Lost in lace

Today's blip is from a fabulous exhibition - Lost In Lace, at Birmingham's Museum and Art Gallery. It is Chiharu Shiota's 'After the dream'.
The museum had also used exhibits from their collection to put lace in its historical and social context. I didn't know that the importation of lace into England has been restricted many times inorder to try and control who wore it and reduce the amount of money spent on lace made in other countries. However, if fashion favoured lace made in Brussels, France or Italy then wealthy people demanded to buy it. To avoid bans and heavy import duties, lace joined brandy and tobacco as a lucrative item on the smugglers' list.
One way of getting lace into the country was coffins of British subjects who had died abroad. Coffins were made large enough to accomodate both the body and large quantities of lace. One report says that when the body of the Bishop of Atterbury was brought home from Paris in 1731 his coffin concealed £6000 worth of lace!