“Muy curiosa y muy diestra”: Bobbin Lace Making in Eighteenth-Century Mexico

Authors

Elena Kanagy-Loux, Independent ScholarFollow

Date of this Version

2024

Document Type

Presentation

Citation

Textile Society of America 2024 Symposium

Shifts & Strands: Rethinking the Possibilities and Potentials of Textiles, November 12-17, 2024, a virtual event

Comments

Published by the Textiles Society of America

Copyright 2024, the author. Used by permission

Abstract

Although bobbin lace was introduced in Mexico through colonization, its local styling—both through making and end use—was by no means a facsimile of its Spanish origins. The appreciation for this “curious and skilled” trimming grew from a long Indigenous history of valuing skilled textile production in the Americas, and lace was quickly interpreted in new ways. Grounded in extant 18th-century objects such as metallic bobbin lace fragments and colchas (or coverlets) with polychrome wool bobbin lace edgings, this project poses the question: what untold stories of the lives of women and girls can these objects reveal? And can this method of analyzing history from below expand traditional narratives of the agency of makers under colonial rule? In addition to the technical examination of the lace structures, ceramics, lace pattern books, and casta paintings will provide supporting evidence for the establishment of bobbin lace production in Mexico.

Scholarship on the development of colonial textile industries in New Spain is extensive, although primarily focused on guild-centric and male-dominated industries such as weaving. This project builds upon a growing body of research by historians such as James Middleton, who analyzes fashion through portraiture, Alejandra Mayela Flores Enriquez, who focuses on girls’ needlework education, and fashion historian Laura Beltrán-Rubio, whose work explores the intersections of Indigenous American and Spanish dress. Seen through a revitalized gaze, the adoption and adaptation of lace in Mexico can be understood not only as an imposition of the Spanish, but as the distinct innovation of local artisans.