Professor Butter Beard and Rembrandt’s Lace
“...lace is formed from the absence of substance; it is imagined in the spaces between the threads. Lace is a thing like hope. It lived, it survived, and it was desired for what it was not. If faith, as the nuns said, was the substance of things hoped for, then lace was the outline - the suggestion - of things not seen.” - Iris Anthony, The Ruins of Lace
I have been forever fascinated with lace. My grandmother had an exquisite collection ranging from doilies to table runners to bedroom curtains. I can remember being sent to her “yellow” bedroom in the big house for afternoon naps and laying on top of the quilt-covered bed watching the light play through the gaps in the intricate patterns. I think of it now as my first experiments with meditation, feeling my breathing beginning to match the dance of the shadows across the pillows.
There also is the memory of my grandfather’s face when he walked into my choreographed dance, me fully wrapped in the lace curtain and singing “Sunrise, Sunset,” but that is another tale for another time…..
When I first visited Bruges, I was determined to explore the churches and canal paths, gaze deeply into the art, and consume as many portions of Moules Frites as humanly possible. But I also had another mission – to bring home a piece of Belgian lace that would forever remind me of the journey and my grandmother.
Jennifer Merin, reporting for the Los Angeles Times, writes that “Belgian lace making predates the founding of modern Belgium (1830) by centuries. In fact, the area’s history is woven in lace.” Textile historians believe the craft began in the 16th century when the land was known as Flanders. A magnificent lace coverlet, full of technical innovation, was made for Archduke Albert’s wedding in 1599. Today that work is in the Royal Museum in Brussels, and I was fortunate enough to study the masterpiece in person.
Belgian lace is well known for its delicacy and beauty, originally only made from the finest spun linen thread, which was spun in dark damp rooms to keep the thread from becoming too brittle. Only one ray of light was allowed into the room, and it was arranged so that it fell upon the thread. The lace patterns are created by braiding and twisting lengths of thread, which are wound on bobbins to manage them. As the work progresses, the weaving is held in place with pins set in a lace pillow, the placement of the pins usually determined by a pattern or pricking pinned on the pillow.
Seventeenth century Dutch artists were also fascinated with lace, and many chose to include it in their portrait paintings and a means of displaying the wealth of their sitters and to show off their own masterly skills with the play of light and pattern. Rembrandt is a perfect example. Jan Six, a Dutch art dealer based in Amsterdam, has studied Rembrandt’s works intricately, especially his signature way of depicting bobbin lace.
Six writes that “other artists of the period painstakingly executed its intricacies in white paint on top of the jacket. Rembrandt did something like the opposite.” He first painted the sitter’s jacket, then over it the collar area in white, then used black paint to create the negative spaces in the collar. Where other contemporary painters were careful to create repeating patterns in the lacework, Rembrandt plaited a freestyle design. For viewers standing a few inches away from such a painting, the collar may appear as a hieroglyphic jumble; as they step back a pace, it magically coheres. Six believes this was one aspect of Rembrandt’s genius. “He realized that a painted copy of a repetitive pattern, even if it followed the original, actually looked artificial.”
Prime examples of this visual phenomenon are the two portraits, painted by Rembrandt, of the cloth merchant Nicolaes van Bambeeck and his wife Agatha Bas. Nicolaes is depicted in half-length, elegantly dressed in a black costume as befitted a reasonably well-off merchant, with lace collar and cuffs and a black hat, holding gloves in his hand. His wife Agatha was from a different social tier entirely, the eldest daughter of the one of the more formidable politicians among the Amsterdam regents. She is shown both plain and fancy. Her dress is dramatically elegant with gold flowers glowing against white silk, at the same time modest and proud. But look how Rembrandt subtly reveals his unique talents when painting the lace cuff on her right hand as it folds and dances in the light.
I may not be able to weave such intricate masterpieces with linen thread or paint them on a canvas, but I do attempt to accomplish something similar with sugar and butter when baking my version of Florentines. As the butter, sugar, nuts and dried fruit absorb the oven’s heat, they spread into a thin crackle of delicate lace-like works of art. Just to gild the lily, the crisp cookie is then dipped into swirled dark and white chocolate creating another intricate pattern of deliciousness. Make them the day you want to serve them. And just for fun, hold them up and let the sunlight dance through the glossy gaps before the snap of your first bite.
Lace Florentines Dipped in Chocolate
18-20 Cookies
1 rounded cup finely chopped almonds (consistency of coarse cornmeal)
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1/3 cup crystalized ginger, chopped into ¼” pieces
Zest of one large orange
4 Tbsp all-purpose flour
3 Tbsp unsalted butter
9 Tbsp sugar (I use 5 Tbsp granulated sugar and 4 Tbsp dark brown sugar)
1/3 cup heavy cream
3 Tbsp honey
4 Tbsp light corn syrup
12 ounces chocolate (I use 8 ounces dark and 4 ounces white)
1) Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line three sheet pans with parchment paper
2) Place the chopped almonds, sliced almonds, chopped crystalized ginger and orange zest in a medium bowl and toss with the 4 Tbsp all-purpose flour.
3) Combine the butter, sugars, cream, honey and corn syrup in a medium (heavy) saucepan and place over low heat. Stirring constantly, bring the mixture to a boil and boil for one minute. Remove from the heat.
4) Pour the butter mixture over the fruit-nut mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until ingredients are just combined. Drop the batter by rounded teaspoons onto the baking sheets (no more than six per sheet). If needed, flatten the mounds with a fork dipped in water.
5) Bake the cookies until they are bubbling all over and the edges are starting to brown – about 9-12 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the sheets five minutes, then remove the paper and transfer to a wire rack. Let the cookies cool completely, then remove them from the paper by hand and replace them on the wire rack.
6) Melt the chocolate (separately, if using dark and white) on top of a double boiler, or in 20-second burst in the microwave. If using both chocolates, drop teaspoons of the melted white into the melted dark and swirl with a chopstick. Dip the edges of the cooled cookies into the chocolate as far up as you desire. Lay the dipped cookies on parchment paper for the chocolate to cool and set.
7) These cookies are best eaten the day they are made.
Note: If you desire perfectly round cookies, when you remove them from the oven, use a large biscuit cutter and cut the cookies into perfect circles. Then let the cookies cool completely before removing them from the paper.
