On the topic of lace.... part one

I mentioned in my last post that I was taking part in a straight book swap with Gina on her chosen topic of lace. It came about by chance after reading one of Gina's posts. She'd been making some lovely small books and as usual cramming 36 hours of activity into a 24 hour day so I left a comment asking her if she fancied doing a book swap as a tongue in cheek remark i.e 'Surely you can make time to do this too?' When she sent me an email saying 'Yes, let's do it' I had a moment where I thought 'hang on girl, don't go there' but I can never resist a challenge so we agreed dates and mechanics etc and the topic for the content that is close to Gina's heart - lace.

Once I started looking at it I was overwhelmed with ideas but not all of them had 'legs'. In my former working life I used to get paid well to come up with ideas for clients but then, I never had to execute them so I could be as off the wall as I wanted to be. When you have to put your money where your mouth is and produce the goods yourself it's not that straightforward and I want to share the 'ones that got away'. The first photo was just a printed idea using some of my photos with a quote I found from Coco Chanel. I am an inveterate experimenter with Photoshop but never quite get the effect I set out for. I moved on from Coco to investigating Queen Anne's Lace. It is a plant I've used before for printing onto fabric and I have lots of them. There is a lot of folklore surrounding them and I had not realised that each flower has a purple mark somewhere in the umbel. It is said to be the blood of Queen Anne as she pricked her finger making lace. Of course it can't possibly be true but it was an interesting diversion. The flower structure is so graphic that it lends itself to lots of ideas but I couldn't come up with an idea with enough content that pleased me.

I found so many artists who are using lace in their work and there is even a major exhibition in Birmingham at the moment of contemporary artists using lace as an inspiration. I looked at lace bugs, lace moths, postage stamps about lacemaking, lace shoes, lace gloves, vintage lace etc etc and found little snippets that fascinated me. Bridal lace was an obvious area to research, particularly it's associations with the Royal Family. Queen Mary, who is always photographed and portrayed as being quite austere was quite bowled over by lace. She couldn't get enough of it apparently. All royal weddings have specially made dresses and Queen Victoria's was personally made of Honiton lace to a pattern that was destroyed after it was completed, ensuring it was a unique example of the craft. That link to bridal purity led me on to embossing some lace .

I wanted something pure and simple so ran some dampened paper through my press over a piece of lace chairback. One of my hoard of charity shop finds, it has a lovely, almost stained glass pattern to it and the finished pieces of paper look ready to maybe be papercut, but it looked too plain and unfinished as a book so I took it no further. These pages will have to be incorporated into something else now but I will enjoy using them somewhere, sometime.

The idea I was most keen on was influenced by researching the artists who use other materials
to create 'lace-like' art, particularly those who laser cut metal. Now I don't have access to a laser cutter but I did think of a way I could make some metal covers for my book. I was going to team it with some slides I was going to make and then place it all in a wooden box I have for keeping the slides in. The idea was to paint the slide mounts black, as all along I have tried to maintain a black/white palette for this project, and then print lace samples onto acetate and place them inside the mounts and inside the box with the book.

Well, it was a good idea in theory but it didn't come off in practice as you can see below. I had an idea of what I wanted to achieve and I picked the brains of my friend Sue of a way to go about it. I have been on a fabulous workshop with her where we did something similar but she phoned me and gave me a better idea which was to etch my aluminium plates with a copper sulphate solution and let it bite through the plate and give me some lovely lacy holes.

As you can see, it all went a bit awry. I rollered a wallpaper design onto the aluminium with some oil based ink and let it dry well. I made up the etching bath but did one crucial thing wrong, hence two well bitten, virtually crumbly pieces of metal at the end of the day. It didn't help that while the bath was working a bat somehow got into my shed and was flying around. All I kept thinking about was the bat flying into the solution and the ramifications of that. By the time I saved the day and diverted him outside (in broad daylight!) the plates were ruined and even a coat of enamel paint has not retrieved the situation so my best plan was scuppered and I had to come up with another. Luckily, I have managed to make something that passes for a book and it's packaged up waiting to go. Next time I hope to share the one that didn't get away and what delight I will have received in the post by return.