Transcript
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: This is the podcast about art, decorative arts and antiques, the stories behind them and what they can reveal to us about ourselves and the people who came before us.
Speaker: You know I love a grand, impressive object, something wildly valuable, maybe even ostentatious.
Speaker: And we've done episodes about things that are worth millions and millions of dollars.
Speaker: But you know what else I love?
Speaker: An object that is deeply, intimately personal.
Speaker: And maybe it was expensive, or maybe it was humble, but either way it connects us to someone who lived centuries ago.
Speaker: Our curious object for today is a 17th century handkerchief.
Speaker: And it's honestly hard to imagine a more personal object than the thing you carry with you every day, close to your person,
Speaker: and literally rub all over your face.
Speaker: But this wasn't a casual throwaway tissue.
Speaker: It was a sophisticated handcrafted work of lace that reflects a hugely ambitious achievement, technically and aesthetically.
Speaker: Joining me is Elena Kanegi-Lukes, who is the person you want to hear from about the art of lace making, historic and contemporary.
Speaker: She's studied textiles and lace in the US and Europe,
Speaker: She worked for Courtney Love.
Speaker: She made a lace collar on commission for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Speaker: She's the founder of the Brooklyn Lace Guild and is now pursuing a PhD at the Bard Graduate Center, focusing on, of course, lace.
Speaker: Elena is our guide today into the very intimate history of this intricate craft.
Speaker: And we're going to hear about the cultural meaning and symbolism of the handkerchief, the incredibly involved production process, and the enormous expense of these seemingly simple objects.
Speaker: And she's also going to share with us how her experience as a lacemaker influences her understanding of the work of lacemakers from centuries past.
Speaker: Let's get to it.
Speaker: Elena Kanegi-Lautz, thanks so much for joining me.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me on the show, Ben.
Speaker: Are you ready for some rapid fire questions?
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: What is the first object or work of art that you remember falling in love with?
Speaker: Oh, that's a really good question.
Speaker: I grew up between the US and Japan and I had an uncle, Dan, who still lives there, who was the first person to kind of like take me to art museums.
Speaker: And I remember that my uncle took me to see a Mark Rothko exhibition and I wept.
Speaker: I was probably like 12 or 13.
Speaker: And I was so moved.
Speaker: And it really like changed my perspective on like what gets to be art and what and what, you know, what, how to find beauty and things that are different than your own tastes.
Speaker: What was the most surprising thing about working for Courtney Love?
Speaker: Most surprising is that she has, well, maybe this isn't that surprising, but she just has like exceptionally good taste.
Speaker: She has a great background and education in antiques and in textiles and furnishings.
Speaker: And like her interior decorating is like stellar.
Speaker: What movie has the best depiction of lace or of textiles in general?
Speaker: Oh, that's, that is such a good question.
Speaker: I can tell you what the worst one is.
Speaker: Okay, give me the worst.
Speaker: The worst one and then maybe the best.
Speaker: The worst one is that Tulipomania movie from a few years ago.
Speaker: No offense to anyone who's a fan.
Speaker: I love a period drama.
Speaker: I love a 17th century Dutch period drama, especially.
Speaker: And I love Tulip Fever and the whole, you know, bubble burst of that.
Speaker: So I was really looking forward to it, but they have a scene where
Speaker: where they're in a convent or a girls' school and the girls are making bobbin lace and they have these super wide pieces of lace with like six bobbins attached to them, which is like, I just wanted to scream, like, you need like at least a thousand for something that wide.
Speaker: And they're like picking them up really slowly and like plonking them next to each other.
Speaker: And it's just, it just, it was painful to watch, but.
Speaker: Wow, they forgot to consult you on that one.
Speaker: I know, I know.
Speaker: But maybe not the most accurate, but one of my favorite representations, which does a similar thing with their representation of lace making, but maybe it just does it so artfully and so beautifully, is the color of pomegranates.
Speaker: It's an Armenian film, and they have just like really beautiful scenes of lace making, and they're such lush colors and textiles that it's such a pleasure to watch.
Speaker: What's the most challenging lace project that you've ever undertaken?
Speaker: you know, having worked for Courtney as her costume designer and knowing the stress of doing commissions, I always said I would never take a lace commission because it's so labor intensive.
Speaker: And then I got a call from Columbia Law School in 2018, who asked me to design and hand make a collar for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the 25th anniversary of her investiture to the Supreme Court because she is an alumna of
Speaker: and they wanted to gift it to her.
Speaker: And so, of course, I mean, I couldn't say no to that.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a commission you can't say no to.
Speaker: You know, and I challenged myself to do it, and it was my first time designing something that elaborate and then constructing it.
Speaker: All in all, it took 300 hours, including design and sampling.
Speaker: And yeah, and she got to wear it and thanked me for it.
Speaker: It was such an honor.
Speaker: What's a misconception that people have about lace that you'd like to correct?
Speaker: Um, well, I think the one that pains me the most is when to hear people say, oh, that's a lost art or that's a dead art.
Speaker: Because it's truly not there.
Speaker: You know, it's impossible to know exactly how many lace makers there are around the world, but certainly in the hundreds of thousands, probably low hundreds of thousands.
Speaker: There are multiple international guilds, festivals.
Speaker: I've been to there.
Speaker: There are lace festivals in Spain where in a single day they'll have like a line of
Speaker: like one or two or 3000 lacemakers working together just from one, you know, community.
Speaker: So it really is just that it's not visible, but it's very much alive.
Speaker: It's very much active.
Speaker: So that's something that I really trying to change in my work.
Speaker: It's the sort of perception that it's disappeared.
Speaker: What's, what's one book that a newcomer to the field or an amateur should read to start to understand it?
Speaker: Well, sort of the seminal work or the Bible of lace history for many lace historians, it's very focused specifically on early modern Western European lace, is the book Lace of History by Santina Levy, who was a curator at the V&A for many years in London and wrote this, I think, in the 80s.
Speaker: It was like decades of research.
Speaker: And that is really foundational to the field.
Speaker: Stay with me.
Speaker: Right after this, Elena is going to spin a story for us about a beautiful 17th century handkerchief.
Speaker: And by the way, isn't it interesting how many metaphors there are connecting storytelling with textiles?
Speaker: You've got spinning a yarn, weaving a tale, a plot unraveling...
Speaker: I mean, it's really telling how much textiles are wrapped up in the fabric of our language.
Speaker: And after a pun run like that, I know you're probably hanging on by a thread.
Speaker: So let's quickly tie up some loose ends and get back to the show.
Speaker: I'm just going to remind you to leave a five-star rating and get in touch with me at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com or on Instagram at Objective Interest.
Speaker: I really enjoyed rating someone left us this week saying informative and inspiring.
Speaker: The curious objects team produces captivating episodes featuring standout objects and leaders in the field.
Speaker: Thanks for that.
Speaker: If that sounds like something you could have written, dare I say you're cut from the same cloth.
Speaker: Well, give it a shot.
Speaker: Those Apple podcast reviews are really helpful.
Speaker: And hearing from you is a big part of what excites me about bringing you these episodes every week.
Speaker: So please be in touch.
Speaker: Let me know what you want to hear more of or what Curious Objects has appallingly overlooked so far.
Speaker: I really appreciate all of it.
Speaker: Now, back to Elena Kaneki-Lukes.
Speaker: Today's curious object is something that I love because in a way it's a casual daily object that we use all the time, except for the most part these days you just grab a Kleenex and then toss it in the trash.
Speaker: But that wasn't an option in the 17th century.
Speaker: So instead you carried a handkerchief with you.
Speaker: And now textiles in general were wildly expensive by comparison to the mass produced fabrics that we use today.
Speaker: And a handkerchief was something you might carry with you every day for years or decades.
Speaker: Some of them were made incredibly intricately with wildly elaborate patterns in lace, you know, at tremendous expense.
Speaker: So these could be really precious items as well as being extremely personal and intimate.
Speaker: And Elena, you've picked out a wonderful example for us from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, which again, it dates to the 17th century to Italy.
Speaker: So for starters, what does this handkerchief look like?
Speaker: So the handkerchief is, it's a, of course, it's a rectangular square.
Speaker: I think it's about 40 centimeters square of linen, plain weave linen, very, very fine and slightly transparent.
Speaker: And it has silk satin stitch, like counted thread stitch geometric embroidery around the border.
Speaker: and a little monogram in metal wrapped threads.
Speaker: But the feature that I'm most interested in, of course, as a lace specialist is the bobbin lace border of scallops that goes all the way around the outside.
Speaker: And I actually counted them in preparation for this, just thinking about like the time and how long it takes to make these kinds of things.
Speaker: And it's 55 lace scallops in a continuous strip of lace that have been sort of gathered at the corners and then stitched onto the border.
Speaker: So this is not your everyday casual handkerchief available to all members of society, but this is definitely a showcase.
Speaker: This is something a little bit fancier.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So give me a sense of that.
Speaker: So how would the sophistication and complexity of the decoration on this handkerchief compare to others from the period?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Well, we know from a lot of probate inventories that people owned a lot of handkerchiefs.
Speaker: So even if you had like a very elaborate handkerchief, you would have sort of basic everyday ones that we would use or that people would use more like Kleenex.
Speaker: I think the kind of decorative ones often served more as like gifts.
Speaker: You know, Queen Elizabeth was gifted them, Queen Mary the first, like these are these are can be like royal gifts.
Speaker: gifts to lovers and things like that.
Speaker: So they're really more of a display object, which is why you see them so much in portraiture from the time period.
Speaker: And you see these really elaborate lace-trimmed handkerchiefs in people's hands and in engravings and things like that, that they're clearly showing these off.
Speaker: And, you know, one wouldn't do that if it were just something you blew your nose in.
Speaker: Okay, so just for the record, this particular example does not have, you know, encrusted 17th century snot on it.
Speaker: Certainly not.
Speaker: Certainly not.
Speaker: But what it was, I mean, was it in some way a functional item?
Speaker: Or was it purely for display, you know, or sort of symbolic function?
Speaker: That's a good question.
Speaker: I would speculate that based on how long it probably took to make the trimmings for this particular handkerchief, which are made in the bobbin lace technique and in embroidery, that it was probably more of an item of display.
Speaker: In this case... And does that mean it was sort of displayed?
Speaker: In what context was it displayed?
Speaker: Was this still something that its owner would have been carrying around and showing off to people?
Speaker: Or was it something that you sort of kept at home and brought out to show off for a company?
Speaker: There's a great chapter in the edited volume, Ornamentalism, about handkerchiefs that goes into some fun detail about handkerchief etiquette and things like that, including...
Speaker: a great quote that I mentioned earlier, let's see if I can find it, from an etiquette book from 1558 that said, and when you have blown your nose, you should not open your handkerchief and look inside as if pearls or rubies might have descended from your brain.
Speaker: So clearly people had to be taught this, even manners throughout time.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: You know, I've seen people do that with a Kleenex, too.
Speaker: My God, old habits die hard, I guess.
Speaker: I guess so.
Speaker: So this handkerchief is really more of like a symbolic hygiene or cleanliness.
Speaker: It's not something that you're actually...
Speaker: I would gather using based on its state and condition.
Speaker: And so, you know, while I'm not sure whether people would have taken it out to show each other, but certainly you see them held in portraits, as I said.
Speaker: And the thing that I think is important to note is that anyone who would have seen a handkerchief like this would understand that it was very expensive.
Speaker: They would have recognized that it's trimmed in handmade bobbin lace, which is
Speaker: time consuming to produce and costly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I do, I want to get into the production and the craft behind this piece, but I want to dig in just a little more first into the symbolism around these objects, because I mean, it clearly has a lot of cultural power and valence and like, you know, the handkerchief, it's a central element
Speaker: character essentially in Shakespeare's Othello.
Speaker: You know, there are ancient Arthurian tales about ladies giving their handkerchiefs to knights for the joust, you know, as a token of their favor.
Speaker: I mean, why were these objects of all things so powerfully symbolic and so precious?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I think part of it comes from the fact that linen is something that's kept so close to the body.
Speaker: I mean, people are wearing linen chemises.
Speaker: There's a lot of like hygiene practices that involve dry brushing with linen cloth and things like that.
Speaker: So I think it's a very intimate gift in that way.
Speaker: Like, you know that this is an object you're giving someone that hypothetically will come into contact with their body.
Speaker: and will be in their pockets and carried around with them.
Speaker: So similar to the way in which gloves, particularly in like 16th and 17th century England, these like beautiful ornate perfumed gloves became an intimate gift between courting couples that, you know, I feel like handkerchiefs had a similar kind of symbolism.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's get into how it was actually made.
Speaker: So you mentioned linen.
Speaker: I mean, what was the where was this linen coming from?
Speaker: What was the sort of chain of production that ultimately led to these these beautiful handkerchiefs?
Speaker: Well, sort of one of the most renowned regions for linen in this time period was in the Low Countries, particularly in Flanders, where they were producing linen of an incredibly high quality.
Speaker: And there are some organizations and even museums like
Speaker: textures in Belgium that are still working out exactly how they were able to get this thread so fine.
Speaker: So even though there's other centers of linen production in Europe, a lot of people for lace in particularly are importing their linen threads from Flanders in this time period because it's known to be the finest.
Speaker: So it's possible that that's where this thread could have come into from Italy.
Speaker: The silk for the embroidery
Speaker: however, could have been a local production.
Speaker: They had their culture in Venice.
Speaker: So, but that's kind of tricky to say.
Speaker: And so then what was the, like, just flesh out the whole production process to me.
Speaker: So you've got these textile materials, and now you have a craftsperson who's trying to fabricate these into something that could be fairly humble and quotidian, or it could be very elaborate.
Speaker: and sort of artistic.
Speaker: I mean, where is that happening?
Speaker: Who is actually executing that?
Speaker: What are the economics of that arrangement?
Speaker: That's a great question.
Speaker: I mean, in this case, because it represents so many different techniques and so many different steps, you're really looking at a number of different people who are involved in the production process.
Speaker: So, you know, going all the way to the beginning, of course, you have the farmer who's growing flax.
Speaker: And then there's a pretty labor intensive process of like redding.
Speaker: Some people did do redding, which means basically rotting where you're rotting the exterior off in moisture.
Speaker: Then after like hackling and other processing steps, I'm sorry that I don't know them exactly,
Speaker: in order, but then you would basically be able to comb the fibers in a direction so that you could spin them.
Speaker: And that was really the key, I think, in a lot of what made Flemish lace or Flemish linen thread so fine is that the hand spinners were known to be like exquisitely talented.
Speaker: So then once you have the thread spun many months, many moons later, you
Speaker: You could either, they would either go to a weaver to be woven into the plain weave linen based fabric for this handkerchief, or they could be sent to a lace maker.
Speaker: Generally, the linen threads were given to the lace makers by weight, and it was expected that they would use like every gram of this thread.
Speaker: And it would be weighted when they gave the lace back so that they couldn't save any for themselves.
Speaker: Like it was pretty precious.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's sort of an interesting, I mean, I, just as a side note, like this is a story that we see with so many craft areas in the sort of 17th, 18th century, so pre-industrial revolution period when, yeah.
Speaker: The cost of labor is actually so low compared to the material cost that the scale is balanced in a totally different way from contemporary production to where you can afford in the context of the overall production cost of an object.
Speaker: to hire someone or pay someone to invest huge amounts of labor hours into that production.
Speaker: And therefore you end up with these incredibly intricate, obviously hand-created effects.
Speaker: And that's what makes lace so interesting to me is that in many cases, and as lace gets more elaborate, and this is something that I focus on in my research, the opposite becomes true.
Speaker: So it's kind of unusual in this way, where at a certain point, the value of the linen threads becomes like almost totally negligible compared to the labor hours, because that's just how astronomical they are.
Speaker: And I was thinking about this in comparison to silver and correct me if I'm wrong here, because obviously I'm not the expert.
Speaker: But my understanding is that, like you say, like in many cases, silver would be, even when like handcrafted by these incredible artisans, would still be sold kind of by weight.
Speaker: Because it was understood that you could melt it down and then it would retain its value.
Speaker: But that even though, you know, the people...
Speaker: the merchants or interlopers who are like providing this linen thread to lace makers are, you know, are weighing it and caring for it.
Speaker: And certainly it's valuable, but really ultimately, if you look at like the end result of, you know, a length of lace can be years, years of labor.
Speaker: So it still ends up that the value really is coming from that cost.
Speaker: And the thread is sort of like,
Speaker: inconsequential a little bit.
Speaker: I shouldn't say, less of the value comes from that.
Speaker: Yeah, comparatively.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: I mean, with silver, you often, if you look at, you know, invoices or account books from silversmiths from the 17th or 18th century, you'll see the cost broken down by material and labor.
Speaker: you can actually see exactly how much they value the material and how much they value the work.
Speaker: And you can really watch that balance shifting over time.
Speaker: The earlier you go, you know, the less expensive labor is relative to the value of the material.
Speaker: So maybe, you know, out of every, you know,
Speaker: You know, out of every pound that you're spending on a particular silver order, maybe 80% of that is for the material and 20% for the labor.
Speaker: But 150 or 200 years later, that ratio might be reversed.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, record keeping with lace is so challenging.
Speaker: I mean, I think the thing that's really hard is that, you know, there are certainly records like convent records and things like that and different like merchant archives that you can see how much they paid people and how much they sold things for, but they don't necessarily correspond.
Speaker: So you don't always know what the same piece sold for and what the labor hours were.
Speaker: And then also we rarely, if ever, I can't really think of an example, although I'm sure there is one, have no what corresponding object that is required.
Speaker: referring to.
Speaker: So it's really hard to make any sort of like specific assessment of like how much things cost.
Speaker: But I know, you know, there are, for example, like in one of the convents in Venice that was very active in lace making in the 17th century, the Santana convent, they would have records of like
Speaker: charging like 360 Dukat for one brakia of lace, which is like an arm's length, which is something like, you know, these equivalences of historic currency are so challenging, but I've read it's around like $20,000-ish.
Speaker: And this is, I think, more importantly to say that this is related to about 10 years of a
Speaker: laborers' wages.
Speaker: So this is like really expensive.
Speaker: So whether that really goes to the nuns or the girls making the lace in the convent, maybe not the majority, or not very much of it, but certainly they're charging a lot because of how much work goes into this lace.
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Speaker: That's fascinating.
Speaker: I mean, I'm always, my mind is always blown by the expense of these early textiles.
Speaker: And, you know, some months ago we did an episode about this cope, this sort of clerical vestment that was purchased, you know, ordered by Henry VIII as part of a set of dozens of these.
Speaker: And, you know, each one represented, they're woven with gold and silver thread and, you know, very finely produced.
Speaker: And, you know, it's an order that would have bankrupted most of the nobles of his realm, you know, just to purchase these essentially like overshirts.
Speaker: But, yeah, but of course it became, because of that value, it became this wildly effective status symbol.
Speaker: And it sounds like these handkerchiefs, to some degree, played a similar role that, you know, if you had something of very sophisticated construction with these elevated materials, you know, that sent a message to anybody who saw it.
Speaker: It was sort of, I mean, I have to imagine that people would perceive that and understand it and know that it was really a status symbol.
Speaker: Is that right?
Speaker: Like, yeah.
Speaker: We don't know the person who bought this particular handkerchief, right?
Speaker: But imagine that this person is prancing around Venice with this handkerchief in his pocket or her pocket.
Speaker: Are this person's aristocratic buddies going to see that and sort of recognize the social power of that?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I definitely think people had this sort of like material knowledge that is difficult for us to even imagine how deeply immersed people were in these things and how much they really had this kind of understanding of maybe not specifically how things were made, but like how valuable they were and to be able to distinguish between different types.
Speaker: So of course, you know, not all laces created equal.
Speaker: I mean, it is for me, I love all of it.
Speaker: But in terms of like the time it takes and how much it costs, there is a huge variety and discrepancy dependent on the techniques and the designs.
Speaker: And people really had the connoisseurship to be able to distinguish that, like really at a glance.
Speaker: And this is what I have gathered from my research.
Speaker: And, you know, part of this is apparent through even like looking at portraiture and things like that.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: And often, very often, it is made clear through the painter's brushstrokes what kind of lace they're depicting.
Speaker: Like whether it's bobbin lace or needle lace, like what specific technique it is.
Speaker: And clearly this is something that was important for people to show because painting textiles, as I'm not an art historian, but as I've heard from art historians, were one of the more expensive parts of having your portrait painted.
Speaker: Wow, interesting.
Speaker: Well, and so I'm glad you brought this up because one of the really cool things about your work is that you're actually learning by studying, but you're also learning by doing.
Speaker: And a lot of what you're doing is sort of historically referential.
Speaker: And in particular, you know, you've been working on this really exciting project called Refashioning the Renaissance.
Speaker: And so I want to get into that, again, sort of in the context of this handkerchief that we're talking about, to try to understand how you're approaching this material from the perspective of contemporary craft, and how that might shed light on some of the historical objects that you are looking at as well.
Speaker: So tell me about refashioning the Renaissance.
Speaker: What's the idea?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So Refashioning the Renaissance was a project started by Paula Hoti at Aalto University in Finland.
Speaker: It's an EU funded project that spanned five years, I think, plus because of COVID and everything.
Speaker: is, you know, moved a little more slowly, but basically looking at the dress of artisan and working class people between 1550 and 1650 through experimental reconstructions.
Speaker: Because, you know, of course, so much of what survives in museum collections, like clothing from this period is so rare, but when it does survive, it's often ecclesiastical garments or aristocratic garments.
Speaker: And they were interested in the sort of like
Speaker: still very costly, but sort of more, slightly more accessible clothing for artisan and working class people, which were a larger percentage of the population.
Speaker: So they did a number of amazing reconstruction projects, including knitting and weaving wool velvet by hand that was stamped, like fabulous.
Speaker: And so they actually approached me about working on
Speaker: a lace project.
Speaker: I knew Sophie Pittman, who was one of the leads on the project as well.
Speaker: So they thought they wanted to do something with lace as a reconstruction that we thought might be something accessible to an artisan in the Italian Renaissance.
Speaker: And they had the idea of a handkerchief because it has four sides.
Speaker: So we could include four different edgings as different examples of lace from this time period.
Speaker: What
Speaker: we decided was that I would focus exclusively on bobbin lace because that's my specialty.
Speaker: And then it's easier to make comparisons between likes, like techniques, like edgings, and that each
Speaker: edging would represent a different quarter century of the period between 1550 to 1650 that would try to sort of exemplify handkerchief edgings from that period or approximate them and would try to have as much variety as possible in terms of technique and material.
Speaker: So I used different fibers and also source material.
Speaker: So some were from egg stand objects, others were from pattern books, things like that, to really give like a diversity of
Speaker: feedback from this project.
Speaker: And it was very exciting for me because it was the first, it was not my first lace commission, but it was my first time combining academic work with making, which as you say, you know, this is such an important way in, especially in textiles, I feel, but for everything, this sort of like practice led research in, in understanding the history of these things, because especially with, you know, any technique, but particularly with lace,
Speaker: that we don't have guild records, we don't have the makers names, many of them were not literate, you know, we don't have their first person perspectives very, very rarely.
Speaker: So it's hard for us to reach them through traditional methods of archival research.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: So kind of these kind of reconstructions can at least give us a glimpse, put us in their shoes to like embody some of the work that they were doing and better understand that maybe the kinds of decisions that they were making in their work.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I find that totally fascinating.
Speaker: And I think it's an underappreciated or underexplored way of interacting with all kinds of material culture, you know, antique material culture in particular.
Speaker: And I'm so curious to hear about your experience doing that.
Speaker: And what sort of, I mean, how has that helped you to feel
Speaker: either connected to these long gone makers or to understand better the kind of work they were doing or the kinds of challenges they faced.
Speaker: I mean, what is it about the physical process that you found to be most revealing or educational?
Speaker: Well, I think my major takeaway was that sort of the...
Speaker: In lace making today, we have the ability to make these very precise repeat diagrams and color code the stitches and follow things with these very perfect and detailed instructions, which they didn't necessarily have.
Speaker: They were doing a lot more interpretation.
Speaker: So tell me a little bit more about who these people were.
Speaker: So we sort of glossed over this, but you mentioned convents.
Speaker: I mean, is it mostly women who are involved in lace production?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I think laces, you know, unlike other textiles globally, which often get lumped into the sort of quote, women's work category,
Speaker: Actually, textiles were much more diverse than who was working on them.
Speaker: A lot of professional guilds had men involved in them, particularly at the highest levels of weaving and embroidery and things like that.
Speaker: But lacemaking, almost exclusively, there are always exceptions, but it is pretty universally women and girls.
Speaker: who are doing this work and emphasis on girls because you have to have pretty good eyesight to be doing this kind of work and youth plays in a big factor in that.
Speaker: So my focus for this particular project was primarily looking at Venice.
Speaker: There's a number of reasons for why Venice is sort of the center of like the development of lace production and these innovation of these techniques.
Speaker: But I think one of the big things is that
Speaker: In the 16th century, Venice had the highest number of convents and nuns per capita in Europe.
Speaker: So approximately 30 convents housing 2,500 nuns in the mid 16th century.
Speaker: And of course, the overall population of Venice fluctuates a lot due to immigration and plagues and, you know,
Speaker: all kinds of things, but that's about 2% of the population.
Speaker: And of that population, and one of the big reasons for why there were so many nuns is because one third of the nuns were involuntary.
Speaker: So this was a practice where basically wealthy families, patrician families,
Speaker: If they had more daughters than they could afford dowries for, they would basically put them in the convent.
Speaker: So get thee to the convent.
Speaker: It really is a real thing that happens to people.
Speaker: And so this is where a lot of textile innovation was happening.
Speaker: A lot of these women were, or girls, they were girls initially, were very well trained and skilled in needlework, but they
Speaker: they had a lot of time to make textiles and they were, you know, made to make textiles for basically ecclesiastical profit and benefit.
Speaker: And so this is given how much time of their day was dedicated to prayer.
Speaker: And also textile making sometimes is seen as a contemplative way to be, you know,
Speaker: in prayer because it's very repetitive in this way.
Speaker: So all of these innovations come out in this time period.
Speaker: And then the other locale for lace making
Speaker: in these larger organizations anyway, not this sort of like cottage industry putting out system, which was happening as well.
Speaker: They were more like homework situations in lace.
Speaker: But the other organized lace production in Venice was in hospitalli or charitable schools for young women and girls, primarily orphans, but sometimes just without family support.
Speaker: such as the Casa de la Zitele in Judica.
Speaker: And what's interesting is that they all have different sort of criteria for entry.
Speaker: So it's clearly competitive to enter these organizations.
Speaker: You know, it might sound like how horrible who would want this life, but actually these organizations provided protection for these young women and employment, which enabled them to save money.
Speaker: Basically, supposedly they would get about a third of the money from the
Speaker: the work that they did for the organization and they could put that towards a dowry or to join or to take the veil, which did cost a fee.
Speaker: Gosh, so, I mean, you're describing a pretty wide array of lifestyles that these lace producers were experiencing.
Speaker: But obviously, you know, all very different from the lifestyle of contemporary lace makers such as yourself.
Speaker: I mean, you when you sit down and work on a project,
Speaker: Using techniques that in many cases are echoes or quite similar to techniques that were being used by these people centuries ago, do you feel some kind of connection or some kind of affinity to those individuals?
Speaker: I mean, does it...
Speaker: Does it give you a sense of transporting yourself across time and communicating with people who you'll never really know?
Speaker: Yes, I absolutely do feel that way to know that, you know, I'm embodying the same gestures as these girls and women 500 years ago.
Speaker: And, you know, there's so few records of like first person perspectives, as I said, but one of the ones that is most interesting to me that is so rare is that one of the involuntary nuns,
Speaker: Archangela Tarabotti, who was born Elena Cassandra.
Speaker: And we know about her life and her perspective of working at Santana convent that I mentioned earlier, actually, in the 17th century, because she, although she was put into the convent against her will at age 11 by her family, some historians think this is because she was disabled, which is pretty horrifying, pretty heartbreaking thought because she was the eldest daughter.
Speaker: So that's unusual.
Speaker: But she...
Speaker: was really determined to be independent.
Speaker: And although she never left the convent, she did become a great thinker of her day.
Speaker: She corresponded with physicists and philosophers outside of the convent, and she wrote five books, including Paternal Tyranny and Monastic Hell.
Speaker: So you can see how she felt about her experiences.
Speaker: It's not a subtle title.
Speaker: They're wonderful.
Speaker: Some of them are translated into English.
Speaker: They're very moving.
Speaker: She's really, you know, I feel like even proto-feminist is too light-handed for her.
Speaker: She's very much like...
Speaker: all about independence and rights for women, which is pretty spectacular in this time period.
Speaker: But so I sometimes think about the fact that, you know, this is something I'm choosing to do and this is something that I enjoy doing and what a privilege that is that I get to do this because I,
Speaker: want to and I because I study it and in contrast to Archangela Tarabotti who wrote in in one of her books about the sufferings of nuns who were forced to take up the quote wretched needle and bobbin to make lace for the wealthy while they dressed in rags and begged for their wages but at the same time I know that what she really wanted was this freedom and independence so I know that she would be happy to know that there is a world today where um
Speaker: women and girls can choose to do this or not.
Speaker: And men and everyone of everyone gender.
Speaker: Now today, we have much more inclusive lace community around the world.
Speaker: Well, Elena, if people are interested in following your work, which I highly recommend because it's so fascinating, where should they find you?
Speaker: Well, I because I am currently a full time PhD student at Bard Graduate Center, yes, focusing on the history of lace.
Speaker: I have not been as active on my socials, although I'm trying to get back to it.
Speaker: But I, I run in my personal Instagram account where I share some a lot of lace history, which is at it in on Naomi E R E N A N A O M I.
Speaker: That's also the same handle I have on TikTok where I make video, educational video content about lace history and textile history.
Speaker: And I also am the acting president of Brooklyn Lace Guild here in New York City.
Speaker: We have a wonderful group that I co-founded in 2016 with Devin Thine and Kaylin Garcia.
Speaker: Now we have like over 60 members and we have a lot of great things coming up this year, including
Speaker: hint, hint, maybe an exhibition.
Speaker: So, so please follow us.
Speaker: You can find us at brooklynlayskilled.com and at brooklynlayskilled is our Instagram handle.
Speaker: I try to keep up on that a little bit better than my own, but you know, it's a lot.
Speaker: But anyway, so we, you know, we don't have a venue or any sort of brick and mortar space, but we do try to offer workshops and different techniques.
Speaker: This year we've had a, we just did a Tenerife workshop, which is like a,
Speaker: like a needle lace from the Spanish Americas and or like Latin America made in the round.
Speaker: It's like a wheel of needle weaving, which is great.
Speaker: We did tatting.
Speaker: We have other things coming up.
Speaker: Of course, I will teach bobbin lace at some point.
Speaker: So people are interested, please reach out.
Speaker: And we, you know, we have friends all over the world.
Speaker: So even if you're not in New York, we can try to find you a lace maker near you.
Speaker: Fabulous.
Speaker: Well, this has been such a pleasure.
Speaker: Thanks so much for spending the time with me.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me, Ben.
Speaker: And thank you so much to Lizzie Cleland at the Met for supporting my research into the lace collection and to Sophie and Paula for inviting me to work on the Refashioning the Renaissance project.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support by Sarah Belotta.
Speaker: Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: And I'm Ben Miller.
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