Exhibition of my Battle of Britain lace panels ending

My Battle of Britain lace panels and the parachute installation will be taken down at Bentley Priory next week, which means this is the last week they are all on exhibition. It will be sad not to have them on show anywhere but they have been seen at three venues in separate areas of the country: Nottingham; Gawthorpe Hall; and London; so they have been widely seen. It was certainly an interesting project which introduced me to many interesting people and widened my knowledge of the Battle of Britain and the RAF and I hope I managed to convey some of that in my work. My current project on Amy Atkin, the first female machine lace designer, is certainly different but I’m sure will also lead to new knowledge and I hope some insights into the role of women in design in the early twentieth century.

Filet lace patterns

I’ve been enjoying reading the historical section in The technique of filet lace by Pauline Knight. She notes that in the late nineteenth century few English magazines published articles and patterns for filet lace but many French albums of designs were produced, several of them reproducing designs from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These designs cover a variety of styles and also include pictorial designs from the fables of La Fontaine and Perrault. These designs were popular for filet lace and also for crochet so had a wide audience. Interestingly Pauline suggests that the interest in filet lace at this time may have been sparked by the availability of machine lace bedspreads and curtains with elaborate designs. This reinforces my own idea that the lace curtain designers were using the filet lace designs as inspiration for their own work as both are based on a square mesh.

Textile journal review of Lace Unarchived exhibition

I’m delighted that my review of last year’s lace exhibition ‘Lace Unarchived’ held in the Bonington Gallery, Nottingham, in February and March 2018, has now been published in Textile journal. The publishers, Taylor and Francis, have sent me a link which allows the first 50 people who use it to download a copy of the review, so if you would like a copy please access it through the following link - you have to copy and paste it

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/BpnSYNZiPCuyQ39CIuyP/full?target=10.1080/14759756.2018.1553110