Lace for dust and decay

 

I’ve finished the first piece of lace for my Dust, Decay, Disintegration series. It’s inspired by my work on nineteenth century gothic novels and is looking at the decay of the home. This piece of lace is based on the tuberculosis bacillus, as consumption was a scourge of daily life and often mentioned in those novels (see posts in Nov and Dec 2014). I’m going to incorporate it into a curtain with silk fabric and silk paper combined with dust, as if the fluid material is stiffening into the crisp paper, due to the silting up caused by the dust in the home. I’ve started the lace for Decay, which represents the continuation of the silting up process, but although there will be less lace in that curtain – making the lace is more complicated because it has to give the impression of decay. It’s always difficult to mimic natural processes without looking contrived and I don’t have time to make the lace and let it decay naturally. Watch this space!