Alwynne Crowsen Honiton Lace
Submitted by Anna Miles on Tue, 10/27/2009 - 22:56
Examples of Honiton Lace made by Auckland Lacemaker, Alwynne Crowsen, as displayed in the 2008 exhibition of her collection.
In 1966, West Auckland resident, Alwynne Crowsen, read an article in The Lady, a magazine, sent to her by her Aunt in England, that suggested it was not possible to teach yourself bobbin lace making. Crowsen gamely set out to prove The Lady wrong. Since then she has taught herself lacemaking, passed the skill on to countless others and accrued a formidable collection. Crowsen's approach has been both panoramic and archival. Over forty years she has sampled a world of lace, making over five hundred pieces that are carefully catalogued and stored in a filing cabinet under her home.
The challenge of learning lace making has at times been extreme. Very little advice was accessible when Crowsen commenced and her making has proceeded according to the often slender resources available. The instructions of her second guide, Therese de Dillmont's Les Dentelles aux Fuseaux, for instance, were entirely in French. With the assistance of a borrowed dictionary, Alwynne decoded the instructions of this famous Austrian embroiderer and she is now well used to following advanced lace advice in many languages.
Crowsen has rarely sold her work or given it away, rather she has made her own collection. Today this carefully archived 'lace library' is a record of a period of lace recovery; piece by piece it records the wealth of lace knowledge that has become available since 1966 when Alwynne began.
In 2008 an exhibition of the collection: A Lace Life: The Alwynne Crowsen Collection, curated by Anna Miles, was mounted by Objectspace, Auckland.
A free PDF of the full exhibition catalogue can be downloaded from the Objectspace website
www.objectspace.org.nz/programme/show.php?documentCode=1238
For further information, please contact the curator, Anna Miles
www.annamilesgallery.com
