TIME WAS, YOU’D WALK INTO any respectable home and find hand-crocheted lace doilies on the arms and headrest of every chair.
Like the fancy tablecloths that came out for Sunday dinner, the lace was the handiwork of the women who lived there, a cherished art passed on from mother to daughter.
Now, the only places you see lace doilies are at yard sales and vintage linen shops. And those lace tablecloths you inherited? They’re usually stored away and forgotten. Easy-launder, no-iron fabrics are just so hassle-free.
Nobody was more aware of the doily’s dip in popularity than the women of Koniakow, a small village in southern Poland not far from the hometown of the late Pope John Paul II and renowned for 200 years for its heirloom lace creations for homes and churches.
Many women in the town of 4,000 had relied on lace-making as a reliable way to earn money in their spare time. But the plummet in the traditional uses for their craft got the women thinking about other uses for their skills.
Enter the “stringi”–dainty thongs like the one shown here ($40.90, postage-free). It is made entirely by hand using the same skills and delicate patterns their foremothers once employed to adorn the vestments of priests.
Since going international via the Internet in 2004 (koniakow.com), the women of Koniakow have dramatically revived the popularity of handmade lace.
The Web site for their company, KONI-Art, includes 94 pages of glowing testimonials from as far away as Japan, India and Malaysia. (Sample: “Whoa, my keyboard is melting from the heat generated by these exquisite creations.”)
The women of Koniakow have moved on from the basic thong to an impressive array of scanties in colors that the doily makers of yore could never have imagined.
This sexy turn away from the traditional use of lace has created occasional hard feelings, with some town elders accusing the women of caving in to “sin and disgrace.”
Others have a different take on the flourishing lace business: progress.
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