Exhibit Slideshow — Tatting: From Concept to Conceptual Art

"From the LMLT Collection"

These examples represent tatting from its earliest 19th century beginnings, when rings and picots joined by needle and thread were the fundamental elements of design, to early 20th century examples, when tatting reached the zenith of its popularity.

"World Invitational"

This exhibit featured an astonishing array of unique and innovative tatted pieces by artists from all over the world—as well as some prized antique and vintage tatted specimens generously loaned out of exceptional private collections of tatted lace.

Rebecca Jones
South Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

A major supporter of this exhibit and the LMLT, Rebecca—author of the 1985 title The Complete Book of Tatting—is recognized for reviving the lost art of tatting, by making the technique understandable even to the uninitiated. Her writing and designs made mysterious patterns perfectly clear and explicit, with easy-to-follow, graphic representations.
Rebecca's dedication to tatting persists today as her fingers are constantly busy deciphering the mysteries of its origins.
The pieces displayed in this exhibit are studies she made for her book, and the notebook pages were submitted as studies specifically prepared for this exhibit.

Andrea Brewster
Oakland, California

Andrea has been tatting for over five years, focusing on tatting as a tool for spatial constructions and sculptural forms. When discussing tatting, she ventures far beyond the limits of the simple doily, ruminating on the possibilities for exploring algorithms and hyperbolic geometry through lace making and the fiber arts.
Working with threads ranging from tee-shirt yarn and handmade paper, these creative and intellectual inquiries are her great passion. With technology an integral part of her life, Andrea and her husband have also made forays into 3D printing their own tatting shuttles.

Iris Niebach
Prato, Italy

Iris has long been fascinated by tatting, particularly in its purity as a tool for building sophisticated and complex patterns.
Using her special technique for continuing shuttle tatting using more than two colors, she has created many original and innovative designs, which you can see (and attempt for yourself) in her books Iris, Just for Fun Tatted Jewelry, Tatted Doilies, Tatting Fantasia (volumes 1-5), and Tatting Together Square Motifs.

Judith Connors
Carindale, Queensland, Australia

Judith is a lace maker, collector, historian, teacher. She tutored at IOLI conventions in 2004 and 2009 as well as with the Australian Lace Guild, and designed and authored the titles Beads in Tatting, Contemporary Tatting, Illustrated Dictionary of Tatting, and Tatting Adventures with Beads, Shuttle and Needle.

Jane Eborall
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England

All the tatted pieces exhibited here are Jane's very own original designs, most of them accomplished with one shuttle and the use of split rings. A prolific blogger as well as tatter, Jane has little use for needle tatting, noting, "The attitude of needle tatters who think it's so wonderful when it's not really tatting at all... I'm a curmudgeonly old woman, I know!"

Karey Solomon
New York, New York

Karey is not only the owner of Graceful Arts Fiber Studio in bucolic upstate New York, the publisher of Tatting Times, a quarterly journal now in its 25th year [as of the showing of this exhibition, in 2016-2017, and now available online], but also the author and publisher of 26 patterns books, as well as tatting editor of the IOLI Bulletin.
Karey popularized the use of buttons in tatting and originated techniques including the single shuttle split ring, mead-measured mignonette, and beaded Josephine chains.

Lyn Morton
Littleover, Derby, England

Lyn is the instructor a monthly tatting class and the author of Tatting Patterns, Tatting Jewelry, and many other titles. In 1997, she and her husband founded Tatting & Design. A tireless promotor of the joy of tatting, she has taught in the United States, New Zealand, and Turkey.

Lindsay Rogers
Inverness Shire, Scotland

Lindsay—author of Mastering Tatting and Tatting Collage—redefines tatting with her innovative approach to tatting as an expressive medium. Embroidery and tatting were part of her life from a very early age and used as tools for her investigations, which she readily shares through her teaching and writings.
Lindsay's pictorial pieces defy tatting's geometries with the freedom of imagery, while she explores the geometries of tatting to create the most spectacular, spiritally-charged mandala forms.

Mary Jo Mundell
Richardson, Texas

A dedicated tatter "since infancy," Mary Jo learned the craft from Grandma Zekia. She began a tatting group in Dallas called Tuesday Tatters, which (as of the time of this exhibition) currently has 27 active members, some as young as age eleven.

Nina Libin
New York, New York

"Beanile Lace is an original art form rooted in the old traditional crafts of knotting and beading. It rediscovers and explores the basic features of both: the threading of beads to create a decorative element, and the knots to secure an openwork of thread, the defining feature of lace.
"The answer to creating an open bead work that holds its shape is a combination of beading and tatting. In ordinary beaded tatting, beads are typically placed only on the visible working thread. By placing beads on the working and core threads, the result is a lace made completely of beads."

Alicia Kwartnik
Castelfranco Piandisco, Italy

Alicia was born in Poland, moving to Italy in 1999 where she has pursued an ctive role promoting the textile arts through her non-profit association Liberi de Creare, which translates to: "Free to Create."
Alicia teaches across a range of crafts: knitting, crochet, embroidery, macrame, sewing, and tatting, among other things. While she instructs in both needle and shuttle tatting, it is needle tatting that truly captured her attention. She has collaborated with Il Mio Chiacchierino, the Italian magazine devoted to needle tatting, and has also authored several books of her own (in Italian), devoted to the art, including Braccialetti con il chiacchierino ad ago, Chiacchierino ad ago, Creare gioielli con il chiacchierino ad ago, and Orecchini con il chiacchierino ad ago.

Linda Joy Schlegel
A Tatter's Collection

This astonishing collection of traditional tatting is from the estate of Gertrude M. Schlegel, which Linda has been the custodian of since the early '90s. Many of the pieces were apparently tatted by one Joe Giladonte, in the 1940s.
Joe, a retiree from Fleetwood, Pennsylvania, gave them to Gertrude in exchange for professional services by her son. Other pieces have an unknown provenance.
Evidence would indicate that Gertrude was not herself a tatter, but a dedicated collector of tatted lace pieces, as well as tatting tools and accoutrement.

Virginia Mescher
Burke, Virginia

It was her fascination with the Civil War period, and her dedication to gaining a deeper understanding of it through re-enactment activities, that led Viriginia to discover tatting.
She loved to research elements of civilian material culture, and you can see this passion in her book Flitting Fingers, a most thorough discourse on the tatting of the 19th century, which were the formative years of this new textile craft.
Viriginia passed away in February of 2016. It is in her honor that her husband Michael is sharing some of her prized antique parasols covered in tatted lace for this exhibit.

Terachi Yuuko
Kyoto, Japan

Terachi Yuuko is one of the most outstanding tatting artists of Japan, and the "last living master of an old form of tatting cultivated in Japan during the Taisho Era (1912-1926) that uses three tatting shuttles and beads to create ornate jewelry and objects."
Ever since her first exhibition in 1993, Terachi has been employing tatting and beading as creative medium in her art, with each piece building on lessons learned from a prior piece. Eventually she developed her own unique techniques for three-dimensional tatting. You can read about—and emulate—Terachi's work in her books 3D Tatting and Art Tatting.