…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.