It’s spring in the UK and the lovely colours in the garden have inspired me to produce a group of small lace panels. I’ve made some frames out of stiffened fabric, the sort used for interfacing when you’re making garments. I’ve already coloured them and am now filling the central openings with random bobbin lace in colours to complement the frames. As you can see I’ve finished one and am just about to begin on the second. I’m not quite sure how to mount them. I want to maintain the see-through quality of the lace but they are so small they would be overlooked hanging on a wall. Therefore I’m going to mount them on a white backing, so they are slightly raised from it and don’t lie flat. My dilemma is whether to mount them inside a box-type frame with glass in front of them or to have them on a block-type frame that stands out from the wall. They would be safer behind the glass but would probably make more interesting shadows if they stood out from the frame. I think I will have to experiment once they are all made and see what works best.
Wednesday 27 March 2024
Wednesday 20 March 2024
Honiton lace and Flemish refugees
There is a tradition, repeated in Mrs Bury Palliser’s authoritative History of lace, that Honiton lace was introduced to Devon by Flemish refugees escaping persecution from the Duke of Alva in 1570. However, there is no primary evidence for such an influx of lacemakers and Palliser based her assertions on the appearance of Flemish sounding surnames in parish registers. H J Yallop in his doctoral thesis on the History of the Honiton lace industry questions whether these surnames actually had Flemish origins. He also notes that they were first introduced into England centuries before the invention of lacemaking and most are first found in Honiton registers in the seventeenth century. Yallop found no evidence for an influx of Flemish refugees in the late sixteenth century.
He also
argues that the obvious place for Flemish refugees to land in England would
have been London, Essex and East Kent, and there is evidence of refugees
settling in these areas. To travel along the English south coast as far as
Devon, passing several ports on the way, to land on an open beach in Devon
seems complete folly. Interestingly, Yallop notes that the first mention of refugee
lacemakers arriving in Honiton to start the lace industry in the sixteenth
century dates from a book on Devonshire history published in 1822, based on some
confused information received from a local Honiton lace manufacturer. In fact,
by the sixteenth century the Devon cloth industry was well established and the
area was home to many weavers, fullers, tuckers and dyers as well as
pointmakers. The latter made points, which were narrow braids or laces used for
tying parts of garments together, using a technique similar to bobbin lace
making. It therefore seems much more likely that the Honiton lace industry was
a natural development from the local weaving industry.
Wednesday 13 March 2024
Bobbin lace lappets
This beautiful bobbin lace lappet was made in Belgium in the eighteenth century. I found the image in an interesting old book entitled Old handmade lace by Mrs F Nevill Jackson, which was published in 1900. Lappets were long strips of lace or embroidery that were attached to women’s caps, hats or bonnets and then allowed to fall onto the shoulders, although there was a period when it was fashionable to pin the lappets to the top of the cap and another when they were tied under the chin. They were fashionable during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries but despite that I could find few images of women wearing them. The cap and lappets on the model above were displayed in the V&A Museum in London. They show round ended lappets attached to the sides of a fine fabric cap falling down the back. Alternatively side lappets could fall either side of the face or lappets could be attached to the back of the headwear and hang down the back of the gown. They varied in width, length and type of lace but always came in pairs. Both the lappets in the images have round ends but square ended lappets were also made. There are also examples of caps and lappets made entirely of lace (see an image in my blog post of 5 October 2022). Many lappets survive in museums and lace collections, probably because they were made to be closely examined and admired and are therefore exquisitely worked and so the owners found them too beautiful to dispose of. Also, once they were no longer fashionable, they were easy to detach from the headwear and small enough to keep in a drawer.
Wednesday 6 March 2024
Celebrating mothers on lace bobbins
As it’s Mothers’ day in the UK on Sunday I thought I’d write about lace bobbins celebrating mothers this week. The bobbin with the blue spangle is inscribed Dear mother and the other one says Sarah Ions my D mother. It looks as if the bobbin maker was running out of space so he just squeezed D on at the end of the line to represent dear. Or perhaps Sarah’s daughter forgot to ask him to include dear and wanted him to fit it in later. Both bobbins were made by the person called the Blunt end man by the Springetts in their research on bobbin makers and their techniques. He seems to have links to Bedford and was definitely making bobbins between 1860 and 1874, so these two bobbins are about 150 years old. The Blunt end man used simple lettering in straight lines, rather than the spiral inscriptions other bobbin makers favoured. He produced a large quantity of bobbins including many personal ones like Sarah’s but also had a good stock of simple inscriptions such as Dear mother, as well as those for other relations such as father, sister, brother, aunt and uncle. What a lovely gift it would have been to receive one of these lovely bobbins on Mothers’ day.
Wednesday 28 February 2024
Prickings
Prickings are the patterns of dotted holes that lacemakers follow to make bobbin lace. Technically the pricking shown in the image is only half complete as I am pricking the holes for the pins as I work the lace. Traditionally, the pattern would have been pricked in its entirety before the actual lacemaking began. Most prickings were made from an existing pricking or a copy of the pricking. Copies were made by placing a piece of thin paper over the reverse side of the pricking then rubbing over it with something like heel ball to leave an impression of the dotted pattern on the paper; in the same way as brass rubbings are produced. The reverse of the pricking was used because pushing pins through card or vellum leaves the top feeling smooth but causes a rough surface on the underside where the pins have displaced the card.
Copies were
made by placing the original pricking (or the rubbing) over a new piece of card
on a cork base, then pushing a pin through the existing holes of the pattern or
the marks on the copy to produce a new pricking underneath the original. This
was done using a pin permanently fixed into a holder, like a bobbin shaft, or
using a pin vice (shown here) which holds the pin firmly in place. Using a pin
on its own would be extremely fiddly and probably hurt your fingers as pricking
lace patterns requires firm, precise, pressure. This image also shows how a
pricking for a length of lace can be cut so the two pieces interlock and a continuous
length of lace can therefore be made by alternating them.
Sadly the
phrase “By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes” has
nothing to do with lace prickings. It is said by one of the witches in Macbeth
and is used to describe an ominous premonition, so it’s a creepy feeling rather
than an overuse of lacemaking equipment!
Wednesday 21 February 2024
Bungalow lace curtains
I discovered these ‘bungalow’ lace curtains in a Lace furnishings catalogue for 1933-34. What unique features they have that makes them suitable for bungalow windows I do not know, but the period between the two world wars was a peak time for bungalow construction in the UK, which would correspond with the publication of this catalogue, so perhaps the manufacturers were just trying to tap into a new market.
There are six
designs and they are all floral, with side borders that tend to take up about a
quarter of the curtain each, and a bottom border of the same width. They range in
size from 35 inches wide to 40 inches and are all 2.5 yards long and are sold
as a pair. However, four of them are also available as fabric bought by the
yard, presumably so the homeowner could make up curtains to their own specifications.
The other designs in the catalogue seem very similar but they tend to be wider
and longer than the bungalow curtains. Unfortunately no prices are given for
any of the curtains.
Thursday 15 February 2024
Miss Channer’s lace mat
Catherine Channer was actively involved in the revival of the East Midlands handmade lace industry in Britain in the early twentieth century. She was a lacemaker, teacher and researcher and I’ve written about some of her work in this blog before. Today I’m looking at Miss Channer’s mat which she designed in the early 1920s using the technique for pricking the ground that she had developed following research into old lace patterns and their origins (see this blog of 24 October 2023). An image of the mat was published in her book Practical lacemaking published in 1928 which was one of the few textbooks for students and gave instructions and patterns for Bucks point lace.
The mat in the book had been worked by Mrs Dixon of Clapham, Bedfordshire in about 1926 and is now in the collection of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery in Bedford. The mat became famous as a challenge for skilled lacemakers in 1991 when Ruth Bean published Anne Buck’s book about Miss Channer entitled In the cause of English lace. A supplement was published at the same time comprising an image of the mat and a full sized pricking of it, which had been adapted by Patricia Bury from an earlier version in her collection. Since then many lacemakers have worked it and their handiwork can be seen by searching for ‘Miss Channers mat’ on the internet. No instructions were given for the original mat or for the version published in 1991 so it is also interesting to see how it has been worked by different lacemakers and the varying number of pairs of bobbins they used to complete it. I have never made Miss Channer’s mat but I do admire the skill and patience of those who have.