The Makers' Hands

"Of many Arts, one surpasses all."

When the Dutch composer Jakob Van Eyck wrote these words in the mid-1600s, he wasn't talking about music or oil painting, but about lace making. Lace was a commodity prized for its beauty and extravagance, so revered [at one point] that in France, by law, only the nobility could wear it.

A few hundred years later, lace has all but disappeared. Gone from Bruges and Chantilly, from Honiton and Bedfordshire, lace no longer builds towns, and only a smattering of artisans still use needles and bobbins to create the intricate patterns by hand.

A cluster of lacemakers ply their trade in a most unlikely place: the fabled temple town of Cape Comorin, in India's southern tip. A sacred meeting place of three seas, Cape Comorin is a famous Hindu pilgrimage site, it's also one of the last places anywhere in the world to still make fine, European handmade lace.

The spectacular pieces created by this cottage industry end up in boutiques on Madison Avenue and at dinner parties and wedding ceremonies half a world away.

This is not a modern story of outsourcing: Lace making has quietly survived In Cape Comorin for nearly 200 years. Indeed, in the hands of these poor Indian women lie the last vestiges of a quintessentially European art.

In The Maker's Hands, Sarmishta Subramanian brought us their story, and the tale of am anachronistic commodity fighting for its existence.

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