Document Type

Theses, Ph.D

Abstract

To investigate how craft practices can help us understand meanings of place this study uses a case study of Borris Lace, a distinctive needle lace tradition associated with Borris, Co. Carlow. It begins from an understanding of place as shaped through materialities, meanings and practices, rather than location alone (Cresswell, 2015), while also drawing on relational approaches that understand place as open, multiple and continually in process (Massey, 2005). Craft scholarship has examined making as skilled, embodied and material practice (Ingold, 2013; Sennett, 2008), and feminist craft scholarship has shown how women’s textile labour has often been undervalued or treated as domestic work rather than cultural knowledge (Luckman, 2015; Parker, 1984). Building on these debates, this thesis asks how a vernacular textile tradition can reveal the ways local meanings are made, carried, interpreted and renewed. This question is especially relevant to Borris Lace because its history has moved through making, decline, storage, revival and renewed practice.

The thesis asks: how can craft practices help us understand meanings of place? To answer this question, the study uses a qualitative case study design informed by ethnographic and deep mapping approaches. Fieldwork was carried out in and around Borris between September 2024 and May 2025, combining interviews, walking interviews, participant observation, archival research, photography and analysis of visual and material data. These methods allowed the research to follow Borris Lace across the relationships, objects, memories, spaces and archival traces through which it has been made, kept and reworked. The data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, with patterns of meaning developed across spoken accounts, fieldnotes, archival material, photographs and object-based encounters.

The findings show that Borris Lace helps us understand place through the relationships formed around making, memory and continuation. Lacemaking creates embodied connections between makers, materials and shared spaces through learning, repetition, correction and touch. Lace objects and motifs hold memories of women’s labour, local landscape, domestic life and personal inheritance, although these associations can be fragile, uneven, contested or uncertain. Contemporary projects, displays and reinterpretations show that the lace continues not through preservation alone, but through renewed opportunities for people to encounter, recognise and take part in the practice.

The thesis brings these findings together through the related ideas of practising place, storying place and sustaining place. Practising place refers to the embodied and social work of learning and making. Storying place follows the ways objects, motifs and memories carry local meaning. Sustaining place considers the conditions that allow the practice to remain visible, viable and open to renewal. Although separated for analysis, these ideas overlap throughout the thesis, showing how meanings of place are formed, carried, interpreted and kept available through making.

Care is central to this argument, but it is not understood as sentiment alone. Drawing on feminist care theory, particularly understandings of care as maintenance and responsibility (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017; Tronto, 1993), the thesis approaches care as practical, material and relational work. In Borris Lace, this work appears in the teaching, correcting, storing, displaying, explaining and remembering that make the lace available to others. Care therefore helps explain how knowledge, objects and stories remain active, even when transmission has been interrupted or meanings have become uncertain.

The research also raises important questions about the visibility, viability and custodianship of Borris Lace. While renewed interest has brought greater recognition to the tradition, this does not necessarily ensure its long-term future. The findings highlight the importance of the people who continue to practise, share and care for Borris Lace, while also raising questions about who holds responsibility for sustaining the tradition and how this might be carried forward.

The thesis develops the concept of keeping place which describes the practices through which relationships between craft, memory and place are held, renewed and reworked. It does not mean preserving Borris Lace unchanged, nor does it suggest that place remains fixed. Instead, it gives language to the quiet cultural labour through which women’s textile work and community-based responsibility keep local meanings available for recognition, interpretation and future renewal. Through this concept, the thesis contributes to craft studies, heritage studies and feminist cultural geography by showing how vernacular making can hold relationships between people, materials, memory and place open for continued use and reinterpretation.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/fyyd-rj05

Funder

Irish Research Council

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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