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For Lace in Translation at The Design Center at Philadelphia University

Aramide and Dynema fibers; powder-coated steel

Studio Tord Boontje, 2009

Photo by Kerry Polite

The word lace evolved from the Latin word laqueare meaning “to ensnare”. In common usage the word is both a verb which describes edges or elements being drawn together or to adorn with lace, the material by the same name. Lace is a general term for a class of materials all of which have one thing in common: the focal point is a void, hole or a lack of material. Lace is one of the few materials where the immaterial is just as important as the material.

In a new exhibition titled “Lace in Translation” The Design Center (TDC) at Philadelphia University uses the Center’s collection of laces produced by the defunct Philadelphia machine-made lace manufacturer the Quaker Lace Company (QLC). These laces are juxtaposed with site-specific installation work by three contemporary art/design studios whose works are often inspired by traditional lace imagery. As lace-making machines once translated the deft fingerings of traditional lace makers into the “complex, rapid and intricately synchronized movements of … metallic parts,” (Pat Earnshaw, Lace Machines & Machine Laces), this exhibition pushes the concept of lace further still, using unexpected materials and new technologies to transform interior and exterior spaces.

The Quaker Lace Company dominated the machine-made lace curtains market in the late 1880s through the mid 20th century. The TDC’s Quaker Lace collections include some 150 machine-made lace samples from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as advertising brochures and glass slides depicting the company’s products in domestic settings. TDC also houses an extraordinary collection of thousands of drawings by lace designer Frederick Charles Vessey (1862-1948), who – along with lace-making machinery and skilled lace weavers – was brought to Philadelphia from Nottingham, England by the Quaker Lace Company’s owners. Just as the designers for “Lace in Translation” turned to historic designs for inspiration to create new concepts, Vessey himself mined such varied sources as Egyptian tomb paintings, Jacobean architectural motifs and tin ceiling catalogs to inspire and inform his designs for the Quaker Lace product line.

The following is a description of the artists and the site-specific work they developed.

Lighting Fixtures For Lace in Translation at The Design Center at Philadelphia University Raffia Studio Tord Boontje, 2009 Photo by Kerry Polite

The Design Center houses a collection of samples and marketing materials from the Quaker Lace Company of Philadelphia.  The show draws it's inspiration from this collection and the rich textile history of Philadelphia

CAL LANE

For “Lace in Translation”, Canadian artist Cal Lane has contributed an environmental installation in The Design Center’s enclosed backyard garden area with its covered grand piano-shaped swimming pool. The installation includes a 600-pound welded filigree oil drum. Lane formerly worked as a welder and today uses her welding torch to cut doilies and baroque patterns into objects such as wheelbarrows, I-beams, dumpsters and shovels. “I was cleaning the metal shop up one day,” Lane says, “and as a joke, I put real lace doilies on top of the equipment after I cleaned them – on the band saw, anvil, drill press. Visually I liked the contrast of materials, the white clean delicate lace draped over this dirty cold steel machine… This brought me to creating industrial doilies… [which] were to me a symbol of contrast and balance, by placing together visual oppositions: male and female, tough and delicate.”

Lane says she likes “to work as a visual devil’s advocate, using contradiction as a vehicle for finding my way to an empathetic image, an image of opposition that creates a balance – as well as a clash – by comparing and contrasting ideas and materials. Her works consider industrial and domestic life, as well as relationships of strength and delicacy, the masculine and feminine, the practical and the frivolous, ornamentation and function.

For more information on the artist go to www.callane.com

For more information on the exhibit please visit www.laceintranslation.com.

Oil tank and installation For Lace in Translation at The Design Center at Philadelphia University Oxy-Acetylene cut and welded steel; paint Cal Lane, 2009 Photo by Kerry Polite

TORD BOONTJE

European designer Tord Boontje has created a multi-sensory three-gallery installation featuring furniture, lighting and laser-cut fabrics in themes of black, gold and white. As part of this site-specific installation, a team of Philadelphia University students, faculty, and staff have been working with Boontje’s designs, hand-weaving raffia into pieces for a large lace curtain to hang in the gallery windows.

Boontje says the vocabulary of lace in his work emerged through “cutting away rather than building up. It was through direct translations of nature, looking up to the sky through the layers of sunlit foliage – these kinds of things remind me of lace. Like the natural world, where foliage is spatial and formed in three dimensions, I started to look at a layered image and three-dimensional lacelike structures to invoke this intricacy that is so fascinating to me.”

For more info on the artist go to www.tordboontje.com

DEMAKERSVAN

Dutch design studio Demakersvan has designed a hand-made “lace” chain-link fence installation for The Design Center’s front yard. Demakersvan’s work can be seen all over Europe as well as in China and Africa. The Lace Fence at The Design Center, approximately 170 feet in length, is Demakersvan’s first major outdoor installation in the United States. “Industrial production is for us a big source of inspiration,” says Joep Verhoeven, one of three founding designers of Demakersvan. “In our projects we often combine the sensitive and the small with the powerful, large and industrial. The Lace Fence project translates that line of thinking. Fencing is a sign of how we have modified and cultivated our environment. We wanted to explore what would happen if a patch of embroidered wire met with and continued as an industrial fence.”

For more information on the artists go to www.demakersvan.com