Enfilade

Now accepting proposals for this panel for next year’s ISECS Congress in Rotterdam:

The International Thread: Lace and Commerce in Eighteenth-Century Europe
ISECS Congress, Rotterdam, 26–31 July 2015

Proposals due by 15 June 2014

Chairs: Tara Zanardi, (Department of Art & Art History Hunter College/CUNY 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065; tzanardi@hunter.cuny.edu), and Michael Yonan, (Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Missouri, 21 Parker Hall, Columbia, MO, 65211; yonanm@missouri.edu)

Enormous amounts of lace flooded the marketplaces of eighteenth-century Europe, which fostered a vibrant international trade. This marketplace centered on competition between the Low Countries (especially the regions that now comprise Belgium) and northern France, two areas that included Europe’s most technically accomplished lacemaking centers, including Alençon, Argentan, Brussels, Mechlin, and Valenciennes. These towns exported huge quantities of lace to an international clientele and competed with locally manufactured lace. Our panel seeks papers that examine how lace operated within eighteenth-century mercantile networks, economic systems, and black markets. What were the trade factors that affected the distribution of lace, both locally and globally, and how did those factors affect working conditions, design choices, and the objects created? How did these market conditions affect what lace was used for, be it garments, decorative items, or household textiles? Topics might include treatments of lace and lace making in gendered terms, as statements of regional or national pride, labor practices in lacemaking, techniques and materials, and the industry’s global ambitions. Interdisciplinary papers are especially welcome.