STA, 17 June 2022 - The 40th Idrija Lace Festival will open on Friday evening to feature in three days almost 50 various events dedicated to the bobbin lace making in the western Slovenian town, including presentations, exhibitions, lace making workshops, competitions and culinary and musical shows.
The theme of this year's festival, which will open with the raising of the festival flag, is What Will You Do With That?, which "indicates the constant search to express oneself by Idrija lace in a new way," the organisers said.
Almost 50 events will take place as part of the festival, with the main one scheduled for Saturday, when the quality of lace featured will be assessed and the best ones receive the Idrija Lace certificate.
A national lace making competition will take place on Sunday, while the festival will also see an in-person gathering of lace makers who have been connected on-line during the coronavirus epidemic.
A total of 16 lace-related exhibitions will be held at various venues in Idrija, most of which will remain open all summer.
The main exhibition is set up in Idrija Castle, featuring selected projects as part of cooperation between textile design students at the Ljubljana Faculty of Natural Sciences and Engineering and a local experimental group of lace makers.
"The products are connected by the idea of combining traditional Idrija lace and modern street fashion, with the students transferring the tradition of the past to the present," said Maja Svetlik of the local lace making school.
Multimedia artist Eva Petrič will be featured with two projects, including a 20-square metre "corona rose" made of bobbin lace, which was previously exhibited in Munich and Bern. It will be put on display in the Church of Saint Joseph the Worker.
An exhibition of lace produced as part of an international competition will make a comeback after ten years, featuring pieces from Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and other countries, with as many as eleven authors being under the age of 18.
The local lace making school will stage an exhibition of works by its students, while a collection of golden jewellery modelled after Idrija lace will be on display at Kenda Mansion.
The festival celebrating the tradition that has made it to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity will also feature guest lace exhibitions from Žiri and Croatia's Lepoglava and Split.
