The Design Center at Philadelphia University opens Lace in Translation, a new exhibition of contemporary work inspired by historic lace, on Thursday, September 24. The Center, located at 4200 Henry Avenue in Philadelphia, will host a free opening reception on September 24 from 5 to 7:30 p.m. and an evening with artist Cal Lane on September 25 at Philadelphia University’s Tuttleman Auditorium (reception at 6 p.m., talk at 7 p.m.).
Lace in Translation, which runs through April 3, 2010, explores the intersection of luxurious hand-craftsmanship with modern, mass production. The Design Center’s historic Quaker Lace Company collection is the inspiration for three internationally-renowned artists and designers reconsidering conventional notions of lace. European designers Tord Boontje and Demakersvan, and Canadian artist Cal Lanehave created installations specifically for TDC’s unique and intimate space — a 1950s era, Hollywood-style ranch house, one of the first in Philadelphia, and situated on the edge of Fairmount Park.
From the intricacy of a handwoven raffia curtain, to the industrial art forms of laser-cut fabrics, a welded filigree oil tank, and a lace chain-link fence, Lace in Translation plays with the concept of lace, utilizing unexpected materials and new technologies to transform the Center’s grounds and galleries. A special exhibition website is available at www.laceinstranslation.com which invites visitors to preview the exhibition and to submit their own designs and handwork.
A short film running at the exhibition explores the history of the Quaker Lace Company and its role in transforming lace from luxury product to mass market consumable, as well as the creative processes of Boontje, Demakersvan, and Lane. The film features historic footage of Quaker Lace being manufactured, the designers’ contemporary production techniques, and interviews with the designers and curators. Directed by Glenn Holsten, the film will also be available online.
European designer Tord Boontje has created a multi-sensory, three-gallery installation featuring furniture, lighting, and laser-cut fabrics in themes of black, gold, and white. As part of this site-specific installation, a team of Philadelphia University students, faculty, and staff worked with Boontje’s designs, hand-weaving raffia into pieces for a large lace curtain to hang in the gallery windows. Boontje says the vocabulary of lace in his work emerged through “cutting away rather than building up. It was through direct translations of nature, looking up to the sky through the layers of sunlit foliage – these kinds of things remind me of lace. Like the natural world, where foliage is spatial and formed in three dimensions, I started to look at a layered image and three-dimensional lace-like structures to invoke this intricacy that is so fascinating to me.”
Boontje’s work is featured in many permanent museum collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, MoMA, and the Groninger Museum. He has developed designs and products for Target, Alexander McQueen, Swarovski, Moroso, Swatch, and Perrier Jouët, among many others.
Dutch design studio Demakersvan has designed a “lace” chain-link fence installation for The Design Center’s front yard. “Industrial production is for us a big source of inspiration,” says Joep Verhoeven of Demakersvan. “In our projects we often combine the sensitive and the small with the powerful, large and industrial. The Lace Fence project translates that line of thinking. Fencing is a sign of how we have modified and cultivated our environment. We wanted to explore what would happen if a patch of embroidered wire met with and continued as an industrial fence.”
Both MoMA and the Victoria & Albert Museum have Demakersvan’s work in their permanent collections. The studio has created pieces for HugoBoss, Swarovski, Fornarina Italy, DROOG Design, MONTIS Furniture, MVRDV Architects, Kakitsubata Tokyo, and others.
The Design Center’s enclosed backyard garden area, with its covered, grand piano-shaped swimming pool serves as the plinth for Canadian artist Cal Lane’s environmental installation, which includes a 600-pound welded filigree oil tank. Lane formerly worked as a welder and today uses her welding torch to cut doilies and baroque patterns into objects such as wheelbarrows, I-beams, dumpsters and shovels. “I was cleaning the metal shop up one day,” Lane says, “and as a joke, I put real lace doilies on top of the equipment after I cleaned them – on the band saw, anvil, drill press. Visually I liked the contrast of materials, the white clean delicate lace draped over this dirty cold steel machine… This brought me to creating industrial doilies… [which] were to me a symbol of contrast and balance, by placing together visual oppositions: male and female, tough and delicate.”
As part of the nation’s oldest textile school, TDC’s historic textile collection features many artifacts from Philadelphia’s pinnacle as a national center for textile design and manufacturing. The Center’s lace collection includes some 150 machine-made lace samples and marketing materials from the Quaker Lace Company of Philadelphia. TDC also houses an extraordinary collection of hundreds of original design sketches by Quaker Lace designer Frederick Charles Vessey (1862-1948). Just as the Lace in Translation designers and artist turned to these historic designs for inspiration, Vessey himself mined such varied sources as Egyptian tomb paintings, Jacobean architectural motifs, and tin ceiling catalogs to inspire and inform his designs for the Quaker Lace product line.
Lace in Translation is the first exhibition produced by The Design Center in conjunction with its new interpretive initiative, The
Fabric of Philadelphia – a collaborative effort led by TDC in partnership with area museums, libraries, businesses and community members. The initiative captures and communicates the compelling story of the Philadelphia region’s textile heritage as a national center for textile design and manufacturing. The Design Center’s historic textile collection also recently served as the inspiration for the bright, bold graphics wrapping the City of Philadelphia’s new fleet of recycling trucks.
Lace in Translation has been funded by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, through the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative with additional support from the Marketing Innovation Program. Additional support has also come from The Coby Foundation, LTD and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
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