all roads lead to Rome

They say that all roads lead to Rome, in fact it is on the route of many travellers!

I already knew that I'm lucky to live near Rome! But I wouldn't imagine that this meant that I could have had the great opportunity to meet travelling tatters!! It happened in 2019, when I met Karen Cabrera in person! (https://ninettacaruso.blogspot.com/2019/10/distractions.html )

And now I had the fantastic opportunity to meet the Master Tatter Anita Barry!

What do you think of an appointment under The Obelisk in St. Peter square? It’s fantastic, isn't it! And highly risky, LOL! For the crowd in the square, we almost didn't find each other! We should thank a light drizzle, for she had the umbrella with her, and intentionally opened it to make her visible to me, hers was the only opened umbrella in the square!

She is very nice and outgoing and one hour flew by! We chatted like old friends! Well, I think I talked too much, telling her about our just finished exhibition in my city, where I saw many beautiful laces, and about the Endrucks Project! Ah, now I have my own cat "Flat Felix" to take care of! Thank you so much, Anita!

Also, she was so nice to gift me some threads and one shuttle, that I love! And a beautiful pair of earrings! And many other lovely things… better to show you the treasure:

I save everything for a good use, and I’ve already wore the earrings. Will try the shuttle soon!

Well, I’d tell you, Felix told me he’s curious like a cat about what Anita will do with the motifs she got in return!

Do you think that I’ve been offline enough? Or do you think I spend too much time on Fb and I should be back blogging regularly? I can’t answer, maybe I’ll blog again. The Cambridge Dictionary says that “all roads lead to Rome” meaning “all the methods of doing something will achieve the same result in the end”. That's life, and it doesn’t mind if we are online or offline. The important thing is to always have (that’s right, the health first! But also…) a passion that fulfils us, that connects us with twin souls, and we'll never feel alone.

Ciao, Ninetta.

…and the offline life

I belong to a local lace association, and thanks to the initiative of Luigia Tosin, master in bobbin lace, we organise an exhibition each year, to promote lace and the cultural heritage of lace. 

Past years we held a series of exhibitions on the history of lace, from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. From this year on, we started a different project, a series of exhibitions focused on how we can pass the know-how to make lace to the future generations, it’s titled ‘Threads and Schools’. The first event has just ended, it was from 9th to 17th March. We invited a dozen participants from associations, single persons and schools from North Italy to exhibit in our city. The project will continue next year (2025) with groups of lacers from Central Italy and the year after (2026) from South Italy. Fingers crossed!

All participants have enjoyed it and welcomed our intent. For more pictures please visit the Fb page of our association "Ago Filo e Fuselli". The exhibition was started by a conference in the city Hall, our moderator was Alessandra Caputo (the amazing “multitasking” lady who is behind the site www.merlettoitaliano.it ):

The "Endrucks 1920 Project" had a little place in our exhibition, too!

My humble attempt to spread the voice here in my city is starting to get some fruits. Eleonore won against the prejudice that tatting is "just rings and chains", or "just knotting", and the Project is a great way to study/research, teach and learn, and it is a wonderful example of international collaboration. I thought it was connected to the title/subject of our exhibition. I received many congratulations and I'm very happy to share the compliments with Muskaan and all the Endrucks group. I stated clearly it's not only my work, and presented the Project like a school's work or a sampler book: I tatted all 44 models from E's and glued them in a handmade accordion book, like it used to be done in many vintage sampler books. Many visitors had to come close to the tatting to persuade themselves that the models were tatted and not printed! That was really fun, and gave me the opportunity to explain! 

You can see my work in a short video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X-11fHJliaA1WWBigcK51oJMGRv6Xjag/view?usp=drive_link 

We had the honour to host a rare copy of the original Endrucks book, thanks to a generous lady collector. The cover page is slightly embossed, which is evident in the back, as shown in the next collage pic. Also the last page of the cover has the initials for "Verlag Otto Beyer'' embossed, as shown in the internal side. Emmy Liebert's books by the same publisher have the covers with the tatting image embossed, too (from what we read in the review by M. Leigh Martin at her site "Something Under the Bed", link - http://www.somethingunderthebed.com/CURTAIN/REVIEWStat/REVIEWS_ItoL/LIEBERT1.html). We cannot say if this was a characteristic of the publisher Otto Beyer because we don't have enough information.(UPDATE: Yes we have the proof! Read here - https://ninettacaruso.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-embossed-cover.html)

 On the same table with my sampler book, we had the artwork that won the second prize, "silver bobbin", at the competition "Intr3cci 2022 – Inno al merletto: una stele tridimensionale” (Hymn to lace: a three-dimensional stele), promoted in 2022 in Sansepolcro (Italy) by the Association "Il merletto nella città di Piero". The lace and the artistic installation were designed by Luigia Tosin and made with various techniques (mainly bobbin lace, then filet and macramè - unfortunately tatting was not admitted!) by many of us belonging to "Ago Filo e Fuselli", in a collective way. The title is “Il mondo è come una trina sottile: complesso, ma unico e meraviglioso.” (The world is like a thin lace: complex, but unique and wonderful.) – each side represents a continent in the world. Luigia is the president of our local association, and our Maestra in bobbin lace. I’m sorry that the pic was difficult to take, for the stele is quite big, height is about 60cm and diameter about 40cm.

 Ciao, Ninetta.

findings and the online life

Spring is just the perfect time to revive a blog that has been languishing for ages! Someone (who's smiling name starts with M 😉) pushed me to win my laziness and took me back to the "blog side"! (Muskaan is amazing and deserves a first prize as the best mentor and tatting friend!) 

So… here I am, blogging on my recent online and offline life. As a sneak peek on my offline life, my hand had the opportunity to touch a rare copy of the original Endrucks’ book (in March 2024). But I’ll tell you in next post…

Now to the online life.

The first important thing to write is that I've never stopped tatting for the Endrucks 1920 Project, trying to do my best to help Muskaan! She's incredibly creative and efficient, and the things to do are really so much that I often feel that I'm not doing enough to help her keep the Project going! 

E15 Ear of Maize Doodle by Muskaan - morphed into lavender by me - Pattern  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GEms2X1Xmk1YHwrDz_3F7FiDLgIVpmz-/view

The Project has been recently updated with a document containing a compilation of sources - contemporary to Endrucks (1916 to 1935) - where we found the same (or similar) patterns of the Endrucks' 1920 book or even a couple of other Eleonore's designs not included in the book (they are very likely her subsequent patterns). Read our new doc "FINDINGS - contemporary/Endrucks-related patterns" -
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CGDpofK-kym96sIPmeEdVJudLwNI5YWr/view?usp=drivesdk

Actually we found only two sources that contain patterns designed by Eleonore not included in the ‘Die Schiffchen-Spitzen’ book, because these designs were published after 1920. I show you in the next pic only one of these two patterns, from “The Studio Yearbook of Decorative Art”, issue 1925 (it was an annual review of contemporary architecture and applied art, issued from 1906 to 1925). A copy can be found in the site Heidelberg historic literature (www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de ). Very interestingly, these few designs show her evolution as a designer from 1920 on.

These “findings” are the result of both my online research and the offline help by a “detective on the field”. We should send a big thank you to a very kind lady, I only know her as ElisaT, who is a tatter, bilingual Italian German (and actually also English). She has decisively contributed to the Project, finding a lot about Eleonore's family (that will be shared soon) and about old German magazines. We wish her all the best and we hope that we can keep in touch and continue the great collaboration - life permitting.

And incredible as it may seem, from these old sources we learned that Eleonore was a self-taught tatter! And a generous teacher, a philanthropist, too. In fact, translating only some sentences found in two pages from the magazine “Daheim” (November 1925), this is what ElisaT wrote:

“Eleonore Endrucks writes in the article, of which she herself is the author, that she had gathered around her a group of ladies from the town where she had gone to live (Gilching) whom she had commissioned to carry out tatting work, according to the patterns that she had designed. Eleonore is keen to point out in the article that she did not keep any percentage: all the money went to the ladies who did the work.”

From the old books we also learn that Eleonore was soon recognised by her contemporaries as an innovator in the art of tatting, for the way patterns were written and diagrammed. We are still searching, but till now we think that she had never published a second book, even if she continued designing. 

We hope to find more in the future about her life and her tatting. I will continue to search online. Every one of you can help, if you think that you found something old new, or new old… oh well! Please contact Muskaan and/or me 😊

Ciao, Ninetta.