Keywords: crochet, etching, joanne scholar, london, metals, united kingdom, acid, digitally manipulated, doily, scanned

Doily 7

Jo Scholar

Dimensions

142 x 170 x 55 mm

Materials

Metal lace doily: the crocheted doily is scanned and digitally manipulated, then the image is transferred to metal and etched with acid

Artist statement

‘I create metal objects that play with perceptions of value, function and decoration. My interest in lace doilies stems from childhood, as I encountered them being used on different occasions; from throw-away paper doilies to hand-embroidered doilies that were passed down the family. Their apparent lack of function, coupled with their inherent connotations of ‘Englishness’ and domesticity, continues to fascinate me. The rejection of doilies by modern householders has made them somewhat redundant as objects. It is this sense of ‘redundancy’ that I explore remaking them in metal.

Traditional lace doilies are soft and able to drape over surfaces, whereas my metal doilies are solid and inflexible, made to imitate the delicacy of lace. I am interested in the exploration of boundaries and crossovers of disciplines and processes. I use photo-etching because of its ability to retain fine detail, and create depth within a piece, whilst creating the ‘negative’ spaces of the original doily.’