Standing on the Altmarkt in Plauen, you can not only admire the beautiful Old Town Hall, but will also find there the entrance to the Plauen Lace Museum. A unique museum that you should plan to visit during your stay in the city.
Entering the museum, you first stand in a long restored hallway, which is already unique from an architectural point of view, with the beautiful reticulated vault.
This corridor leads to the ticket office and museum store and the approximately 500 m² exhibition rooms, where everything revolves around the theme of lace. The museum is unique in Germany and is equally exciting for people interested in fashion and technology.
Plauen lace
If you tell people that you are traveling in Plauen in the Vogtland region, some listeners’ eyes start to light up. Immediately comes the question – the city with the top?
Not only fashion-conscious people associate with the city the filigree manufactured lace, which is not to be excluded for many years from the fashion world, but also lovers of lace blankets or artful window decorations and curtains know Plauener lace.
From about 1810, commercial hand embroidery began to spread more and more in Plauen. Many women, most of whom worked at home, produced artistic white embroidery, the quality of which quickly spread and made the products increasingly popular.
In the course of industrialization, the first hand embroidery machines arrived in the region. Theodor Bickel succeeded in using one of these machines to produce machine-embroidered tulle lace with satin stitches for the first time. A revolution on the market, which led to the emergence of more and more factories producing lace products. In 1883, the first shuttle embroidery machine came to Plauen, with which it was possible to produce aerial lace.
In the meantime, the term Plauener Spitze is also protected under trademark law.
How exactly the production of the lace took place, you can practically experience in the Plauen show embroidery.
Discoveries in the Plauen Lace Museum
During our tour of the Plauen Lace Museum, we are first introduced to the history and manufacture of lace. On display boards and with the help of pictures, we learn how the different types of manufacturing work.
For me, this was the ideal supplement and expansion of what I had learned the day before in the show workshop. And some things I only understood exactly through the additional texts and pictures.
The museum has a large embroidery machine and some smaller machines that look like sewing machines. I found the enlarger, which is used to prepare a pattern for the embroidery machines, super exciting. It reminded me a bit of a tool I used as a child to transfer patterns (only much bigger and much sturdier).
Another focus of the exhibition is, of course, Plauen lace. Exhibits from the early 19th century to the present are presented, which could not be more different.
Beautiful, I think, are the large round swaddling blankets. For those who are now thinking – no not intended for wrapping children! Wrapping is a technique in which individual elements of lace are sewn together – wrapped – with the help of a special machine. These blankets are used, for example, as a tablecloth or for decorative purposes.
Fans of lace collars will be delighted when viewing the exhibition. There are some very beautiful examples on display, which certainly caused a stir in the fashion world.
In the Plauen Lace Museum you can also see dresses made only of lace. We were told that these are not just pure exhibits, but have also been worn. In Plauen, there is a lace princess every year who is elected at a lace festival. I wonder if she can also wear such a beautiful dress?
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