Traditional bobbin lace-making meets creative design
Interconnections
Bobbin lace-making is considered a delicate, painstaking, and tradition-bound craft. Ilse Blümel doesn’t stop there. She breaks with convention, works from her own designs, and combines classic yarns with metal threads. The result is images and sculptural objects in which delicacy meets resilience and traditional order gives way to unconventional new forms.
She was introduced to the fundamentals of this craft at an early age. Born in the Ore Mountains, Ilse Blümel learned traditional bobbin lace-making from her mother as a child. Later, while traveling through lace-making regions in Germany and Europe, she encountered a wide variety of techniques. Yet her works are not a nostalgic look back. They show what happens when an ancient craft transcends its familiar boundaries.
The title “Interconnections” takes us right into the contradictory world of human relationships. Interconnection can mean closeness, support, and belonging. But it can also constrain, create resistance, and become entanglement. Where connections break or orders dissolve, interstices emerge—as voids and ruptures, but also as spaces of freedom.
In these interstices lies the opportunity to gain distance, to view the familiar in a new light, and to recognize alternative paths. In this way, Ilse Blümel’s works directly address the LUPINALE theme “Turning Point: Upheavals and Glimmers of Hope.”
Exhibition opening: September 18, 2026, 6:00 p.m.
Exhibition dates: September 19 through October 17, 2026
Kunsthaus Lübz – Center for Circular Art
TIP: On October 17 at 6 p.m., the Kunsthaus Lübz will host its grand end-of-season celebration under the theme “Art – Cuisine – Sound.” The program also includes a major art auction. The works provided by the artists for this auction can be viewed at the Kunsthaus starting September 25 during regular opening hours.
