My mother’s white lace wedding dress lived in the basement of my grandparents’ suburban-Detroit home. My childhood summers were spent in that house, and soon after arriving I would scurry downstairs to the fragrant, cedar-lined closet to gaze again at the stark purity of the threads, a snowflake pattern that was wildly delicate yet forever unmelting. Like all lace, it radiated both earthly treasure and pristine transcendence. One summer I arrived to find it was gone—the basement had flooded and the dress was among the casualties. I have mourned it ever since.
Fast-forward to the present, and the new exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center “Threads of Power: Lace from the Textilmuseum St. Gallen,” opening September 16. While it may not include that dress lost long ago, the show—co-curated by Emma Cormack, associate curator at the Bard Graduate Center; Michele Majer, a B.G.C. assistant professor; and Ilona Kos, curator at the Textilmuseum St. Gallen—offers more than enough to ignite the heart and mind of any lace-lover.
