Jane Atkinson: Contemporary Lace
talks

Jane Atkinson

Jane has spent more than 20 years gradually extending the space and speed incorporated along with the threads and other filaments in her work.  Although she uses traditionally-based bobbin techniques, her imagery is entirely personal, confounding expectations and ever developing. 

With the support of bursaries awarded by the Lace Guild and by Southern Arts she has developed strategies for utilising the yarns manufactured for all the other textile media but normally denied to lace; the examples shown are in Scandinavian weaving linens, often manipulated using specially-made or imported equipment.

Widely influential at home and abroad through classes and patterns published in Lace Express, this approach allows the manufacture of scarves, hangings, panels and banners, braids, yard-laces, shaped pieces and textile jewellery.

The inspiration for much of Jane’s work comes from the natural environment around her East Dorset home - crystalline ice forms on the local salt marsh often suggest new ways of working (with and without a pre-designed pattern) which then cross into her other pieces; waves on the beach demonstrate fresh approaches to capturing movement; bark from the New Forest inspires abstracted design.  Expressive use of underlying grids has become a hallmark of her work;  the basic technique is recognisably ‘Torchon’ but developed in unique fashion.

Everything she learns is returned to the lace community through her teaching, lecturing and publishing.  She has taught annually at Lace Guild Conventions, tutored at adult residential colleges, Lace Guild and Knuston Hall Summer Schools and for many locally-run lace groups, as well as teaching abroad.  She holds a Cert. Ed (Southampton University) in adult and post-compulsory education.

A  founder-member of the Lace Guild and past chairman of the 98 Lace Group, she has exhibited widely and written one book,
Pattern Design for Torchon Lace.

Under the Red Bough IV, Bockens 16/2 weaving linen, 28ins x 5ft, an experiment in ordering colour, which won the Teacher’s Trophy at the Lace Guild ‘Seven’ Exhibition, 2007, at Dudley Museum and Art Gallery.

Talks cover various aspects of Jane’s experimental work, including pattern design, inspiration from natural sources and her Lace Guild bursary into thick threads for faster lacemaking, as well as topics suitable for non-lacemaking audiences

THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF PATTERN DESIGN

Step-by-step examination of the simple but effective methods Jane has evolved for devising original geometric and abstract pattern for easy transfer into lace designs. 

PUSHING BACK THE BOUNDARIES OF LACE DESIGN

Jane’s design work has placed increasing emphasis on colour, texture and scale, with unusual treatment of the basic grids on which her lace is made.

UNDER THE INFLUENCE

Looking at how other art textiles have inspired Jane’s original approach.

THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH

Work funded by a Southern Arts Bursary into layering stylised panels inspired by autumnal foliage extended into a seven-year project which took Jane into new territory, including mentoring.


 

LACE FROM THE LOCALITY

Jane lives in Mudeford, Christchurch, and looks specifically at the local inspiration for her lace design – from shells and stones and driftwood, ice on the local marsh, waves lapping the beach, fishing nets hung out to dry.

FAST FORWARD - SPEEDY LACE

Using the thickest threads she could find, Jane spent two years working out how they might best be used to make useful, colourful and above all, fast, bobbin lace.

THE CASE FOR LACE

Suitable for a general audience, examining ways contemporary lacemakers are working to update this traditional technique.

LACE FOR SPINNERS

Jane has initiated several spinners’ guilds into lace technique and projects that may be made with hand-spun yarn.  This may extend to a day workshop and talk.