Yes, I watched it.

A classmate hosted a wedding-viewing brunch this morning, so I baked my most British scones, rustled up some clotted cream, pulled out a silly hat and sat down to watch The Event.

But amidst all the Sarah-Burton-for-Alexander-McQueen dress excitement (and in my secret, shameful romantic-dream-princess-Barbie heart, I have to admit to liking the gown) not enough people registered the coolest part of the dress: the Royal School of Needlework did the lace stitching!

The RSN is an incredibly awesome organization founded in 1872 by Princess Helena, Queen Victoria's third daughter, to provide lower and middle class women with marketable needlework skills. They are known for producing amazing stitchers and incredibly creative needlework designers. Much of the famous needlework done for the Arts and Crafts movement was done either at the school or by graduates, and they also did the needlework on Queen Elizabeth's coronation robes. They have one of the largest collections of needlework in the west and use their thousands of collection pieces as teaching examples to their students who still train in this highly traditional handicraft.

I got a chance to visit the RSN when I was in London with my graduate cohort this winter — besides being incrediby talented artisans, craftswomen and teachers, I can also say that the women of the RSN are almost absurdly welcoming. They took in 12 tired, hungry and cold graduate students and fed us tea and cookies while they told us the history of the school and the role of needlework in English dec arts history. And just think: while I was eating biscuits and gulping down hot tea, just a few rooms over the finest hands in English stitching were working overtime to make Princess Shinyhair's magical wedding dress. If only I'd known... I could have spilled some tea on it and made history.

Infinite Variety, or, quilts as far as the eye can see

I meant to write about this earlier, but my spring break was awesome. Why, you ask? Oh, no real reason... just going to New York and attending a groundbreaking and amazing quilt exhibition on its closing day.*

The show was incredible — over 600 quilts exhibited at once, more than have ever been shown at one time. And the one unifying theme was color: they were all red and white. The quilts were on loan to the American Folk Art Museum from Joanna S. Rose, and the exhibition (which only lasted six days)** was paid for by her husband as a birthday gift. The real recipient, though, was the city of New York — Rose's husband paid to make sure the show was free to all visitors.

The quilts are all unique — even ones that were made with the same pattern have small differences. They are also all American, spanning in date from the late 18th century to the present day. The vast variety of quilts was amazing, but the truly fantastic thing about the show was the exhibition staging. Assembled in the Park Avenue Armory, the quilts were suspended from the ceiling in a series of cyclical pods. If that makes no sense, don't worry — it was this ridiculously overwhelming sensory experience that really can't be described. The pictures below only go so far to explain how fantastic it was. To be honest, I think I cried a little bit.

The American Folk Art Museum website describes it as a "magical yet ephemeral event." I couldn't agree more. I'll also add that in this crazy museum industry that I seem hell-bent on entering, there are certain shows that live on in people's memory. My professors still talk about "THAT" show, the one that blew them away or made them want to pursue curating as a career. Staged in the American Wing of the Met in the 1960s or at the Whitney in 1985, about art, furniture, basket-weaving, whatever... the thing these shows have in common is that they opened visitors' eyes to the potential of exhibition, to the creativity and power inherent to objects. This is one of those shows, I think, and it is definitely that show for me.







*Thanks, Lizz, for the heads-up via materialconcern! It was truly phenomenal.
** If you missed it, don't worry... there is talk about it being mounted again as a traveling exhibition.