Lace, Ancient and Modern

I promised you lace today and so here we go. The Bowes Museum is exhibiting work from the 98 Lace Group until 15 April and it is well worth visiting.

There are various events supporting the exhibition and you can find more information about the group on their website here:  98 Lace Group including good photographs of their amazing projects.
This project was inspired by the Blackborne Lace Collection and so here are some photographs of that antique lace (I apologise for the quality, the exhibition was lit wonderfully, but not ideally for photography).

 This pair of lappets are of Brussels bobbin lace, 

with a ground of drochel net, made between 1710 -1720.

 These lappets are slightly later, made c 1780, 

and are also Flemish bobbin lace with a drochel ground.

Thank you to Crista for a great post on lappets here:  http://fashionpreserve.blogspot.com/2010/03/closer-look-at-lappets.html

So, here are my favourites. 

This piece by Mary Colman is called "Frosted Cobwebs" 

and is bobbin lace worked in wool, silk, cotton and linen threads.

This is "Night Fall" by Jane Atkinson 

and depicts falling plum blossom worked in bobbin lace.

Coincidentally, my Kiwi friend, Jenny, has posted about a lace museum in New Zealand today, have a look at Lillia's Lace Museum.
Tomorrow I'll bring you quilts from Beamish...

Bowes Museum Textiles

 When we arrived at the Bowes Museum I headed directly to the Fashion and Textiles gallery.

 

This intricate Stumpwork embroidery box, worked by young girls, dates from c 1650. The scene on the front is of the Biblical story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

This quilt, from 1810 -1815, is pieced from printed cotton fabric and panels sold specifically for patchwork.  It was made by Elizabeth Norman of Lowick, Northumberland.  The central panel of a basket of flowers was also used in a quilt made by Jane Austen in 1811.

This quilt is made from a variety of dress fabrics and these have been used to date it to circa 1850.  The chintz dates from the 1820s, the border fabric is late 1830s and the wave patterns and bright blues are typical of the mid 1840s.

Interestingly this smock was sold by Liberty & Co in the late 1920s.  It is a reference to the traditional handsmocking worked in rural England and was made at a time when the countryside was being romanticised and its styles and techniques were fashionable in the cities.

 These quilts were hanging temptingly in the "Cube".  On another occasion it would be possible to arrange to study them more closely.

This newborn baby's cap, made of linen and dating from the late 1500s is incredibly delicate and beautifully worked.  I am sorry I was not able to photograph it more clearly.  The finest linen thread was from Flanders and the decoration was done in cutwork.

This evening gown made by Madame Paquin in 1911 is a glorious confection of velvet silk, ivory satin, black net and beadwork, wouldn't it have been wonderful to wear a dress like this?

Tomorrow:  the exhibition of work by the 98 Lace Group....

A Holiday in Stockton on Tees

DH and I have just returned home from a jolly to Stockton on Tees in the north east of England.  This is quite a strange place for a holiday, positioned in a very industrial area of the country but we found a lot of interesting things to do.  I'm just sorting out my photographs but here's a quick taster of what we got up to:

Our first day out was to the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle,
"Purpose built in the 19th century by John and Joséphine Bowes, the Museum has a wonderful story to tell.  John Bowes was a successful businessman who travelled to Paris in 1847 to explore his interest in the arts. It was here he bought a theatre and met the Parisian actress Joséphine Coffin-Chevallier whom he married in 1852. Joséphine was a talented amateur painter who was interested in a whole range of art forms including paintings, ceramics, furniture and textiles. Soon the couple began to develop the idea of creating a world-class museum back in John’s ancestral home of Teesdale in order to introduce the wider world of art to the local people".

There is much more information on the website about the collections and I will share some of my favourite things in my next post.
The museum is especially well known for the Silver Swan which was made in the late 1770s and bought by John Bowes in 1872 for £200:

"The American novelist Mark Twain also saw the Silver Swan at the Paris exhibition in 1867 and described it in his book The Innocents Abroad:

 ‘I watched the Silver Swan, which had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes-watched him swimming about as comfortably and unconcernedly as it he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweller’s shop - watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and hold up his head and go through the customary and elaborate motions of swallowing it...'"

Our second day saw us heading a little further north to visit Beamish.  This is an open air museum about the people of North East England through the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian periods. As it was winter not all of the museum was open but we had plenty to do exploring the town and the pit village. 

All museumed-out we decided to head to the coast on our third day but got sidetracked firstly by the Middlesborough Transporter Bridge,

then by the rather more modern Temenos sculpture by Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond,

and finally by RSPB Saltholme where we had a nice walk around the lake, watched the birds and had a scrummy lunch.
Our little break at an end, we headed home yesterday, stopping at a site in Boroughbridge to look at the Devil's Arrows: