We were living in a small French village in the deep South, near Spain.  On the edge of town, surrounded by vineyards, was an 8th century church.  It was squat and dark, looking for all the world like a stone barn.  Most of the villagers never went there.

One day there was a special event.  An architect was in town to study the church and offered to give an impromptu lecture on its place in design history.  Armed with a comprehension of French that increased remarkably after a few glasses of very local wine, we went. The speaker defined the purpose of a church — to express a relationship between the finiteness of human life and the infinity of creation.  He traced the development of worshipful space as a process of leaving things out — less is more.  The Romanesque style, our church, was close to the ground, unadorned, a rude but massive windbreak.

The great cathedrals that followed, like Notre Dame and many others, reached skyward, reflecting a deepening appreciation of the mystery of existence.  They did this by replacing solid walls with arches, solid structure becoming a counterpoint for space itself, each defining the other.

In his view the ultimate expressing of cathedral structure is the Eiffel Tower, incredibly light lattices that extended the principle of the arch skyward, a church without walls or denomination.

Gustav Eiffel built the tower as an entry to an exhibition.  There was a design competition that called for the tower to be removed after 20 years — like the Crystal Palace before it, the structure had to be temporary, and recyclable.

During the 1880′s when the tower was designed, Europe was coming under deep influence from Japanese art, a trend called Japonisme.

One of the Japanese concepts with greatest resonance then, and still, is that of ma, which translates roughly to negative space but means much more.

There is no record of Eiffel being influenced by this concept, but it was ‘in the air’ at the time.

Negative space is a poor translation for ma.  It’s a term from shinto, the Japanese spiritual root that came from taoism in China.  Both worldviews begin with a reverence for nature.

Emptiness in nature is not just the absence of something — it represents one pole of a duality where each part is necessary to create dynamism.  Holes in leaves are not nothing, but rather places where essential respiration takes place, including expulsion of the waste gas oxygen, so essential for our lives.

Gustav Eiffel was a bridge designer, well schooled in a discipline where wind pressure counts as a weight to bear, and a dynamic one at that.  Building a lattice permitted the tower to become the world’s tallest structure by reducing its wind resistance.  We look at it and see the iron bars, but the space between them is crucial to the workability of the design.  Spider webs take the principle of reducing wind pressure to the ultimate, reducing structure  to an incredible lightness.

Ma is a concept central to zen meditation, a place for the mind to rest from its preoccupations, its busyness. Not so much as nothing, but as an energizing counterpolarity.

Which brings us to lace.  Nature thrives on perforations, lacy tissues that are places of phase change.

The polar mutuality of ma is the essence of life itself — the very structure of genetic material is a lattice.

Or we can go subatomic — crystals are amazingly lace-like at the molecular level, where energetic particles require a buffering space.

Through architecture and nature we have come to the lace of personal expression.

The linguistic roots of ‘lace’ are richly evocative.

lace, from lacere – to allure
meaning paired with
delicer — to lure away
root of delicate
cousin of
licia — pleasure
closely related to
delicia — delicious
licentious
need we say more

Modern lace, invented in the 1400′s, was first worn by the clergy but soon became a fetish among men of power and influence.

Soon many other potentials emerged.

Thirty spokes meet the hub
But the empty space between them
is the essence of the wheel

Pots are formed from clay
But the empty space
Is the essence of the pot

Walls with windows and doors form the house
But the space within
Is the essence of the house

– Lao Tse

How is it that lace can allure, delicious for the eye, and yet carry the spirit into another realm?  Perhaps because it reflects the the deep structure of our inner universe, always something known, accessible, a reference, and always something unknown, mysterious, beckoning, interconnected by the delicate bridge of caring that we add.

For something good to happen, we need to set aside a stable secure place for it to emerge.  In so doing we invite the mystery of a new reality.

The holes in lace are not empty — they are pathways to discovery.

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Yarntasting Cafe Sampler — Lace Edition

Our Yarntasting Cafe Sampler for August 2010 is a special edition containing six lace yarns shown — see at our companion post with six free lace scarf patterns.  The sampler includes 15 yards of each yarn, enough to make a swatch in pattern, 90 yards total.  The cost is $10 ppd US, $15 ppd everywhere else.  To order just send a request (including your mailing address!) by email: artfibersyarn@earthlink.net.  We’ll bill you via Paypal.

SALE
We’ve marked 11 lines, more than 120 colors, at 20% off through August.  Please check our online sale catalog.

Tags: lace

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