A Fishy Tale

Booking for a course at Convention is often an act of faith - if Jacqui Barber has booked the tutor she must feel that the experience on offer is worth being part of. (What I know, and you don't, is that she is sometimes skating on very thin ice... as a tutor one might have a vague idea of what one could do, try a sample, offer the course, hang the sample on the wall... and then panic some months later that this is so awful one has to take a whole new look at the project...)
Bringing tutors in from abroad is a different business - this will be someone with an established reputation, whose work Jacqui has seen, and whose career bears testament to her training and experience.  However, if one hasn't heard of her, all you can say to yourself is - let's give it a try, even if, as in the case of Jitka von Lindern at Norwich, the biographical notes ring odd alarm bells. Fish skins? Sounds a bit rum to me!

Let's clear that one up first. You think of something slippery, slimy, translucent, or perhaps textural like shagreen (shark's skin, I believe, but very beautiful). What they turned out to be was little pieces of tanned, coloured leather in the shape of small plaice or dabs; someone had discovered a pile of them in an attic in somewhere like Prague, and Jitka had taken some on in the spirit of being game for anything.

She had incorporated some in lace necklaces, maybe flat, maybe folded (right); also incorporating mussel shells in others, using the offered shapes as the starting point for her basic designs. She made the lace up over very simple pattern drawings, seemingly planning little beforehand, and going with the flow of what was on offer - using subtle palettes, restricted to perhaps five colours of linen, maybe with one or two thicker threads to add texture. Beads? No thank you (Jane R-L). More than five colours? Definitely no (Jane A). She gave us a short lecture, including notes on colour proportions (base your subsidiary colours on an equation which allows the bobbins used in the main colour to be divided into three, and three again, and so on) and then encouraged us to try our own designs.

I worked on an oyster shell picked up from Avon beach at home, which offers a configuration which I have never managed to achieve in Torchon, of what could be trails flowing side by side.

Our base-line parameter, of course, was that this was Czech lace, so: tape lace, and thinking on the hoof.  Jitka's neck pieces, upon examination, started somewhere interesting and finished each side with a long plait which became the thread by which the necklace hung round ones neck.

Having drawn mine (below, left), I pondered on where to start. Could I work it like this (with my design orientated the way I had drawn it)? Yes, or like this, was the reply - turning the pillow through 180 degrees. To me, that meant: anything goes! So I started it somewhere in the middle, worked round to one side, divided the trail in half and took some bobbins one way, some in the opposite direction, and worked up and down, thinking up new patterns for the mixing of the coloured threads, until I, too, finished off with long plaits (below, right).
I can't say I would want to wear it, although the most adventurous of my local students thought she might. But as a piece of lace... believe me, I couldn't keep my hands off it when I got home, constantly intrigued as to how to overcome the next problem. Nor did I return to my usual Torchon for several months, Jitka's style seeming to have freed me from its thrall.

The thread was the thicker gauge of that displayed by a Weston-Super-Mare Convention speaker, Jana Novak, as Moravia linen. I'd always wished I could try the thicker one, and it was love at first sight - I don't think Jitka went home with much. Nor with any fish skins, although I bought the last red one more out of curiosity than any real desire to use it. Jitka -says she doesn't like red, so doesn't use it much; one does, indeed, use very personal approaches.

In preparation for a 98 Lace Group show-and-tell (which hasn't actually taken place yet) I wrote to all the other course members to find out if it had had a similarly galvanising affect on them. I have not heard back from all, and few had finished pieces; some may be taking up Jane Rowton-Lee's suggestion that we submit our results to the Dreaming Dreams exhibition.

The photos and comments included here are only an 'interim report': I am looking forward to co-ordinating comments from others in a future issue. Denise Watts sent me a scan of her lace (right), and had thoroughly enjoyed her day but I don't have any accompanying comments as she was at that time recovering from the discovery that the paint her husband had bought for the front of their house was National Health Sticking Plaster Pink...

Brenda Paternoster also went home eager to get on with her piece: "I had it finished and framed (below) within a week of getting home!" She felt the session with Jitka opened up a very different approach to lace designing: "Just taking a found item, drawing around it and letting the lines continue on proved to be very successful - I think what I enjoyed most was just playing around with the shapes and not having any pre-conceived ideas about what the end result was going to be."

Ann Durrant found "a very interesting part of (Jitka's) work was the way she starts many pieces by making a long plait with the passives - not in the way of a 'lace' plait, but like plaiting hair. I watched her starting a piece on a two sided pillow, turning it over to mark the exact length for the plait. I thought this was a wonderful idea, as she also finished with a plait, and has the cords for a necklace therefore included in the lace, without the problems of hiding the ends of the main part of the work."

"Jitka does a drawing of her planned lace before starting. When working with fish skins, she draws around the skin first in the middle, then continues the lines of the skin outwards to achieve a balance around it. Sometimes, when adding bulky objects, she will leave some of the passives out above the object, then plaiting over it with these threads before rejoining the main lace."

Ann's lace (below, right) was inspired by a photograph of an Autumn storm in the Rockies -
"very small, and not very much like Jitka's lace, though she stood behind me and made approving noises, so I must have been doing something right." Ann plans to use one of the fish skins to make a necklace for City & Guilds.

Jane Rowton-Lee thought the course "one of the best I have been to for a long time." Her lace was creeping to the top of the list of things to be done, and a visit to Bembridge gave her the opportunity to look for small shells and stones with holes to add to her fish skin piece. It was a great treat to have something totally different to work on and with, and her explanations of designing with them and the techniques to use were clear and easy to understand.

"She had a great sense of humour, especially over the use (in my case) of beads and this continued the following day when I discovered that she was in fact using them herself, but not, she hastened to assure me with fish skins - shells instead!  On that subject I loved her shells encased in lace, and would love to spend another day with her on just that subject."

Margot Walker, from Canada, found Jitka's course "has allowed me to think outside the box. I've always alternated between making traditional and free lace, and now feel more confident about making my own designs." She is keeping one of the fish skins to use in some goldwork embroidery, inspired by another course she did while in our country, at the Royal School of Needlework; and has already completed a small free-form lace piece in Eyelash embroidery thread - we look forward to seeing the results when she finishes her roll of film.

I might add, in light of the above remarks, that after a very stressful year, I would have preferred to have gone into retreat rather than to join the hustle and bustle of Convention. Jitka's course (and a wonderfully re-energising meeting with the lady who introduced me to lace, 26 years ago) as well as the other lovely things organised for Norwich, sent me home refreshed.