NELG - a day at RISD Museum

Our lace group had the distinguished opportunity to view some of the lace collection at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Most, if not all, of the collection is not on public view and therefore Carolyn made arrangements with their director for us to view such great pieces.

Our request was, to see older, 18th century, only hand made, unusual pieces, leave out crochet and tatting - the result was just amazing and equisite. There were pieces of needle lace, bobbin lace in binche, flanders, mechlin, bruges just to name a few. There was a bed cover (in all lace) where the background netting was hand made - mind you, the time to make the netting alone - years? There was this little bumble bee placed onto the netting. We took quite a few pictures and maybe making a pattern for a group project for 2010. Lets say, there was so many ohhh and ahhhs, truly inspirational.

To our surprise - we found that we, NELG, had made a donation of a very unusual piece of lace a couple of decades ago. The director was very kind to bring it out for all of us to see. We need to find out about it's history and how it came to be that we donated it.

The picture above is a border in binche. It is enlarged as the original piece is only 7cm from the top to bottom. Yours truly hasn't had the opportunity to learn binche yet. It is a sample of what we saw. I'm awaiting for some picutres to be loaded as I couldn't take pictures with flash in the room.

Any way it was a great day for our lace makers of NELG. We are now making arrangements to demonstrate making lace at the Wadsworth Antheneum during a special exhibition of "Allure of Lace"