Chaos ground

I recently saw a presentation by Kim Lieberman, a most wonderful South African artist who, while talking about her journey with lace, mentioned chaos lace, or wild lace. Her lace was so beautiful (https://www.kimlieberman.com/) and I was so intrigued that I decided to do a little research. That research was stunningly short because I found next to nothing about it. 

I did find a small mention on Jean Leader’s website (definitely worth a peruse). https://www.jeanleader.net/mylace/3x3x3.html Her website was the first place I saw a description of chaos ground and the fascinating way she’d used it.  

One other place I found information was Janis Savage’s blog post on a chaos ground scarf. http://janis.savage.org.za/2011/07/hasty-chaotic-scarf.html?m=1 

The final piece of information I found was a brief discussion on an old IOLI group discussion which mentioned that this type of work was used quite a lot at one time within the German lacemaking community. One poster mentioned a book that had a lot of chaos ground patterns called Klöppeln Am Laufenden Band. Amazingly, I was able to find it and it has dozens of variations. Now to go to sampling. While I don’t read German, I can read a chart and , who knows, maybe I’ll learn a few words along the way!!

Even though I didn’t know much about it, I ended up designing a piece using it. Actually the piece was designed before I bounced down the rabbit hole but it will be, I hope, a good place to explore the technique. So after sampling will come the doing!