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A Precious 17th-Century Kleenex
22 Plays1 year ago
On this week’s episode, Ben Miller speaks with Elena Kanagy-Loux, lacewear trendsetter and co-founder of the Brooklyn Lace Guild. The focus object is a seventeenth-century Italian handkerchief, but Ben’s and Elena’s conversation also touches on that time she worked for Courtney Love; good (and bad) representations of lace and lace production in cinema; and Refashioning the Renaissance, a five-year project to investigate popular dress trends and meanings in early modern Europe.
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Transcript
00:00:02
Speaker
Bye.
Introduction to 'Curious Objects' Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:09
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I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:09
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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.
00:00:16
Speaker
You know I love a grand, impressive object, something wildly valuable, maybe even ostentatious.
00:00:23
Speaker
And we've done episodes about things that are worth millions and millions of dollars.
00:00:27
Speaker
But you know what else I love?
00:00:30
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An object that is deeply, intimately personal.
00:00:34
Speaker
And maybe it was expensive, or maybe it was humble, but either way it connects us to someone who lived centuries
The 17th-Century Handkerchief: A Personal Artifact
00:00:41
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ago.
00:00:41
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Our curious object for today is a 17th century handkerchief.
00:00:46
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And it's honestly hard to imagine a more personal object than the thing you carry with you every day, close to your person,
00:00:52
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and literally rub all over your face.
00:00:54
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But this wasn't a casual throwaway tissue.
00:00:58
Speaker
It was a sophisticated handcrafted work of lace that reflects a hugely ambitious achievement, technically and aesthetically.
Elena Kanegi-Lukes: Expertise in Lace Making
00:01:04
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Joining me is Elena Kanegi-Lukes, who is the person you want to hear from about the art of lace making, historic and contemporary.
00:01:12
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She's studied textiles and lace in the US and Europe,
00:01:15
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She worked for Courtney Love.
00:01:17
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She made a lace collar on commission for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
00:01:22
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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.
00:01:29
Speaker
Elena is our guide today into the very intimate history of this intricate craft.
00:01:34
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.
00:01:45
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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.
00:01:52
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Let's get to it.
00:01:54
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Elena Kanegi-Lautz, thanks so much for joining me.
00:01:58
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Thank you so much for having me on the show, Ben.
00:02:01
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Are you ready for some rapid fire questions?
00:02:03
Speaker
I am.
00:02:05
Speaker
What is the first object or work of art that you remember falling in love with?
00:02:11
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Oh, that's a really good question.
00:02:14
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.
00:02:26
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And I remember that my uncle took me to see a Mark Rothko exhibition and I wept.
00:02:36
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I was probably like 12 or 13.
00:02:38
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And I was so moved.
00:02:40
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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.
00:02:50
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What was the most surprising thing about working for Courtney Love?
Courtney Love's Taste in Antiques
00:02:54
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Most surprising is that she has, well, maybe this isn't that surprising, but she just has like exceptionally good taste.
00:03:01
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She has a great background and education in antiques and in textiles and furnishings.
00:03:08
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And like her interior decorating is like stellar.
00:03:12
Speaker
What movie has the best depiction of lace or of textiles in general?
00:03:18
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Oh, that's, that is such a good question.
00:03:22
Speaker
I can tell you what the worst one is.
00:03:25
Speaker
Okay, give me the worst.
00:03:26
Speaker
The worst one and then maybe the best.
00:03:29
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The worst one is that Tulipomania movie from a few years ago.
00:03:34
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No offense to anyone who's a fan.
00:03:35
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I love a period drama.
00:03:37
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I love a 17th century Dutch period drama, especially.
00:03:40
Speaker
And I love Tulip Fever and the whole, you know, bubble burst of that.
00:03:44
Speaker
So I was really looking forward to it, but they have a scene where
00:03:47
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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.
00:04:00
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And they're like picking them up really slowly and like plonking them next to each other.
00:04:05
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And it's just, it just, it was painful to watch, but.
00:04:08
Speaker
Wow, they forgot to consult you on that one.
00:04:10
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I know, I know.
00:04:11
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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.
00:04:25
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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.
00:04:35
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What's the most challenging lace project that you've ever undertaken?
Designing for Justice Ginsburg
00:04:39
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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.
00:04:49
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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
00:05:07
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and they wanted to gift it to her.
00:05:09
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And so, of course, I mean, I couldn't say no to that.
00:05:12
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Yeah, that's a commission you can't say no to.
00:05:13
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You know, and I challenged myself to do it, and it was my first time designing something that elaborate and then constructing it.
00:05:20
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All in all, it took 300 hours, including design and sampling.
00:05:24
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And yeah, and she got to wear it and thanked me for it.
00:05:30
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It was such an honor.
00:05:31
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What's a misconception that people have about lace that you'd like to correct?
Is Lace Making a Lost Art?
00:05:37
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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.
00:05:46
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Because it's truly not there.
00:05:48
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.
00:05:57
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There are multiple international guilds, festivals.
00:06:01
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I've been to there.
00:06:01
Speaker
There are lace festivals in Spain where in a single day they'll have like a line of
00:06:06
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like one or two or 3000 lacemakers working together just from one, you know, community.
00:06:13
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So it really is just that it's not visible, but it's very much alive.
00:06:18
Speaker
It's very much active.
00:06:20
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So that's something that I really trying to change in my work.
00:06:23
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It's the sort of perception that it's disappeared.
00:06:26
Speaker
What's, what's one book that a newcomer to the field or an amateur should read to start to understand it?
00:06:33
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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.
00:06:57
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It was like decades of research.
00:07:00
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And that is really foundational to the field.
00:07:06
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Stay with me.
00:07:07
Speaker
Right after this, Elena is going to spin a story for us about a beautiful 17th century handkerchief.
00:07:13
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And by the way, isn't it interesting how many metaphors there are connecting storytelling with textiles?
00:07:18
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You've got spinning a yarn, weaving a tale, a plot unraveling...
00:07:22
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I mean, it's really telling how much textiles are wrapped up in the fabric of our language.
00:07:27
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And after a pun run like that, I know you're probably hanging on by a thread.
00:07:31
Speaker
So let's quickly tie up some loose ends and get back to the show.
00:07:36
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.
00:07:46
Speaker
I really enjoyed rating someone left us this week saying informative and inspiring.
00:07:51
Speaker
The curious objects team produces captivating episodes featuring standout objects and leaders in the field.
00:07:57
Speaker
Thanks for that.
00:07:58
Speaker
If that sounds like something you could have written, dare I say you're cut from the same cloth.
00:08:03
Speaker
Well, give it a shot.
00:08:04
Speaker
Those Apple podcast reviews are really helpful.
00:08:08
Speaker
And hearing from you is a big part of what excites me about bringing you these episodes every week.
00:08:12
Speaker
So please be in touch.
00:08:14
Speaker
Let me know what you want to hear more of or what Curious Objects has appallingly overlooked so far.
00:08:19
Speaker
I really appreciate all of it.
00:08:21
Speaker
Now, back to Elena Kaneki-Lukes.
The Status of 17th-Century Handkerchiefs
00:08:27
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.
00:08:40
Speaker
But that wasn't an option in the 17th century.
00:08:42
Speaker
So instead you carried a handkerchief with you.
00:08:46
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And now textiles in general were wildly expensive by comparison to the mass produced fabrics that we use today.
00:08:51
Speaker
And a handkerchief was something you might carry with you every day for years or decades.
00:08:57
Speaker
Some of them were made incredibly intricately with wildly elaborate patterns in lace, you know, at tremendous expense.
00:09:05
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So these could be really precious items as well as being extremely personal and intimate.
00:09:11
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.
00:09:23
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So for starters, what does this handkerchief look like?
00:09:27
Speaker
So the handkerchief is, it's a, of course, it's a rectangular square.
00:09:31
Speaker
I think it's about 40 centimeters square of linen, plain weave linen, very, very fine and slightly transparent.
00:09:40
Speaker
And it has silk satin stitch, like counted thread stitch geometric embroidery around the border.
00:09:48
Speaker
and a little monogram in metal wrapped threads.
00:09:52
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.
00:10:04
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.
00:10:12
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.
00:10:20
Speaker
So this is not your everyday casual handkerchief available to all members of society, but this is definitely a showcase.
00:10:28
Speaker
This is something a little bit fancier.
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:32
Speaker
So give me a sense of that.
00:10:34
Speaker
So how would the sophistication and complexity of the decoration on this handkerchief compare to others from the period?
00:10:42
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:10:43
Speaker
Well, we know from a lot of probate inventories that people owned a lot of handkerchiefs.
00:10:47
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.
00:10:54
Speaker
I think the kind of decorative ones often served more as like gifts.
00:11:01
Speaker
You know, Queen Elizabeth was gifted them, Queen Mary the first, like these are these are can be like royal gifts.
00:11:09
Speaker
gifts to lovers and things like that.
00:11:11
Speaker
So they're really more of a display object, which is why you see them so much in portraiture from the time period.
00:11:19
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.
00:11:28
Speaker
And, you know, one wouldn't do that if it were just something you blew your nose in.
00:11:33
Speaker
Okay, so just for the record, this particular example does not have, you know, encrusted 17th century snot on it.
00:11:41
Speaker
Certainly not.
00:11:42
Speaker
Certainly not.
00:11:44
Speaker
But what it was, I mean, was it in some way a functional item?
00:11:48
Speaker
Or was it purely for display, you know, or sort of symbolic function?
00:11:54
Speaker
That's a good question.
00:11:56
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.
00:12:10
Speaker
In this case... And does that mean it was sort of displayed?
00:12:13
Speaker
In what context was it displayed?
00:12:15
Speaker
Was this still something that its owner would have been carrying around and showing off to people?
00:12:19
Speaker
Or was it something that you sort of kept at home and brought out to show off for a company?
00:12:25
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...
00:12:38
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.
00:12:56
Speaker
So clearly people had to be taught this, even manners throughout time.
00:13:04
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:13:05
Speaker
You know, I've seen people do that with a Kleenex, too.
00:13:08
Speaker
My God, old habits die hard, I guess.
00:13:11
Speaker
I guess so.
00:13:12
Speaker
So this handkerchief is really more of like a symbolic hygiene or cleanliness.
00:13:18
Speaker
It's not something that you're actually...
00:13:20
Speaker
I would gather using based on its state and condition.
00:13:27
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.
00:13:37
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.
00:13:45
Speaker
They would have recognized that it's trimmed in handmade bobbin lace, which is
00:13:50
Speaker
time consuming to produce and costly.
00:13:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:54
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
00:14:15
Speaker
character essentially in Shakespeare's Othello.
00:14:19
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.
00:14:29
Speaker
I mean, why were these objects of all things so powerfully symbolic and so precious?
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:38
Speaker
Well, I think part of it comes from the fact that linen is something that's kept so close to the body.
00:14:43
Speaker
I mean, people are wearing linen chemises.
00:14:45
Speaker
There's a lot of like hygiene practices that involve dry brushing with linen cloth and things like that.
00:14:52
Speaker
So I think it's a very intimate gift in that way.
00:14:56
Speaker
Like, you know that this is an object you're giving someone that hypothetically will come into contact with their body.
00:15:01
Speaker
and will be in their pockets and carried around with them.
00:15:04
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.
00:15:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:24
Speaker
Let's get into how it was actually made.
00:15:28
Speaker
So you mentioned linen.
00:15:30
Speaker
I mean, what was the where was this linen coming from?
00:15:33
Speaker
What was the sort of chain of production that ultimately led to these these beautiful handkerchiefs?
00:15:39
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.
00:15:52
Speaker
And there are some organizations and even museums like
00:15:55
Speaker
textures in Belgium that are still working out exactly how they were able to get this thread so fine.
00:16:01
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.
00:16:13
Speaker
So it's possible that that's where this thread could have come into from Italy.
00:16:17
Speaker
The silk for the embroidery
Lace Production: Craftsmanship and Labor
00:16:21
Speaker
however, could have been a local production.
00:16:24
Speaker
They had their culture in Venice.
00:16:26
Speaker
So, but that's kind of tricky to say.
00:16:30
Speaker
And so then what was the, like, just flesh out the whole production process to me.
00:16:35
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.
00:16:51
Speaker
and sort of artistic.
00:16:55
Speaker
I mean, where is that happening?
00:16:57
Speaker
Who is actually executing that?
00:17:00
Speaker
What are the economics of that arrangement?
00:17:03
Speaker
That's a great question.
00:17:04
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.
00:17:12
Speaker
So, you know, going all the way to the beginning, of course, you have the farmer who's growing flax.
00:17:16
Speaker
And then there's a pretty labor intensive process of like redding.
00:17:21
Speaker
Some people did do redding, which means basically rotting where you're rotting the exterior off in moisture.
00:17:27
Speaker
Then after like hackling and other processing steps, I'm sorry that I don't know them exactly,
00:17:33
Speaker
in order, but then you would basically be able to comb the fibers in a direction so that you could spin them.
00:17:41
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.
00:17:50
Speaker
So then once you have the thread spun many months, many moons later, you
00:17:57
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.
00:18:06
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.
00:18:14
Speaker
And it would be weighted when they gave the lace back so that they couldn't save any for themselves.
00:18:19
Speaker
Like it was pretty precious.
00:18:21
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:22
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.
00:18:37
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.
00:18:55
Speaker
to hire someone or pay someone to invest huge amounts of labor hours into that production.
00:19:05
Speaker
And therefore you end up with these incredibly intricate, obviously hand-created effects.
00:19:13
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.
00:19:23
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.
00:19:34
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.
00:19:40
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.
00:19:54
Speaker
Because it was understood that you could melt it down and then it would retain its value.
00:19:58
Speaker
But that even though, you know, the people...
00:20:04
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.
00:20:15
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.
00:20:25
Speaker
So it still ends up that the value really is coming from that cost.
00:20:31
Speaker
And the thread is sort of like,
00:20:34
Speaker
inconsequential a little bit.
00:20:36
Speaker
I shouldn't say, less of the value comes from that.
00:20:39
Speaker
Yeah, comparatively.
00:20:40
Speaker
That's interesting.
Valuing Historical Lace
00:20:41
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.
00:20:59
Speaker
you can actually see exactly how much they value the material and how much they value the work.
00:21:06
Speaker
And you can really watch that balance shifting over time.
00:21:10
Speaker
The earlier you go, you know, the less expensive labor is relative to the value of the material.
00:21:14
Speaker
So maybe, you know, out of every, you know,
00:21:20
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.
00:21:28
Speaker
But 150 or 200 years later, that ratio might be reversed.
00:21:35
Speaker
Interesting.
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah, record keeping with lace is so challenging.
00:21:40
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.
00:21:56
Speaker
So you don't always know what the same piece sold for and what the labor hours were.
00:22:00
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.
00:22:10
Speaker
referring to.
00:22:12
Speaker
So it's really hard to make any sort of like specific assessment of like how much things cost.
00:22:19
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
00:22:34
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.
00:22:47
Speaker
And this is, I think, more importantly to say that this is related to about 10 years of a
00:22:59
Speaker
laborers' wages.
00:23:01
Speaker
So this is like really expensive.
00:23:03
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.
00:23:20
Speaker
This episode is brought to you by Indeed.
00:23:23
Speaker
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00:23:48
Speaker
That's fascinating.
00:23:48
Speaker
I mean, I'm always, my mind is always blown by the expense of these early textiles.
00:23:54
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.
00:24:12
Speaker
And, you know, each one represented, they're woven with gold and silver thread and, you know, very finely produced.
00:24:18
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.
00:24:31
Speaker
But, yeah, but of course it became, because of that value, it became this wildly effective status symbol.
00:24:40
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.
00:24:55
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.
00:25:07
Speaker
Is that right?
00:25:07
Speaker
Like, yeah.
00:25:10
Speaker
We don't know the person who bought this particular handkerchief, right?
00:25:14
Speaker
But imagine that this person is prancing around Venice with this handkerchief in his pocket or her pocket.
00:25:23
Speaker
Are this person's aristocratic buddies going to see that and sort of recognize the social power of that?
00:25:31
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:25:32
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.
00:25:56
Speaker
So of course, you know, not all laces created equal.
00:25:59
Speaker
I mean, it is for me, I love all of it.
00:26:01
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.
00:26:11
Speaker
And people really had the connoisseurship to be able to distinguish that, like really at a glance.
00:26:17
Speaker
And this is what I have gathered from my research.
00:26:21
Speaker
And, you know, part of this is apparent through even like looking at portraiture and things like that.
00:26:26
Speaker
Like,
00:26:27
Speaker
And often, very often, it is made clear through the painter's brushstrokes what kind of lace they're depicting.
00:26:35
Speaker
Like whether it's bobbin lace or needle lace, like what specific technique it is.
00:26:39
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.
00:26:50
Speaker
Wow, interesting.
00:26:51
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.
00:27:00
Speaker
And a lot of what you're doing is sort of historically referential.
00:27:06
Speaker
And in particular, you know, you've been working on this really exciting project called Refashioning the Renaissance.
00:27:14
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.
00:27:33
Speaker
So tell me about refashioning the Renaissance.
00:27:35
Speaker
What's the idea?
00:27:37
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:27:39
Speaker
So Refashioning the Renaissance was a project started by Paula Hoti at Aalto University in Finland.
00:27:46
Speaker
It's an EU funded project that spanned five years, I think, plus because of COVID and everything.
00:27:53
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.
00:28:05
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.
00:28:15
Speaker
And they were interested in the sort of like
00:28:18
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.
00:28:29
Speaker
So they did a number of amazing reconstruction projects, including knitting and weaving wool velvet by hand that was stamped, like fabulous.
00:28:39
Speaker
And so they actually approached me about working on
00:28:43
Speaker
a lace project.
00:28:44
Speaker
I knew Sophie Pittman, who was one of the leads on the project as well.
00:28:47
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.
00:28:57
Speaker
And they had the idea of a handkerchief because it has four sides.
00:29:01
Speaker
So we could include four different edgings as different examples of lace from this time period.
00:29:07
Speaker
What
00:29:08
Speaker
we decided was that I would focus exclusively on bobbin lace because that's my specialty.
00:29:13
Speaker
And then it's easier to make comparisons between likes, like techniques, like edgings, and that each
00:29:24
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.
00:29:42
Speaker
So I used different fibers and also source material.
00:29:45
Speaker
So some were from egg stand objects, others were from pattern books, things like that, to really give like a diversity of
00:29:54
Speaker
feedback from this project.
00:29:55
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,
00:30:23
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.
00:30:33
Speaker
So it's hard for us to reach them through traditional methods of archival research.
00:30:40
Speaker
So,
00:30:42
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.
00:30:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:57
Speaker
I find that totally fascinating.
00:30:59
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.
00:31:09
Speaker
And I'm so curious to hear about your experience doing that.
00:31:13
Speaker
And what sort of, I mean, how has that helped you to feel
00:31:19
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.
00:31:29
Speaker
I mean, what is it about the physical process that you found to be most revealing or educational?
00:31:39
Speaker
Well, I think my major takeaway was that sort of the...
00:31:44
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.
00:32:01
Speaker
They were doing a lot more interpretation.
00:32:04
Speaker
So tell me a little bit more about who these people were.
00:32:07
Speaker
So we sort of glossed over this, but you mentioned convents.
00:32:14
Speaker
I mean, is it mostly women who are involved in lace production?
00:32:19
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:32:20
Speaker
I think laces, you know, unlike other textiles globally, which often get lumped into the sort of quote, women's work category,
00:32:32
Speaker
Actually, textiles were much more diverse than who was working on them.
00:32:35
Speaker
A lot of professional guilds had men involved in them, particularly at the highest levels of weaving and embroidery and things like that.
00:32:44
Speaker
But lacemaking, almost exclusively, there are always exceptions, but it is pretty universally women and girls.
00:32:52
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.
00:33:04
Speaker
So my focus for this particular project was primarily looking at Venice.
Convents and Lace Making
00:33:10
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.
00:33:17
Speaker
But I think one of the big things is that
00:33:20
Speaker
In the 16th century, Venice had the highest number of convents and nuns per capita in Europe.
00:33:30
Speaker
So approximately 30 convents housing 2,500 nuns in the mid 16th century.
00:33:36
Speaker
And of course, the overall population of Venice fluctuates a lot due to immigration and plagues and, you know,
00:33:42
Speaker
all kinds of things, but that's about 2% of the population.
00:33:48
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.
00:33:56
Speaker
So this was a practice where basically wealthy families, patrician families,
00:34:03
Speaker
If they had more daughters than they could afford dowries for, they would basically put them in the convent.
00:34:10
Speaker
So get thee to the convent.
00:34:11
Speaker
It really is a real thing that happens to people.
00:34:14
Speaker
And so this is where a lot of textile innovation was happening.
00:34:18
Speaker
A lot of these women were, or girls, they were girls initially, were very well trained and skilled in needlework, but they
00:34:27
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.
00:34:36
Speaker
And so this is given how much time of their day was dedicated to prayer.
00:34:43
Speaker
And also textile making sometimes is seen as a contemplative way to be, you know,
00:34:48
Speaker
in prayer because it's very repetitive in this way.
00:34:54
Speaker
So all of these innovations come out in this time period.
00:34:58
Speaker
And then the other locale for lace making
00:35:03
Speaker
in these larger organizations anyway, not this sort of like cottage industry putting out system, which was happening as well.
00:35:10
Speaker
They were more like homework situations in lace.
00:35:12
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.
00:35:25
Speaker
such as the Casa de la Zitele in Judica.
00:35:29
Speaker
And what's interesting is that they all have different sort of criteria for entry.
00:35:33
Speaker
So it's clearly competitive to enter these organizations.
00:35:36
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.
00:35:48
Speaker
Basically, supposedly they would get about a third of the money from the
00:35:53
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.
00:36:01
Speaker
Gosh, so, I mean, you're describing a pretty wide array of lifestyles that these lace producers were experiencing.
00:36:10
Speaker
But obviously, you know, all very different from the lifestyle of contemporary lace makers such as yourself.
00:36:18
Speaker
I mean, you when you sit down and work on a project,
00:36:24
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?
00:36:42
Speaker
I mean, does it...
00:36:45
Speaker
Does it give you a sense of transporting yourself across time and communicating with people who you'll never really know?
Modern Evolution of Lace Making
00:36:54
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.
00:37:05
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,
00:37:19
Speaker
Archangela Tarabotti, who was born Elena Cassandra.
00:37:23
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.
00:37:44
Speaker
So that's unusual.
00:37:46
Speaker
But she...
00:37:47
Speaker
was really determined to be independent.
00:37:51
Speaker
And although she never left the convent, she did become a great thinker of her day.
00:37:56
Speaker
She corresponded with physicists and philosophers outside of the convent, and she wrote five books, including Paternal Tyranny and Monastic Hell.
00:38:07
Speaker
So you can see how she felt about her experiences.
00:38:11
Speaker
It's not a subtle title.
00:38:12
Speaker
They're wonderful.
00:38:13
Speaker
Some of them are translated into English.
00:38:15
Speaker
They're very moving.
00:38:16
Speaker
She's really, you know, I feel like even proto-feminist is too light-handed for her.
00:38:24
Speaker
She's very much like...
00:38:26
Speaker
all about independence and rights for women, which is pretty spectacular in this time period.
00:38:31
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,
00:38:42
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
00:39:09
Speaker
women and girls can choose to do this or not.
00:39:12
Speaker
And men and everyone of everyone gender.
00:39:15
Speaker
Now today, we have much more inclusive lace community around the world.
Engaging with the Lace Community
00:39:22
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?
00:39:31
Speaker
Well, I because I am currently a full time PhD student at Bard Graduate Center, yes, focusing on the history of lace.
00:39:40
Speaker
I have not been as active on my socials, although I'm trying to get back to it.
00:39:44
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.
00:39:57
Speaker
That's also the same handle I have on TikTok where I make video, educational video content about lace history and textile history.
00:40:05
Speaker
And I also am the acting president of Brooklyn Lace Guild here in New York City.
00:40:11
Speaker
We have a wonderful group that I co-founded in 2016 with Devin Thine and Kaylin Garcia.
00:40:18
Speaker
Now we have like over 60 members and we have a lot of great things coming up this year, including
00:40:26
Speaker
hint, hint, maybe an exhibition.
00:40:28
Speaker
So, so please follow us.
00:40:30
Speaker
You can find us at brooklynlayskilled.com and at brooklynlayskilled is our Instagram handle.
00:40:36
Speaker
I try to keep up on that a little bit better than my own, but you know, it's a lot.
00:40:40
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.
00:40:48
Speaker
This year we've had a, we just did a Tenerife workshop, which is like a,
00:40:54
Speaker
like a needle lace from the Spanish Americas and or like Latin America made in the round.
00:41:01
Speaker
It's like a wheel of needle weaving, which is great.
00:41:04
Speaker
We did tatting.
00:41:06
Speaker
We have other things coming up.
00:41:07
Speaker
Of course, I will teach bobbin lace at some point.
00:41:09
Speaker
So people are interested, please reach out.
00:41:13
Speaker
And we, you know, we have friends all over the world.
00:41:15
Speaker
So even if you're not in New York, we can try to find you a lace maker near you.
00:41:21
Speaker
Fabulous.
00:41:22
Speaker
Well, this has been such a pleasure.
00:41:23
Speaker
Thanks so much for spending the time with me.
00:41:26
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me, Ben.
00:41:27
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.
00:41:41
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support by Sarah Belotta.
00:41:46
Speaker
Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:41:49
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:41:51
Speaker
And I'm Ben Miller.
00:42:13
Speaker
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00:42:25
Speaker
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00:42:27
Speaker
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