By Kristi L. Nelson
Scripps Howard News Service
Friday, August 27, 1999
Don't think of handmade lace as a dying art. The threads that bind the past and present are keeping the ancient tradition alive all over the country.
Observe Ellen Goan, secretary of the East Tennessee Lace Guild, as her nimble fingers move polished wooden bobbins of thread in and out of straight pins that form loops and curves on a pillow. When she finishes and removes the pins, what remains is a delicate web in the shape of a lady's head.
Or watch guild president Evelyn "Dumpie" Piatt's fingers fly, using a shuttle and thread to create tatted bookmarks and edgings.
These women -- and countless other lace enthusiasts -- practice their art almost every day.
"I know it's an old art, but I don't feel like we're doing it just to keep it alive," Goan said, "We're doing it because we enjoy doing it. Most of us make stuff and give it away. We don't keep it."
The lace goes on sets of towels and sheets, trims T-shirts or christening gowns, forms doilies and collars and mantel scarves, and adorns boxes, note cards and Christmas trees.
The Knoxville, Tenn-based Lace Guild (which uses bobbins and pillows) and the Mad Tatters (who use shuttles and thread) each meet once a month to do projects and share ideas and company. A $10 annual fee to the Lace Guild includes membership in both clubs as well as 96 hours of tatting and lace-making instruction -- taught by members.
Some are old hands at tatting, like charter member Irene Snell, who's won awards for her beautiful handwork.
"In the 1930's we had no TV," Snell said, "After dinner in the evenings, the ladies would go out on the front porch and tat. When I was 5 my mother said, 'You're old enough to learn to tat now,' so I did."
Others, like Piatt, became tangled up in it more recently. She began doing the bobbin lace a few months ago and started tatting only about five years ago, when she saw a Mad Tatter's meeting announcement in the newspaper and decided to walk in.
"Within 20 to 30 minutes after I walked in the door, I was tatting," she said. Now she teaches others at meetings.
Most people can pick it up in a single lesson, Goan said; "We seldom have one that absolutely can't learn it."
And for those who do find it more difficult, there are classes on videocassettes and books that use diagrams rather than written instructions. But once they pick it up, Piatt said, they'll find they can do it almost anywhere, even while doing other things.
"It's portable and cheap," said Kim Bowman, second vice president for the guild, pulling out a snap-top box about the size of a deck of cards. "This is a whole tatting project, in this little box."
And tatting, once you learn the basics, requires very little concentration, Piatt said.
"You can be totally brain-dead and still tat," she said, "It becomes so automatic for us. I can tat, watch TV and talk to my husband at the same time."
But you wouldn't know that from the intricate designs tatters make. Stitches form rings, which are decorated with little loops known as picots. These rings form larger shapes: circles, flowers or butterflies, for example. Those can be joined together to make even larger pieces, such as tablecloths.
"It's the piece that you get out of it (that gives you satisfaction)," Snell said. "It's like reading a good book."
The bobbin lace is a little more difficult and less portable. Lacers must carry lap-size bolsters and pillows on which to work, and they use two bobbins per thread. A large design in progress might have as many as 30 or 40 bobbins hanging from the pillow at once. Some are painted or decorated with "spangles" on their ends. The craft originated in Belgium and Wales in the 1800's, but its popularity has spread worldwide.
That's easy to tell by the hundreds of members of the International Old Lacers organization, which holds national and regional conventions with classes taught by world-renowned lacers. Countless books, tapes and Internet web sites coming out each year attest that the number of lacers worldwide is growing rather than shrinking. Tatting, in particular, is very popular in Japan, where the beginner-easy books using all diagrams rather than paragraph-by-paragraph written instructions originated, members said.
The East Tennessee Lace Guild was organized a decade ago by Gladys Davis and others. Now the 30-plus members share patterns, attend classes and conventions, make use of the guild library, which has an array of books, patterns and instructional videos for tatters and bobbin lacers alike.
Members are just as likely to share special skills. Goan, for example, also does calligraphy and plays the dulcimer. Snell's into rubber stamping -- she just taught a class where members used the stamps with tatting to create beautiful note cards -- and Bowman cards her own wool for weaving and makes soap and candles. Other members knit, crochet, draw and paint detailed designs on the bobbins and shuttles.
"Anything you want to know, someone knows it," said Piatt, who's an expert quilter.
Members span the ages, though most are seniors ("...we're retired, so we have the time, Goan said.), and there have been male members, though fewer here than in other parts of the country. In fact, the diverse group can only be unified by one thing: their love of lace-making.
"It's our recreation," Goan said.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
Copyright ©1999, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications