International Lace Exhibitions organized by the Halas Lace Foundation

Lace House, Kiskunhalas

/ 1998-2001/

Kiskunhalas is a middle-sized town in the south of Hungary. It has got a 100 year-old tradition: the 100% hand-made needle-lace. Halas lace has won many Grand Prix-s of World Exhibitions /Paris, Brusselles/ coming before the laces from Venice and Brusselles.

The halas lace is made with a very special thin-like-breath thread -made of a Saud-Arabian plant. The techic is also very special, taking a lot of time. The rich variety of stiches -by now we use up to 60 ones- using between the strong contour lines and the motifs from the Hungarian folk art characterize our lace.

Halas Lace Foundation was established by the town council of Kiskunhalas in 1992. to save the world-famous halas lace that is the 100 year –old jewel of the Hungarian cultural heritage.

Nowadays, due to the international lace exhibitions organized by the Foundation, Halas Lace has been discovered again by the international public taste and remarkable attention is devoted to this noble artistic treasure.

The Ist International Lace Exhibition was organized in 1998. Beside the numerous Hungarian lacemakers a lot of exhibitors participated from 8 other countries. The 2000 visitors could admire laces in the following categories: needle –lace, bobbin-lace, modern-lace and laces made with mixed technics.

The 2nd International Lace Exhibition in 2000 was one of the most important events of our town concerning the celebration of the Millennium. This exhibition was a really great success / 3500 visitors/ because Mrs.Erika Sűdy, Honorary Patroness of Halas Lace,helped us to invite a lot of well-known, world-famous Japanese experts of lacemaking to participate. The exhibition was opened by His Excellency, Mr.Kazuo Nukazawa, the former Ambassador of Japan. There were 160 exhibitors from Hungary and from the European countries and even from Australia. The members of the international jury were American, Belgian, Japanese and Hungarian lace experts.

2001.

The organization of the this year international lace exhibition started in November. We invited the lacemakers from all over the world for more different exhibitions at the same time: Finishing the programmes connected with the celebration of the Millennium we organized an International Lace Design Competition and Exhibition both for needle-laces and bobbin ones. On the other hand we were very keen on exhibiting modern products: Improvisations and Variations with Laces. The smallest exhibition room of the Lace House was the place of the 100-200 year–old lace - miracles coming from the East part of France.

We have had a very close relation with the Lace Center of Luxeuil since the last year exhibition.

We had 52 registered exhibitors from Australia, Chech Republic, Germany, Belgium, France, Ireland, Slovenia and a lot of Hungarian lacemakers also participate. Ireland was represented by Veronica Stuart. Her wonderful laces were admired by 3200 visitors.

We were very happy because the international jury – members were, as usual, European lace experts from Belgium, Germany and Hungary.

The Honorary President of the OIDFA / International Lace Association /, Mrs. Lydia Thiels-Mertens also accepted our invitation and joined us. The exhibition also was honoured by Heather Nina Mackay from the Irish Lace Association. She also visited our previous exhibition last year so it made us very happy to meet her again.

Our exhibitions were more than a show of different laces: It was a great possibility for lacemakers from all over the world to meet, to talk and to present their technics to each other and to the visitors. The official opening ceremony of our exhibition was in the Lace House / Kiskunhalas , Kossuth u. 37/A/ at 5p.m. on 4 th May 2001.and the exhibition was opened until 13 th May 2001.

to be continued soon from 2002 to 2005.