Looking through photos of my grandmother and great grandmother. Thinking about the creativity that connected women in our family throughout generations and somehow my great grandmother’s millinery business. She was making hats using wooden shapes carved especially and putting wet felt and nails to create hat shapes. My grandmother made a lamp once using scraps of vintage lace and stitching them together to make a lace top half of a lamp. When I started my own fashion brand I was making lace dresses using lace from the polish mountains and designing patterns to send them to the highlander women who then made the lace shapes according to the patterns I sent them. I am now using the same lace, working on the prototype of a lace lamp and to mould it into the shape I want I need a mannequin, which I will need to pin the fabric to in order to create the desired shape with lace dipped in starch
My grandmother Krysia – I found this description of my memory of her written shortly after her death when I was planning to start a brand inspired by the little jumpers she knitted for my children and my friends’ children. I never started the brand:
„Pani Krystyno Piekno Nigdy Nie Umiera”
She came from a very poor family, for her creating beautiful things was the only way to survive/function in a grey post war Warsaw. She didn’t do it to be rich or famous, she did it to make people she loved happy and in return make herself happy or keep herself busy. She taught my mother and I to look at the world through her eyes, to pay attention to beautiful things. Looking at beautifully made, hand crafted things makes me happy. Now that grandma is gone this is the only way to feel her presence, to feel connected to her, by looking at beautiful things and appreciating their craftsmanship . I want to continue spreading appreciation for one-of-a-kind hand crafted pieces to keep the memory of my grandma alive. As someone once said to her: Beauty Never Dies
My great grandmother Bronia(Bronisława) with my young mother Grażyna
Lace lamp ideas/sketches:
