worked separately. This has the benefit that many lacemakers can work the motifs, which are then assembled and joined together and attached to the linen cloth, by other lacemakers who are skilled in that part of the process. This example is unusual because the motifs are joined together, not by a net of bobbin lace stitches, but by fine plaits of thread made using two pairs of lace bobbins working from one motif to another.

The second handkerchief was made for Queen Mary’s coronation in 1911 and again presented to her by the Honiton Lace Guild. It includes symbolic flora including the rose, thistle and shamrock representing the countries of the British Isles and oak leaves for stability. This time the motifs are joined by a net ground which was probably worked using bobbin lace, although by this time much commercially available Honiton lace was mounted on machine-made net.

The third handkerchief was made for the Queen’s mother, the Duchess of Teck, and is embroidered with her monogram MA standing for Mary Adelaide. It is a pretty design and was presented to her as a gift for her wedding in 1866. The writer of the article notes that at this time the Honiton workers were producing excellent lace for international exhibitions, in an effort to show that their lace was able to compete with that from the great lace centres of the Continent. However, by 1928, when the article was written, women in Britain had more opportunities for employment and fewer were prepared to make elaborate lace for little reward, so commercial lace making in Honiton, and other parts of the British Isles, was declining.

Frayed nerves: needle lace and silk paper

 

To have frayed nerves is an expression that has been used since 1870 to mean being worn down or irritated to the point where you feel stressed, anxious and no longer able to cope. As textile people we are aware of threads fraying when they become stressed and worn to the point that they gradually pull apart and thus lose their strength and ability to function.

This piece literally show the frayed ends of the threads, and the nerves they represent, lying under the skin. It shows a glimpse of the nerves at a point where a strip of skin has been broken and torn down to reveal them lying underneath. The implication being that the skin was scratched incessantly in a nervous manner until it was torn open to reveal the nerves underneath.

The nerves are made in needlelace, which is worked with a needle and thread, forming a variety of buttonhole stitches. Here the buttonhole stitches are worked, in subtly coloured silk threads, over a core of thicker crochet cotton. The frayed ends of the nerves are embedded in a larger piece of handmade silk paper to form a hanging, with a strip of the silk paper hanging down at the front of the work as if it has been ripped from the main hanging to reveal the nerves underneath. The hanging is backed with a length of silk that has a fine shimmer suggesting the interior of the body. The fine silk paper and the subtle colours of the nerves were designed to suggest the fragility of the human body and the ease with which the nerves can be stressed.  

Roller blind lace

 

These strips of lace are advertised in the 1904 Peach lace catalogue as roller blind lace. They are quite wide (about 12 cm) and were designed to be sewn to the ends of roller blinds to make a neat and attractive ending to the fabric. (Interestingly the catalogue refers to this lower lace edging as a valance, which I had always thought referred to the upper part of a window dressing - clearly a research question for another day!) These lace trims are all numbered and priced so I assume the householder could order the length she wanted and make up her own roller blinds, however the company also offers a making-up service. They offer three types of roller blinds: plain linen, holland and union. The styles of blind all seem to be simple rolls of fabric, the only difference being the type of fabric used. Plain linen is self explanatory. Holland is generally a better quality linen cloth, although by 1887 it also referred to cotton fabric, which was usually glazed and sized to make it stronger and less affected by dust. Union is a mixture of cotton and other yarns, usually linen but also wool or jute, it was considered inferior to plain linen. It was glazed and often used for blinds, but had a reputation for not wearing well and the advice was to replace union blinds rather than attempting to wash them when they got dirty. 

The householder could buy plain fabric blinds or have them made up with one of the lace trims. They could also buy blinds with both a trim of lace and an insertion of a strip of lace a few inches above the trim in a matching style of lace, you can see an example of this combination in the image above. The insertion lace in this image (the piece with the straight edges) is about 6 cm wide and the trim 9 cm, but prices are also given for wider laces. The prices in the catalogue show that the linen blinds were the most expensive, followed by the union ones and the holland type were the cheapest, suggesting that the holland used was cotton and not linen. Many late nineteenth century influencers, were opposed to roller blinds because they blocked sunlight and impeded the flow of air, but the number on sale in this catalogue show that they were obviously popular with householders.

 

Kabuki kimono costumes

 

This is the second series of beautiful kabuki kimono costumes loaned to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford by the famous Japanese performer Bando Tamasaburo V and they are just as amazing as the first series. Kabuki is a traditional Japanese style of drama involving melodramatic plots, stylized acting, music, dance and stunning costumes. All kabuki actors are male and Tamasaburo is famous in Japan as the most well-known ‘onnagata’ or performer of female roles. He collaborates closely with the textile designers to produce unique personalised costumes.

There are many costume changes throughout the dramas and they subtly reflect the personalities of the characters, their feelings, the development of the plot and the seasons of the year. The techniques used to produce them include weaving, embroidery, dyeing and painting.

This ethereal over-robe incorporates a design of cherry blossom by firelight (there is a detail at the top of the post). The under-layer of silk is dyed and overlaid with silk gauze embroidered with thread wrapped in gold foil. This kimono is worn by the courtesan Matsuyama as she appears to her lover in a vision on a spring evening. It looks beautiful here but seen on stage, in a film that accompanies the exhibition, it really comes alive and shimmers under the stage lights.

Two over-robes worn by the courtesan Yugiri at different times in the play ‘Love letters from the pleasure quarters’ show how the costumes help to develop the narrative. She wears the black and white robe embroidered with egrets by a flowing stream with snowflakes and snow-covered weeping willow branches to reflect her fragility and the bleakness of winter when she falls ill after being separated from her lover. Later she wears the colourful robe below, embroidered with peonies and peacocks, to express the joy she feels when she recovers from her illness and is reunited with her lover.

There are six stunning kimono in the exhibition and in the accompanying film Tamasaburo explains how the costumes were made and the inspiration for their designs. It also shows how he dresses for the performances and seeing the robes being worn under theatre lighting also reveals how these beautiful costumes come to life on the stage and become an integral part of the drama.

 

Hollie point: an English needlelace

 

At first sight hollie point lace resembles other needle-made laces, however this particular style of fine, flat, white lace incorporating designs of religious motifs, made up of small holes in a grid-like pattern seems to be uniquely English. It was used particularly to trim christening robes and a circular medallion of the lace was often inserted in the crown of christening caps. The image below comes from Margaret Simeon’s book The history of lace and shows the typical panel and medallion inserted in an early 18th century christening cap; the edging is Valenciennes bobbin lace.

Hollie point was made from about 1720 until the early 19th century. The name hollie point is a corruption of holy point and the term was originally used to denote any type of church lace, but by the early 18th century the name exclusively referred to the style of lace we are looking at here. The patterns are all geometric and include religious symbols such as the Holy dove, the crown of glory, and the tree of knowledge. They were thought to have a protective function in warding off evil and keeping the child who wore them safe.

The hollie point stitch is basically a buttonhole stitch with an extra twist, worked over a horizontal thread. The example here was an exercise in working the holes and was made in crochet cotton, so it was easier to see the stitches and their placement. It was worked on a backing with an outlining cordonnet secured round the square shape to provide an outline from which to work the rows of stitches. The examples above give an idea of how attractive these designs could be, even though they are worked on a simple grid. Many antique pieces also include dates and initials adding a touch of social history to these lovely designs.  

 

Marriage lines: a wedding veil for Jane Austen

 This veil, entitled 'Marriage lines', was inspired by Jane Austen’s life and in particular the manuscript of her unfinished novel The Watsons, which is housed in the Bodleian library in Oxford. One of the interesting things about the manuscript is that Jane used ordinary sewing pins to ‘cut and paste’ parts of the story in order to make changes and rearrange the words. Jane’s novels are concerned with social issues, seen from a female point of view, and the way in which young women, in particular, navigate the world around them and their place within it. Jane herself never married, although she came close to doing so twice; the first time for love (although the young man’s family prevented the marriage) and the second time for pragmatic reasons. In fact she accepted the second proposal but changed her mind by the next morning and broke off the engagement.

At one point in The Watsons, the heroine’s sister, Elizabeth, says ‘I think I could like any good humoured man with a comfortable income’ which is a sentiment shared by many of Jane’s fictional characters; although not her heroines, who are all seeking love and meaning in their relationships. I embroidered this text onto lace, which I cut and pinned to the wedding veil. This mirrors the way Jane pinned her manuscripts, so that the words, like the sentiments, can be rearranged or even removed as the situation changes. My aim was to reflect the general view of marriage in Jane’s novels as a negotiation open to rearrangement as well as Jane’s own equivocal views of the married state.