Reviving threads of lost craft

Page 1 of 2 View as a single page 5:00AM Friday April 25, 2008
By Adam Gifford

Samples of Alwynne Crowsen's work. Photo / Supplied

EXHIBITION
What: A Lace Life: The Alwynne Crowsen Collection
Where and when: Objectspace, 8 Ponsonby Rd, Auckland, to May 17
And: Jeweller Joanna Campbell and artist Kim Meek discuss the exhibition, noon, Saturday May 3; Crowsen identifies laces at the gallery, noon, Saturday May 17

Alwynne Crowsen started making lace in 1966 after reading a magazine article saying bobbin lace-making could not be self-taught. "I saw that as a challenge. I like a challenge," says the West Auckland grandmother, whose knowledge of lace can now be called encyclopaedic.

During the past four decades, she has tracked down books and samples of vanishing styles and techniques, and produced example pieces she meticulously files in a cabinet in her basement. "I like learning the different countries' laces, the techniques used. You'd be surprised how different they are," the 80-year-old confides, as we walk among her collection laid out in cabinets in Objectspace in Auckland's Ponsonby Rd.

"This is Irish crochet. It's got all those little 3D flowers," she says, pointing to an exquisite white collar. "This is Venetian needle lace. That's creative bobbin lace. That's Flanders and this is Halas lace which is done with a needle."

And so on and on, dozens of names and styles, thread knotted around thread in complex mathematical equations, tensions balanced, a single line looping into other dimensions.

Feeling a technical void in my understanding, I ask what seems an obvious question about the fourth dimension: how long did a piece take to make?

"I don't know," she says. "I never counted the hours and I had a lot of children so I had to do everything in spare minutes."

Six children in fact, with all that that entails. "One thing that is really good about bobbin lace, you can stop, and two hours later just pick it up and go on. With some things like knotted lace, you have to get to the end of a row before you put it down."

Objectspace director Philip Clarke says Crowsen is in her own category as a maker. Her expertise is such that she could not be considered an amateur and her methodical approach to creation and collection means she has taken on many of the functions of a curator.

Since 2004, she has been the volunteer curator of lace at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. She is also an innovator, developing her own techniques and patterns, such as the weta   in Honiton lace, the technique chosen for Queen Victoria's wedding dress.

Soon after picking up her needle, Crowsen co-founded the Auckland Embroiderers and Lace Makers Guild. She started teaching WEA classes in 1975 and still teaches three night classes a week at Rutherford and Lynfield colleges, and Titirangi Community House.