A Vision for the new Millennium
Sounds confused? Let me tell you a short story before I disclosed my vision for the new Millennium. My grandmother Ruth was born in Sweden in 1906. In 1916 she was on vacation in a little town called San Quentin in France. Her mother bought to my grandmother a handkerchief because she need it. In one of my traditional Saturday afternoon visit to my grandmother in 1976, she gave me as a present, the handkerchief, that her mother bought for her 60 years ago. She said to me that one day I could find somebody that I would like to give as a present, what she was giving to me at that time, or maybe it could have an special meaning for me, because at any time that I see the handkerchief I will remember her. But when you are 20 years old, as I was in 1976, sometimes you do not understand the hidden message, but you can feel that maybe one day something important will happen to you because somebody who loved you, just shared something very important. I have to say she had a vision which was not my vision in 1976. Of course, I kept in a very safe place the valuable gift. It was so safe that I could not find for while, the box where 10 years later, in 1986 I found it, as usual looking for another thing. I decided I should frame it and instead of hanging on the wall I putted back in a box. In 1997, ( more than 10 years after) I wrote the BLEN project with Eva Vidal and Emilio Gonzalez, and as you know our project was supported by the EEC. One night while I was heavily scanning lace images, in order to create what is known today as the Virtual bobbin lace BLEN Collection, suddenly I saw something what was familiar to me, but I couldn't know what it was at the first sight. The next night when I was in bed, a flash light came into my mind and I just realized that the handkerchief that was given to my grandmother in 1916 by her mother, and she gave to me, was made with bobbin lace and embroidery. Is amazing, I discovered that I had an 83 years old bobbin lace piece just waiting for the right time to make sense in my life. This is one of things in life that you can not explain, just feel it and live it and of course learn from that. Today I know what a Footside with whole stitch and twisted whole stitch ; tallies, torchon ground bar and leaves is, which is not bad for a man. Towards the new millennium my lace vision is very much focus out of what is call today the EEC countries. Sooner or later most of the European countries will have their websites with plenty informations about bobbin and needle lace and maybe they create new networks or they merge the existing ones. There are hundreds of people working in many projects around Europe, more than you can believe. Even in the United States there are lace networks working closer with European organizations. However at the same time, there is still an enormous amount of lace hidden information waiting to be discovered as I discovered the handkerchief of my grandmother. I am not talking about lace catalogues, I am talking about talking to the people who made the bobbin lace history possible. Ethnographic and cultural heritage recuperation and teaching the real
value of the bobbin lace is one of the challengers of the future, not only
to teach how to make lace to the younger generations as a way to preserve
the bobbin lace heritage. In a way is a living moving history just waiting to be told. But you know, there are people that have things to show , stories to tell and because of the budget, language barrier or politics, you will never meet them. We have a compromise with them, because their history is also our history,
we are not divided by countries we are joined by the bobbin lace and it
doesn´t matter from where the lace is coming from. Daniel Weiss |