Stiffness

The use of lace in fashion is linked to the physical manipulation of the fiber material, which upon creation takes the form of its base, into something that can describe volumes distinct from the body.

For example, a collar can be made stiff by starching and a ruff can become voluminous by ruching. While the former involves the addition of an external material, the latter speaks to the ability of a material to propel itself into the third dimension by the manipulation of its geometry. Painting lace objects, especially those made stiff by these processes, have been a stimulating challenge for painters, who could showcase their virtuosity in indicating both dramatic shortening and complex effects of transparency. The study of elasticity, which spans several centuries, reveals that a stiff material with a slender cross section will buckle out of plane as it seeks a minimal energy state. In engineering, such large deformations were studied in order to be prevented as they typically indicate structural failure. More recently there has been an abundance of interest in eliciting large elastic deformations for a wide range of applications in scales ranging from the nano to the architectural. Applied to lace, we consider the effects of working with inherently stiff yet pliant, elastic ribbons as opposed to formless round threads and witness the 3D forms that emerge.

Portrait of a Lady by Cornelis de Vos — This magnificent portrait of an anonymous female member of the financial elite of the Low Countries displays the characteristic and important use of lace in 17th-century European fashion. Made of fabric – here, probably linen – lace needs either a support on which to rest or an additive to give it the stiffness that it inherently lacks. The white lace cuffs contrast with the sumptuous black dress on which they rest. Their geometric design of fine cutwork with points of detached needle lace follows examples of contemporary pattern books, in which lace appears in negative as black ink on the white page. As for the neck ruff, it is free-standing, held either by wire or pasteboard, or heavily starched. The lace cuffs and collar also allowed the painter, Cornelis de Vos, to display his virtuosity in evoking transparency and spectacular effects of shortening.

Cornelis de Vos

*Portrait of a Lady,* ca. 1625–29

Oil on canvas, 124 x 91 cm.

From Princeton University Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas G. Cook. y1964-63.

This small sculpture testifies to the association of lace with luxury fashion and the obsession with stiffness that characterizes research around textile materials. Starting in the 1880s, Dresden manufacturers started to produce porcelain lace figurines made following a technique invented a century earlier in the famous nearby porcelain center of Meissen. To create the illusion of real fabric, decorators would dip actual, delicate machine-made net lace into porcelain slip before applying it by hand to the porcelain figure. When fired in a kiln, the fabric would burn away, leaving a hard but extremely fragile shell of frozen crinoline skirts and billowy material behind. Buyers could therefore acquire at relatively low price these figurines where lace has acquired the stiffness of porcelain.

Müller and Co

*Dresden Lace porcelain figure,* ca. 1895–1927

Porcelain, 19 cm.

From private collection

Metallic lace, platinum print by Walter Roland Latimer Sr. — This photograph by a student of Clarence H. White shows how the term lace can migrate to materials that are defined above all by their stiffness. Before taking on photography, Latimer worked as an engineer in the Taylor-Wharton Iron & Steel Company and retained a long-term interest in suspended bridges. Here lace is defined by the pattern the steel cables form by intersecting on the open sky. It returns to the definition of lace as a material in which the pattern is surrounded by air, with bars of net holding the various elements of the pattern together. Here, soft material – linen, cotton, or silk – is replaced by iron and steel, opening the many possibilities we can think of for lace in architecture and design.

Walter Roland Latimer Sr.

*Metallic lace,* ca. 1916

Platinum print, 11.5 x 16.5 cm.

From Princeton University Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Hungerford Icaza. x1979-126.