Iveta Zuskinová
Several professional and amateur producers draw their inspiration from original folk techniques at present, revive and revitalise them, thus giving them the co-called „second existence“. For many designers the textile techniques are a source of inspiration and invention giving their work a hallmark of uniqueness and atractiveness. One of them is also bobbin lace. Bobbin lacemaking, the knitting of lace, is one of the most demanding and yet in the past quite frequent textile techniques. In almost all original cultural and historical regions of Slovakia characteristic patterns of folk knitted lace appeared being different from each other only with the technique of their rendering and the composition of patterns and colours. Folk lace was applied mainly in folk and ritual garnments, less often in the interior textile. A great merit for the development of lacemaking goes to professional female lacemakers who were making fine lace for sale to be applied decoratively on noblemen’s and townmen’s clothes. They were used also in the interior textile. In the Liptov region there were several lacemaking centres where lace was made to be sold to other villages. The greatest variety and richness of motifs is to be found in bonnet laces from Liptovské Sliače where the ornamental and compositional structure of the lace had been developing until the late 1970‘s. As the Liptov lace is one of the most technically demanding in Slovakia, it is pursued only by a small number of producers. However, with its balance, ornamental and compositional structure it had attracted the attention of a prominent textile designer Silvia Fedorová from Bratislava who came to deal with bobbin lace in the 1980‘s. Since the 1990’s she has been pursuing bobbin lacemaking continually, experimenting with the materials which had not been used in lace until then. She uses wire instead of a solidifier and combines it with plastic to create a soft and pliable surface. Jewels, hats and clothes accessories made of these trivial materials make a very noble impression.