The seamstress and her spellbox: conceal reveal

Lace-Collar 16.5″ x 27″ Oil on 23k gold and platinum leafed wood panel Manuel Nuñez

My mother was a seamstress who could conjur magic in cloth and thread and make your dreams come true.

In her spellbox she kept lace. She could design this seemingly simple yet complex material , in unique ways, into her hand tailored garments.

 Lace enchants me . It is multifacited - it's connotations shift and change depending entirely upon its context .

Lace can be demure and conservative but also exotic and bold . It is both fragile but powerful . It can instill a sense of  confidence and grace. Depending on its colour, placement , use  , lace can conjur up connotations  of virgin or whore .  

Lace both conceals and reveals . It simultaneously veils and anticipates laying bare the essence of what it hides. This is the aspect of lace  that I connect with ideas about memory , and the falsehoods  of memory as a keeper of the past. Memory in essence , is always past made present(1) ... it is never purely the past . As past made present memory reveals but also conceals itself. It promises to reveal truths of the past but keeps them veiled by your sense of self in the present .

As part of my explorations for new work about my mum and the concepts of memory / memory loss and identity,  I've started exploring histories/ forms, qualities , connotations , use of lace.( Lace collars in particular). My mum loved lace collars and made some beautiful garments featuring  them. When I went to Venice and explored some of the workshops of lace makers I bought my mum a Venetian lace collar. She incorporated this into a shirt that she made for herself.  She still wears this shirt. Sometimes, when people comment on it, she remembers that she made it and that the collar "came from overseas." She  can't quite remember other details, but sometimes recalls these  fragments memories with a kind of certainty - a tone of satisfaction and pride and you get a glimpse of her seamstress soul in these recollections.

Funnily enough I already see the influence of lace collars on some of my past work.( pictured below)

Below are some examples of lace collars/ruffs that I've collected on Pinterest. ( click image to open)
What do each of these examples conjur up for you?

Terdiman, Richard (1993). Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis. Cornell University Press.

Huyssen, Andreas (2003). "Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia" Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford University Press. pp. 1–29.