I was delighted recently to buy a copy of The Art Journal
Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition showing beautiful engravings of
many of the items exhibited including some of the lace. The image here shows
the border of a Brussels lace veil exhibited by M Delehaye and notes that the
company also exhibited gracefully designed lace handkerchiefs, although sadly
none are depicted in the catalogue. The caption to the lace says ‘Brussels
lace, that magnet of attraction to ladies, is contributed in great abundance
and beauty, by many famed manufacturers of the Belgian capital’ so a visitor to
the exhibition would clearly have seen many more beautiful examples of lace.
What has struck me is how clearly the engravings depict the details of each
item in the catalogue, whether they are textiles, metals, ceramics, glass,
furniture or machinery. It must have been a mammoth task to draw and engrave so
many items in such detail, yet as far as I can see there is no acknowledgement
of any of the people involved in the production of the catalogue, in the same
way as the craftsmen who produced all the beautiful exhibits remain nameless.
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