What Is The Ring of Tatters?

The Ring of Tatters is an organisation which supports and promotes the craft of tatting. It encourages new and experienced tatters to enjoy their craft and develop their skills. It promotes high standards of tatting and design and presentation. To achieve these aims, the Ring of Tatters:

• Attends and demonstrates at exhibitions and craft shows
• Encourages local tatting days with workshops
• Encourages members to meet in local groups
• Encourages people to learn to tat through all of the above
• Publishes a newsletter twice a year containing:
  • articles
  • news
  • patterns
  • tips from tatters around the world
  • information on local activities around the world
  • book reviews
• Maintains a library (available for UK members) containing:
  • books
  • magazines, periodicals and booklets
  • loose patterns
  • video tapes
  • suppliers catalogues
• Has competitions and a biennial bursary for research
• Has designed the official qualification in tatting skills through the Lace Guild
• Maintains this web site

The Ring is run on a voluntary basis by an informal team, in their own time and from their own homes. The Ring is based in the UK, but has many members in other countries.

If you are interested in becoming a member of the Ring of Tatters, please see How to Join.

Development Of The Ring of Tatters

In 1980, 12 tatters met at a course in the UK and decided to keep touch, and from there things mushroomed:

• A newsletter was started
• The Ring of Tatters formed in 1982
• In 1990 there were 500 members
• In 1999 1470 members across the world
• Early 1999 over 12% of members are on the internet.

In September 2002 the Ring had 1248 members with the folloging breakdown by country:

The Ring Of Tatters' Website

In 1999 Peter Johnston (husband of Membership Secretary Jean) set up our first website. In 2002, very sadly, Peter died. He did a wonderful job in getting us on to the Internet and we have reason to be very grateful to him - he certainly has a place in the history of the Ring. He must have put in countless hours to get the website up and running, and Jean contributed a lot too. We are full of admiration, especially on hearing from Jean that Peter was not a computer expert, but started from scratch and taught himself HTML.

In summer 2002 the website was taken on by Sally Magill (with technical assistance from husband Adrian), and our first version went live at the end of September.