Knotwork

Description

This knotwork butterfly is made of off-white cotton thread tied into an intricate pattern of loops and knots. New York-based artist Irene DeFoy Gregor made and designed this object around 1970. This manner of construction, done with a series of small knots, is known as tatting. Tatting is performed using a shuttle which holds thread wound around a bobbin in its center. The tatter holds a large loop of the thread in one hand and moves the shuttle back and forth through the loop with their other hand, making and tightening knots as they go. The tatter may create small, loose loops called picots by leaving gaps in the thread as they form the knots. Picots can be decorative, but they can also be structural, used to join segments of tatting together to create a larger work. This butterfly has decorative picots, which line its outer edges, as well as structural picots, which connect its wings to its central body. Long, tied threads trail from the ends of this butterfly, which the artist never cut. This object is one of a large group transferred to Winterthur from the American Textile History Museum when it closed in 2017.