HEATHER TOOMER MA,(Cantab); Dip. Ed
I am a freelance lecturer,
author and consultant on antique lace and whitework embroideries, being particularly concerned with their identification, their use in costume and the history of their craft industries.
My interest in lace and whitework started over 45 years ago when I bought my first pieces of lace and tried to identity them through books and museum visits. Since then I have collected continuously and built up a very substantial and wide-ranging
collection including lace, whitework and small costume items such as decorative babies’ robes and accessories.
Being a trained teacher, I started lecturing
on their history and identification at an early stage, fitting this in with my other careers, initially in teaching but later in patent work. In the 1980s I worked with Exeter Museums to set up their new lace displays in Rougemont house (since closed) and
the travelling exhibition ‘Lifting the Veil: a closer look at antique lace’ which was drawn from my own collection and toured the country for two years. It was then that I wrote my first lace book for Batsford, a revised edition being published
by Schiffer in 2001 under the title ‘Antique Lace: identifying types and techniques’.
In 1997 I gave up patent work to work full time with textiles. Having
become particularly interested in whitework I spent several years researching the subject to produce my more recent works, “Baby wore white: robes for special occasions, 1800-1910” (2005); "Embroidered with white: the 18th century fashion
for Dresden lace and other whiteworked accessories" (2008) and its sequel "White-embroidered costume accessories: the 1790s to 1840s"(2013). The final book in this series, "Fashionable white-embroidered accessories: c.1840 to 1900" was published in 2018.
Although the books on whitework have taken much of my time in recent years, lace has not been forgotten. The exhibition of 'Lifting the Veil' led to an exciting commission to
provide a lace exhibition for a Japanese Museum. I have also loaned lace and whitework to various other museums but have a particularly strong relationship with the Argentan Museum, Maison des dentelles, in Normandy. My review of the hand-made lace collection
in the Nottingham Museum also helped in having the lace collection as a whole, including its collection of machine laces, designated as a collection of National importance.
In
between writing and working with my own and other collections, I am very happy to be asked to lecture or give workshops on lace or whitework. I always take original examples of the material I am asked to lecture on, in addition to giving a Powerpoint presentation,
as one gets such a distorted impression of the work from seeing it on a large scale in slides: its minuteness and delicacy are only fully appreciated in the real thing.
I
am very happy to travel to lecture venues but can also welcome small groups in my home in Somerset - I particularly enjoy sharing my collection and my enthusiasm with students in workshops. If you or your group would
like a lecture or study day, do contact me - but remember, it must be through my email htac2000@gmail.com as your contact details cannot be given through the website.