The basic role of every museum is preservation of the tangible cultural heritage within the mission and the collection policy set in the museum's guidance. Mission of the Municipal museum Idrija is permanent and entire care of the heritage of the regions of Idrija and Cerkno. This heritage can boast with many peculiarities compared to the remaining parts of Slovenia, which makes our region well and quickly recognisable and at the same time closely connected to the world. The first place among the peculiarities is taken by the 500-year-long legacy of mercury mining in the second largest mercury mine in the world, and on the second place there is Idrija lace, which has co-influenced the lives and life-styles of numerous local families and made their way to many a part of the world as a handicraft and art product.

The lace exhibition occupies a very important position in our museum. Beside the collections in Idrija, extensive material collections of laces and lace-making are only preserved in the Slovene ethnographic museum, the museum Loški muzej in Škofja Loka and the museum in Železniki. It is known, though, that large privately-owned lace collections and collections of laces in some churches exist, too.

Preservation of the heritage in a museum consists of collecting, keeping, protecting, researching and presenting it to the public. Despite the importance of lace and lace-making for the culturally identity of the region, we've only occupied ourselves with it occasionally. We were looking for and researching the origins of Idrija lace, its characteristics, the beginnings of lace-making in Idrija, the connections between Idrija and other European lace-making centres and regions, the importance of the Lace School Idrija in Slovenia and abroad, lace trade, etc. Numerous articles have been written in expert as well as in other journals about these topics. Nevertheless, we are only in the beginning phase of forming a complete systemisation of laces that were made in Idrija throughout the history. The same situation applies to making an inventory of laces which also includes detailed technological descriptions of laces in our collection. The reason for this situation is lack of lace-making knowledge taught by the lace-making school and incomplete Slovene terminology. It often happens that parts of a lace or specific lace-making processes are not known to us at all. The European expert literature that is available is very moderate, too. Our experiences show, though, that there is a lot of lace-making knowledge accumulated in Idrija. Together with Lace School Idrija and their teachers, contemporary and retired ones, we can cope with the situation. Cooperation in international projects such as Culture 2000 - Land of Lace, where museums with similar interests united their powers and knowledge, brings numerous challenges, new knowledge and new experience. On the basis of this experience we may say that our work had been systematically and wholly conceived before this project, too. Even though we may not always be satisfied with the results, it turns out that others can learn from our experience, too.

The other, for our museum very important part, incorporated in the EU project Culture 2000 - Land of Lace is the outline scheme of our new permanent exhibition about Idrija lace. Exhibitions are the mirror of each museum and an important means of presenting heritage. In the last 15 years we have presented our lace-making legacy in Slovenia and abroad. In Slovenia two of the exhibitions have been met with a wide response - Čipke iz babičine skrinje (Laces from Grandma's Chest) in 1992 and 1993; the latter was presented in the Cultural information centre Križanke in Ljubljana. The biggest of all exhibitions that were presented internationally was the exhibition Mojstrovine klekljanih čipk na Slovenskem (Masterpieces of Bobbin Lace in Slovenia), which united three Slovene lace-making centres: Idrija, Žiri and Železniki. It was exhibited in Geneva (March 1996), in Aumetz in France (May 1996) and in Strasbourg (June 1996). Lace exhibitions were also prepared together with Lace School Idrija and visited Finland (1995), Bela Krajina museum in Metlika (1996), Nova Gorica (1998), the National Assembly of Slovenia (1998), the Šivec house in Radovljica (1998), the Malerič gallery in Črnomelj (2003) and the Mihelič gallery in Ptuj (2005). Very important as exhibitors and presenters of Idrija lace outside of their home town are the local lace merchants, the Association of Idrija lace lacemakers and, of course, Lace School Idrija.

Museum staff in the Municipal museum Idrija now has their final task ahead. We have to make the expectations of the public and our lasting plans come true. We have to set up a new permanent exhibition that will represent a professionally planned and contemporarily designed story of Idrija lace, its makers, merchants and resellers, teachers and pattern designers and also of Idrija itself on a European map of lace-making.

Ivana Leskovec



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