Born: 1514, Germany
Died: 14 January 1575
Country most active: Germany
Also known as: Barbara Uttmann, Barbara von Elterlein
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
In Annaburg, Saxony, stands a statue of a woman seated on a beehive, the symbol of industry, her fingers busied in making lace.
This monument was erected, in 1834, to a woman, Barbara Uttmann, foundress of the lace industry in her community. At her wedding, she presented to the groom a collar and set of cuffs of Cluny lace, of her own making, the first ever seen in Annaburg. It was so simple and so beautiful that soon after, Barbara Uttmann was teaching her craft to many of the inhabitants. Her art was the beginning of a vast and a profitable industry in this impoverished community. By the end of the sixteenth century there were ten thousand lace workers in Annaburg; every woman and many men had learned the art and used it as a means of livelihood. Barbara Uttmann’s motto still lives among her countrymen, “Great Thoughts Come From the Heart.”