Bobbin-made lace hanging, designed by artist Luba Krejci (1925-2005), Czechoslovakia, (above) from the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. 1982. Below lace portraits Luba used a unique lace technique, "nitak." which enabled her to draw intriguing human and animal interlaced figures in thread.
Above: "Diana with Deer" lace on linen, Attributed to Austrian designer Dagobert Peche.
1890-1900 French antique sampler of a lacemaker’s work The designs could be ordered from the lace maker directly.
Lace created by Adelaide V Hall a dressmaker, whilst incarcerated at St Elizabeth’s insane asylum in 1917.
This artwork measures just 9.5 by11.5 inches and shows several figures amidst snakes, insects, and birds, as well as various other symbolic images. Hall explained to her psychologist that work told the story of a woman who longed to be simultaneously a virgin and yet a mother, told with a cast of characters each symbolising some type of sexual relationship: some have anatomically incorrect male genitalia, there is a skeleton, the Virgin Mary, and various couples. Then there is the protagonist, the One Woman, who apparently symbolised Hall herself.
It was associated with the complex relationship Adelaide had with her father who had molested her as a child. Adelaide died at St Elizabeths shortly after WW2.
