Top Drawer

Jane is exhibiting in Top Drawer at The Gallery Upstairs, Upton Country Park, Poole, 22 June to 3 July 2023.

With strong drawing at its heart, the show curated by Bournemouth artist Tom Marshall brings together UK and overseas artists in a vibrant mix of painting, printmaking, contemporary lace, carved porcelain and more.

Jane developed her entry from the drawing project she will explore in her next TAL course for 2024 on Stylisation. 

Wishing to encourage students to expand the sketching skills at the heart of most design work, she will be making the suggestion: ‘add a bunch of flowers to your supermarket basked and spend a few minutes over the following week developing confidence with drawing practice’. 

So she did that herself, examining a jug of lilies, and then dug into the Victorian design literature she collects, to explore their advice on how to work out a pattern.

Tom’s invitation, drawing together a very personal selection of artists whose work intrigues him, presented the ideal opportunity to take Jane’s project to the finish.

New Course on Patreon: Embellished Clothwork

Marian Tempels is our first guest teacher on TAL. The title of her course, starting in June 2023 on our Patreon page is Embellished Clothwork - where she teaches us how to create otherworldly clothwork with assymetrical stitches on a more open clothwork configuration.

Two Free Bobbin Lace Design Courses Available on Youtube

Pierre's "Binche Pixels" and Jane's "Contemporary Lace Design" are now available on YouTube. These are great primers before diving in to our intermediate level e-books and courses on Patreon. (For absolute beginners we still recommend starting with "Art Lace For Absolute Beginners" on Patreon first)

Online Workshop in deutscher Sprache

Am 14.11.2022 startet der erste Online Pointfusion Workshop in deutscher Sprache. Pointfusion wurde von dem Künstler Pierre Fouché entwickelt und vereint die Techniken der Tüllspitze mit den Elementen der flandrischen und der Binche-Spitze. Das Ergebnis kann man am besten bezeichnen als "mit Gründen malen". Weitere Details zu dem Workshop findest du hier. Der Workshop wird ausgerichtet von KLOEPPELN.AT. Zur Anmeldung geht es hier lang.

The Seas and All will Part, Expire

Pierre's installation was exhibitied at Spier Wine Estate alongside other lace works in their collection between 17 September to 27 November 2022

Pierre conducted an artist walkabout on Friday 25 November

Link to their website

Indecent

Pierre (with support from Elena Kanagy-Loux) curated an exhibition of erotic lace miniatures by international artists at Whatiftheworld Gallery in Cape Town in 2022

Lace has a colourful history and relationship with sexuality, and this small group exhibition takes that relationship as its starting point. Unravelling the theme in miniature lace opens up Pandora’s box of further questions about human nature, aesthetics, politics, pleasures, taboos and the fine line separating them.

Online Catalogue

Three Adventurous Lacemakers interviewed for Haptic and Hue.

Haptic and Hue is one of our favourite podcasts by hand weaver and broadcaster Jo Andrews. This episode is all about lace, and it delves into lace's colourful history and even brighter future. Jo interviewed Jane, Pierre and Elena for this episode.

Latest book on art lace

Denise, Pierre & Jane feature in this anthology of contemporary artists working in lace. ‘La Dentelle dans l’art contemporain’ will shortly to be issued in English too.

Art Brightens your World

Dagmar exhibited at the Art Brightens your World exhibition at the Ames Arts Center in Burnsville, MN in 2022. (The Eiffel Tower on the right is featured in "Drawing with lace"  on Patreon.)

Make Southwest

Jane exhibited at Make Southwest at Bovey Tracey from 16 July to 8 October 2022

Most of Jane’s work in contemporary bobbin lace captures fragile memories from a wetland landscape combatting the breakdown of our climate. While making Arbor Vitae (image above) to celebrate an ivy-clad poplar that had survived the violent storm which had felled its companion, she discovered that it had itself been truncated to prevent it being blown onto the observation hut built in its shade.

Independence, the sunflower inspired by stylised Catalan Modernist architectural decoration, is shown in solidarity with Ukraine.

The Little Woman

In this video, Filmed just before lockdown. Denise explains how she creates her unique and intricate form of horsehair bobbin lace. Denise shares her thoughts behind her handmade dolls in “The Little Woman” exhibition. Each hand crafted paper mâché doll is hand painted before it is embellished with embroidery, vintage cloth, vintage finds and handmade bobbin lace.

Pierre visited in Perth in October/November 2022

Western Australia recently hosted the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial that included Pierre's installation "The Little Binche Peacock and Other Utopian Dreams", and when travel restrictions eased, Pierre travelled to Perth to teach three lace design and technique workshops, and to speak at the Fremantle Design Week.

Pierre's trip and masterclasses were hosted and made possible by the curators of the Indian Ocean Craft Triennial, Maker&Smith (@maker_and_smith)