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Bobbin lace is a method of weaving in which each thread is independent of the others. This allows infinite possibilities for working and combining the threads. Traditionally, bobbin lace was used for fine clothing ornamentation, but I have always seen nontraditional potential in the venerable old technique.
Ten years ago, I took a six-week course in bobbin lace from Betty Kemp, a lace expert who worried that the bobbin lace was a dying art. I did not intend to become involved, but as I began to understand the process more fully, my mind leapt ahead with possibilities. So few people had ever explored this technique. There were hardly any contemporary applications, and this excited me. What if the work were to be done on a large scale? What if it were to be done in something other than the fine white threads of traditional work? I could even see it rendered in metals.
What little contemporary work existed was very poorly executed, so I decided that I would discipline myself to learn the traditional craft before I tried to bring bobbin lace into the twentieth century.
Here in the States, people are not accustomed to looking at the fine differences and design development of the various families of lace. So I began a serious study that led me to give up my career in advertising and travel to England and Belgium for individual instruction. In Europe, I found a wealth of knowledge and technical precision, and I quickly realized that I could never, in one lifetime, complete a study of bobbin lace. There is simply more information than one could ever absorb or explore.
