Unravelling "The Most Beautiful Lacework in the World"
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Requested lectures |
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| Description | Lace is a traditional, often handmade fabric crafted for decorative, occasionally practical purposes in the home and on dresses. Drawing on its links to home industries, lacemaking in Central Europe became much more than an economic activity at the beginning of the 20th century. Lace was turned into a self-sufficient artform, a means of emancipation and a source of income and recognition for many creators. Artists of the Viennese Werkstätte, German Werkbund or its Czechoslovak equivalent turned lace into a modern medium that could successfully represent individuals, institutions and states. Designers like Leni Matthaei, Dagobert Peche or Emilie Paličková Milde became recognised for the intricacy and modernity of their lace that abandoned decorativism in favour of abstraction and free expression. Paličková Milde, for instance, was a highly successful female artist who was awarded many international prizes and in Sweden in 1932 her lace was called the most beautiful lacework in the world. While highlighting these emancipatory functions of lace and its path to international exhibitions and markets, this paper also focuses on not-so-transparent aspects of modern lacemaking. The artists behind the prized designer lace were not the makers. The many hands that actually turned their designs into the final pieces and often invested their own creativity in the production process went mostly unrecognised. The anonymous character of the making therefore survived from its origins in small lace-making communities. Focusing mainly on Central Europe of the modern period, the paper confronts the issues of labour, creative economy and authorship in other communities and other parts of the world, including Finnish Kale Roma and Native American women lacemakers as well as contemporary inclusion of lace in haute couture. The paper therefore sheds light on global aspects of modern lacemaking and design economies in order to interrogate what emancipation means in these cases and to what extent acknowledged authorship matters. |
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