Secrets In Lace Catalog.pdf

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Secrets In Lace Catalog.pdf

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The lacemaker sits at a rather complicated piece of furniture, a triangular table, for lace making. The table's uppermost surface could be raised and lowered by inserting a peg into one of the holes in the leg with the knob top. The rectangular leg, crowned by a carved (detachable?) knob. No such device from Vermeer's time has survived and, according to Albert Blankert, only one other 17th-century painting shows a comparable but hardly identical construction.

To exalt the expressive tension of the young lacemaker absorbed in her work, Vermeer drew up close to the subject eliminating all but a patch of blank white-washed wall behind her. However, even the unobtrusive presence of the anonymous wall may have had its own story to tell.

Vermeer's young lacemaker presumably wears a satin yellow garment with a lace collar. The collar is executed with such pictorial freedom that its decorative motif cannot be distinguished in any way although the artist was able to capture the material's transparency with amazing economy.

Although not a single sitter in Vermeer's paintings has been objectively identified, critics have asserted that at least some of them were members of his immediate family circle. Considering the probable date of this painting and the corresponding ages of the artist's eldest daughters Maria and Elizabeth, it would be normal that one of them posed for this picture. Sewing or lacemaking was part and parcel of the upbringing of a virtuous young Dutch woman. In any case, the facial features of the present figure compare favorably to those of fthe young lady bent over a letter in a work of the same period, the Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid.

The lacemaker's hairdo and falling locks, which costume experts tell us were in vogue for a limited number of years, confirms the date generally ascribed to the painting for stylistic motives. The dangling locks resemble those of the Young Woman Seated at the Virginal painted in the same years.

Although we cannot see exactly what kind of lace the girl is making, it is possible to draw some conclusions from her tools which Vermeer has rendered with sufficient precision. The girl rests her hands on a rather flat, light-blue lacemaking pillow, nowadays called a "cookie-pillow" owing to its round form. This kind of pillow served to make shorter pieces or stripes of lace. Another long, thick, tube-like "bolster-pillow" was frequently employed to produce yardage (long strips of lace) but does not seem to be the case in Vermeer's work.

According to the writer Simon Schama, the Dutch culture of the 17th century was a conflict between home and world. In response to their own commercial successes, they invented the "cult of housework," an ideological elevation of domestic work to an almost sacral status. Numerous prints, manuals, and sermons contributed to the process of sanctifying the home as a refuge against the incursions of market values. No aspect of daily life was considered too insignificant to be portrayed, whether strumming a lute in solitude, reading a letter or quietly making lace. However, the Dutch often attached moral values (frequently contradictory) to each of these activities so that the painting could not only delight the eye but nourish the soul as well.

Embroidery, like lacemaking, was traditionally shown in representations of the Education of the Virgin. In Dutch literary and pictorial traditions sewing and lacemaking were associated with fundamental values of Dutch culture, industriousness and domestic virtue. Women belonged in the home, doing needlework, taking care of the household, and looking after the children.

An example of Dutch lace called Cauliflower or Chrysanthemum lace. This kind of thick, closely worked, strong lace can be seen in many portraits of the period which provided a contrasting effect to the austere black of the sitter's costumes.

One of the greatest extravagances in the history of clothing was lace, of Europe's ancient crafts. Lace is an openwork fabric, patterned with open holes in the work, originally made by hand but now by machine. The open holes can be created by removing the threads or cloth from a previously woven fabric, but more often open spaces are created as part of the lace fabric. True lace was not made until the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Until the time of Queen Elizabeth of England lace was not common. True lace is created when a thread is looped, twisted or braided to other threads independently from a backing fabric. All lace was handmade and very expensive. It was made from many fibers such as cotton, silk, and flax as well as metallic threads like gold, silver, copper, and even hair. In Vermeer's painting, we can clearly see that the girl is making bobbin lace. As needle lace is to embroidery, bobbin lace is to weaving. In bobbin lace, the threads are plaited, twisted and interwoven. The solid parts resemble woven cloth.

Bobbin lace became more popular than needle lace because it was lighter in texture and it worked well in Elizabethan costume. It also lent itself to the manufacturing system of the day. Businessmen would purchase the raw materials and pass them out to home workers. They would get paid for each piece they completed. The businessman would sell the product and keep the profit. Bobbin lace, unlike needle lace, was made by men as well as women. Even fishermen in the "off-season" would make bobbin lace. The advent of machine lace at first pushed lace-makers into more complicated designs (ones that the machines couldn't handle) and then eventually pushed them out of business almost entirely. Bobbin lace is also known as bone-lace. The name bone-lace comes from the fact that some bobbins were formerly made of bone. The collar worn by Vermeer's lacemaker is presumably made of lace although it has been painted with such economy that only its transparency transpires.

So what kind of lace may the girl in Vermeer's painting actually making? Of course, we must take to account that Vermeer most likely did not paint exactly what he saw with photographic precision. However, an educated guess would be that she is working on a rather short piece of lace, perhaps a geometric motif for non-continuous lace or a short stripe later to be attached to a piece of linen, for instance for a small tablecloth or runner or for a cushion. She is certainly not making a very complicated pattern or non-continuous lace, for which she would have far more bobbins at hand and would have probably used a "bolster" pillow.

On the other hand, in Vermeer's Lacemaker, the viewer's eye tends to scan the whole painting exploring bit by bit the curiosities of the composition of which the girl's face is but a part. We are artfully guided by the calligraphic and supremely confident brushwork, and by the dazzling compositional rhythms. The few facial characteristics the artist permits us to inspect are reduced to a pattern of dark and light patches, barely continuous in their modeling. The direction of the girl's gaze, the alignment of her fingers with the taught threads all converge on a single point where, knot after knot, her lace is being miraculously produced. We experience the wholeness of lacemaking, something beyond the individuality of the lacemaker herself. She remains visible yet ultimately intangible.

Vermeer's mother, Digna Baltens, leases the inn Mechelen to a shoemaker for three years. She and her husband had owned in the place for 28 years. Afterward, she goes to live with her daughter Gertruy on the Vlamingstraat, in Delft.

Pope Clement IX dies at Rome December 9 at age 69 after a 2-year reign in which he has encouraged missionary work, reduced taxes, and extended hospitality to Sweden's former queen Kristina. He will not be replaced until next year.

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