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Lace : here : now

This book is documents lace:here:now, a season of events held in Nottingham during autumn/winter 2012/13, drawing on a body of research and practice that Briggs-Goode has developed since 2008. It included exhibitions, talks, films, story-telling, archive openings and lace-making opportunities at key venues around the city.

Having coordinated these events, Briggs-Goode, both edited the book and wrote key sections. It articulates the relevance of Nottingham lace to contemporary design practice and the significance of the Nottingham Trent University lace archive, telling the story of how lace continues to inspire, fascinate and excite contemporary practice in all spheres of art and design. This is particularly relevant to Nottingham where the machine lace industry emerged and flourished during the 19th and 20th centuries. The city was the centre of the world’s lace industry and this legacy remains in its built environment.

The first half of the book outlines the significance of Nottingham’s lace heritage from industrial, social and cultural perspectives and demonstrates the value of the archives held at Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham Castle, and their potential for inspiring contemporary practice.

The second half of the book demonstrates how practitioners, designers and artists, have responded to these archives, documenting the work that was produced for the exhibitions that were part of the lace:here:now season and providing a unique insight into Nottingham’s lace heritage through images drawn from the lace archives and contemporary art and design practice.

This approach to lace and to archives is influenced by Janis Jefferies’ and Lesley Millar’s work around the use of archives to inspire contemporary practice. The case studies in this publication specifically focus upon the artists' engagement with historic design to inform their contemporary practice and indeed this formed the focus of Lace Works which is discussed by Dean in this publication.