Re-making the World: Women, Humanitarian Agencies and Handicrafts Programmes

The First World War threatened to extinguish the renowned Belgian lace industry, cut off from both markets and raw materials. Thousands of female lacemakers would be left without an income.

Humanitarian organisations stepped in, saved the country’s cultural heritage, and supported its workers by supplying materials and selling the finished fabrics. Their actions gave unprecedented publicity to the industry and employed more than 50.000 Belgian lacemakers. The produced lace became known as war lace, as its unique iconography sometimes referred directly to the conflict.

Art historians and craft practitioners addressing war lace have concentrated on high-quality laces designed by recognised artists. Historians have tended to study food and medical aid programmes. Yet the history of such humanitarian handicraft programmes remains obscure. ReMTW fills this gap.

It uncovers the overlooked origins for the preservation of cultural heritage by humanitarian organisations, while examining the prospect for female emancipation and artistic expression.

Through a combination of archival, collection and practice-led inquiry, the project will lead to an innovative history of humanitarianism which encourages historians to attend to material object, and art historians and craft practitioners to engage with the historical processes and the production of embodied knowledge.

During the fellowship, the ER will organise an international colloquium, submit 3 peer-reviewed articles, present 2 papers at international conferences and lead an interdisciplinary workshop with 3 site-specific iterations.

This will enhance the ER’s skills and future employability prospects, by opening new training opportunities, furthering her ability to plan, organise, and develop her dissemination and public outreach competencies, and reinforcing her professional international networks of researchers and practitioners versed in history, art history and craft practice.