For the Love of Lace: Crafting Identities

On the exhibition

In 1934, Mary Alice Peck, one of the co-founders of the Canadian Handicrafts Guild (now The Guilde), wrote: “No nation began with beautiful buildings, grand sculptures, or noble paintings. They all began with humble craftsmanship.” This statement summarized Peck and Mary Martha Phillips’ initial mission when founding the Canadian Handicrafts Guild in 1906: to use crafts as a forum for cultural exchange, as well as a tool for the unification of Canadian identity and its subsequent recognition abroad.

Through works from La Guilde’s permanent collection and loans from private collections, this exhibition explores how lace was used to express and construct makers’ identities in the context of a changing Canada. Drawing on La Guilde’s rich history promoting the lace art form, this exhibit features numerous lace techniques from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century and outlines the social, economic and colonial implications of craft. Lacemaking was more than decoration: it could serve as an opportunity for financial emancipation and education for the makers. It was also a tool of colonial assimilation, constructed ethnic hierarchies and asserted the British empire’s cultural authority. With the decrease of handmade production in the modern era, Canadian artisans found ways to adapt lacemaking techniques to modern forms and use. Today, lacemaking still lives within lacemakers’ associations and guilds across Canada, welcoming a new generation of makers to participate in the craft.

For the Love of Lace: Crafting Identities invites you to observe, read, touch, make, and question: what does it mean to be a craft practitioner, and how does craft impact your identity today?