“I Follow Rivers”: A Tribute to Flanders, to Lace Makers, and to the Heritage of Women

Presented on the Delen Private Bank booth during Luxembourg Art Week 2025, I Follow Rivers is one of the most personal works created by Marie De Decker.
It carries within it a territory, a lineage of women, and an ancestral gesture: lacemaking, which shaped the identity and renown of an entire region stretching from northern France to northern Belgium and the Netherlands.

A Work Rooted in Family History

At the heart of this piece is an essential figure:
the artist’s grandmother, a seamstress and lace maker, a woman of technique and transmission.

She taught Marie how to handle needlework, lace techniques, precision, and patience.
Some of the pearls integrated into I Follow Rivers belonged to her, making the work a literal fragment of her presence.

These pearls also symbolize femininity—not only its delicacy but also the quiet strength of the women whose craft built a cultural and economic legacy that still resonates today.

Volutes Inspired by the Rivers of a Life

The palladium patterns, worked like metallic lace, follow a fluid relief inspired by the course of the rivers that trace the landscapes where Marie’s grandmother lived.

Each curve evokes a riverbed, a memory of place, a passage.
Water, present symbolically throughout the work, links territories, gestures, and generations.

An Emblematic Object of Lace Makers’ History

The object itself is a historical witness:
an 18th-century lace maker’s magnifying globe in blown glass.

These globes were filled with water and placed in front of a small candle.
The magnified light allowed lace makers—most of them extremely poor—to work late into the night, often damaging their eyesight.

By giving new life to this object, Marie pays homage:

• to the women who built the textile reputation and prosperity of Flanders;

• to the invisible gestures that shaped the history of the region;

• to a cultural heritage that still radiates today.

A Natural Echo with Delen Private Bank’s Identity

Presenting I Follow Rivers with Delen Private Bank felt like a natural fit.

Historically rooted in Belgium, at the crossroads of French- and Dutch-speaking cultures, the bank shares part of this territory and its cultural identity.

By welcoming this work on its booth, Delen highlights an object intrinsically connected to:

• the history of Flanders,

• the labour and legacy of women,

• the transmission of craft,

• and the memory of a gesture that defined an entire region
  

A Personal, Cultural, and Universal Work

Through I Follow Rivers, Marie De Decker weaves together family memory, textile history, territorial identity, and contemporary creation.

The work carries emotional depth as well as strong cultural significance.
It is part of a larger movement: recovering, preserving, and reinterpreting objects that once bore ancestral gestures.

Where others might see a simple tool, Marie recognises a symbol — and offers it a new life.