Matchmaker, Matchmaker - Elizabeth M. Kurella Curator of Antique

In the fall of 2003, the Sweet Briar Museum becomes the recipient of the J. Margaret Barber - Jane Connin Lace Study
Collection. This unique collection of just over a hundred pieces includes study specimens of lace from the seventeenth
through the early twentieth centuries; fashion items including collars, cuffs, lappets, and berthas from the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries; and an assortment of booklets, lace postcards, and study material. The arrival of the lace at Sweet
Briar together with hundreds of digital images and pages of documentation will make that museum one of the best locations in the country to study antique lace, its place in 19th century society, and lace collecting.
This article originally was presented as a lecture at the 2003 convention of the International Old Lacers, Inc. (Now the International Organization of Lace, Inc. ) Elizabeth M. Kurella is the author of Guide to Lace and Linens, Secrets of Real Lace, Anybody Can Mend Lace
and Linens, and the LaceCurator.info website.
Matchmaker, Matchmaker
Bringing together a lace collection,
a donor, and a museum
By Elizabeth M. Kurella
Once upon a time, about a dozen years ago, Jane Connin arrived on
my doorstep in a driving rainstorm, her grandmother’s lace collection
stashed in her car. She heard I had written a book on identifying vintage
lace, and was determined to have her grandmother’s collection identified,
and eventually, to fulfill her grandmother’s wishes that others would learn
to love and appreciate fine lace through her collection.
Expecting the usual assortment of crochet and embroidery, I put off the
visit for weeks. I will never forget my amazement when we opened a box
and began to unroll eighteenth century Brussels lappets and seventeenth
century Genoese and Milanese flounce fragments.
J. Margaret Kyle Barber was born in in a sod house in Nebraska in the late
19th century, educated in the East, and determined
to see the world. A job with the International Red
Cross allowed her to travel through Europe at a time
young ladies stayed at home. These were years when
collecting vintage lace was a well-respected avocation
of society’s elite, and J. Margaret became a collecting
connoisseur.
This summer, as Jane planned a “perhaps permanent”
move to Australia, she commissioned me to photograph and document the collection, and select a
museum for the lace. She knew I really understood
the value of the material as a collection, shared her
grandmother’s love of the unique vintage handwork,
and could share the stories the threads had to tell.
Above: detail from a late seventeenth century
Milanese bobbin lace ecclesiastical cuff with
traditional representation of St. Anthony of Padua.
Raised folded tallies for hair curls, bead eyes, and
additional raised details make this especially interteresting to lacemakers. Cuffs match other lace in
the Ikle collection in the lace museum in St. Gallen,
Switzerland.
Sweet Briar Museum was selected because, with the lace
pieces belonging to their founder, they already had an
expressed interest in lace. With its focus on the
fine arts and programs in museum studies, Sweet
Briar offers the possibility of reaching and teaching museum curators of the future to appreciate
Monogram from Margaret Kyle Barber’s handkerchief.
Above right: J. Margaret Kyle Barber circa 1940, on one of her
European adventures, Above left: J. Margaret in the 1890s.
and recognize laces, and understand the value of showing actual
laces in the context of historic homes and in conjunction with fine
art representations of vintage lace in portraits. The museum is
small enough to be able to keep the lace together as a collection,
yet large enough to be able to properly take care of it and make it
available for study to a variety of groups with different interests.
Their facilities, including a convention center, make it an ideal location for workshops. Another plus: the potential for a supportive group of volunteers in the area lacemaking groups.
perhaps from Finland? — invite lacemakers to imitate Hungary’s
Halas lace on a whole different scale.
What makes this collection special? The laces, certainly, but also
the stories that they tell when together as a collection. From the
monogrammed handkerchief and tiny needle lace monograms for
table linens, the laces give a glimpse of what it meant to be a lady
in the first half of the twentieth century.
Lacemakers — a wonderful resource is arriving on your doorstep.
Come, enjoy, and support your local museum!
Those interested in costume and fine arts will find a worth-while
grouping of fashion items — perhaps encouraging the start of a
wider collection. Finally, the digital images and documentation
establish a model for preparing lace for study, and raise the possibility of on-line teaching or sale of educational CD’s to continue to
support and develop the collection.
Some fragments are presented finished on all sides, attached to
a colored fabric, and identified with a label, as early twentieth
century study specimens. Until the beginning of the Second
World War, New York City dealers and fine department stores like
Nieman Marcus in Texas, B.Altman in New York, and Marshall
Field in Chicago offered these specimens to high-society ladies
who collected vintage lace the same way many collected fine art.
Lacemakers and embroiderers will find unique thread manipulations and stitches to study and take inspiration from in many
of the examples. Tiny folded tallies that form curly hair tucked
under the halos of the saints in seventeenth century Milanese
bobbin Church lace invite today’s Milanese lacemakers to expand
their repertoire, and add creative raised effects to their laces. A
unique collar-and-cuff set from the late nineteenth century invites
lacemakers to go beyond flat Youghal into the world Pat Earnshaw
calls “freakish” Youghal, and add wild raised work to their Irish
needle laces. Needlewoven birds, dragons, and fanciful horses —
Above: Pair of mid-eighteenth century lappets (headdress streamers).
Above : Whitework fragment prepared as a collector’s study specimen.
Connin-Barber collection includes several pieces of fine whitework
embroidery.
Right: Unique piece offers a research challenge: needleweaving technique
resembles Hungarian Halas, but on a coarse scale. There are suggestions
that this needleweaving technique was also worked in Finland, a place J.
Margaret visited, and collected early twentieth century Finnish bobbin lace
fragments.