Dumps and thumpers

 

Dumps and thumpers are wooden bobbins from the south Buckinghamshire area of England that, unusually for that area, do not have a spangle of beads to weight them, and resemble the bobbins used in some areas of continental Europe. Dumps are smaller and thinner than thumpers so I think that the top three bobbins are dumps and the lower five are thumpers, but they were probably used interchangeably. Confusingly, some of them do have bead spangles, but these were added long after the bobbins were made and originally used and you can see that the beads are modern additions rather than the traditional square-cut beads generally used for spangles. Dumps, also known as bob-tailed bobbins, and thumpers were used to make fine Bucks point lace. The thread for which was so fine that the addition of a spangle to the bobbin would have broken the thread. The reason that many of them have been drilled to add spangles is that lace fashions changed and fine thread was no longer available.

Many of them are quite plain but some are decorated, for example with indented lines and the addition of rings of either pewter or wood, known as jingles. The bobbin with the inlaid spots of different coloured wood is a ‘plum pudding’ while the bobbin next to it with very small indentations resembles the type of decoration sometimes used on Honiton bobbins. The two bobbins at the top are intriguing because they are made from two different coloured woods. Some of these types of bobbins can be pulled apart to reveal a tiny bobbin hidden inside. Sadly I have opened both of them and they are not ‘jack in the box’ bobbins.

Lace in Turkey

 

I’ve just returned from an amazing textile tour of Turkey where they have their own distinctive style of lace, which is mainly used as an edging for scarves and clothing. There are two main techniques, one using a fine crochet hook and the other a knotting technique using needle and thread.

We were lucky to be shown both styles of making on our tour and the skilful women who demonstrated for us were all able to use both techniques. The edging of the blue scarf in the main image is fine crochet work. The photo shows both sides of the work so you can see how the scarf is hemmed as an integral part of the lace, a clever way of saving time so the scarf does not have to be hemmed before the lace work begins.

The knotting and looping technique is shown round the edge of this beautiful dark blue scarf. The needle is inserted under the main thread then the remaining thread is twisted round the needle to form the loop. The skill lies in controlling the size of the loops to make a pleasing gradation to represent flowers and leaves.

As well as lace attached to fabric, strings of flowers and leaves are also made using a crochet technique which can be used as necklaces. Beads and ribbons can also be incorporated into the lace to add highlights to the work. We were lucky to be shown how the lace is made at several places and were pleased to see contemporary and vintage lace being sold in various outlets throughout our tour.

The lace curtain as silent witness

The lace curtain lies in the liminal space of the window, where it may act as a sieve, trapping the whispers, memories and secrets of the home. This curtain entitled Whispering has a conventional bobbin lace trim, but part way across the curtain it begins to unravel as the threads degenerate and record a series of phrases that the curtain has heard within the home. 

Read as a group these whispers form an unsettling narrative. Confidences such as ‘Keep out it’s not your business’, ‘Have you heard what she did?’and ‘He says she’s not herself today’ suggest a troubled household. While ‘He frightens the life out of me’ implies that something more sinister may be taking place. The disintegration of the lace, revealing the hidden whispers and cries for help, may be reflecting the disintegration of the household.

Rainbow lace curtains

 

I love the idea of these rainbow lace curtains, which I found in a facsimile of a Harrod’s store catalogue from 1895. Rainbow is perhaps a rather over optimistic description as they are basically only three colours: gold, terra, and eau de nil, rather than the seven we usually associate with the rainbow, but definitely a change from the more usual white or ecru curtains. Unfortunately there is no colour illustration so we have to imagine what they actually looked like. I think gold would have been a rich, dark yellow rather than a shiny gold fabric. The Italian term terracotta means baked earth and terra usually describes an earthy brown colour, although it can range from dark brown, to a pinky brown, taking in orange and burnt umber on the way. Eau de nil (water of the Nile) is a light greenish blue with an interesting history. The description was coined at the end of the nineteenth century just as European, and especially French, interest in Egypt was at its height. It is supposed to reflect the shifting colours of the River Nile. This type of subdued yellowy greeny blue became associated with Modernist interiors so would have seemed very new to readers of this catalogue. The curtains are quite large with a width of 60 inches and a length of 126 inches so would have provided a dramatic and unusual window covering for an upper class home with wide, tall windows.

Waves on a lace curtain

 

The sea seems an appropriate topic for a summer blog post so I thought you’d like to see a detail of this lace curtain which depicts a sunrise/sunset and its reflection on the sea. This piece is interesting because the colour effect is not achieved by using different coloured threads in the machine, but by printing or painting coloured dye on to the fabric after the curtain was made. It has been done very skilfully but you can see where two of the yellow and blue waves meet there is a slight green area where the colours have overlapped.

The colouring could have been done with a paintbrush or with small blocks dipped in dye in the same way as block printing, but the subtlety suggests it was done using a paintbrush. The curtain does incorporate different threads because a floss thread has been used to depict the foam on the waves and parts of the sun. So it would have been possible to use different coloured threads as well, but it was probably quicker just to print the colour on afterwards. The curtain is made from a rayon thread, which gives a lovely warm glossy appearance to the scene, and sunlight coming through the curtain would have made the colours appear to glow.

Lace curtain draught

 

This is the pattern, or draught, for a lace curtain made on the Nottingham lace curtain machine and it contains all the information required to make one pattern repeat of the curtain. This one has a stamp on it indicating that it was made by Edwards and Richardson, designers and draughtsmen, of 7 Carlton Street Nottingham.

Designing and draughting are just two of the stages required in the process of making a lace curtain. First, the designer has to design the lace, then a draughtsman converts the design into a draught. The draught would then have been passed to another company where a card puncher would have followed the instructions it contained to make the jacquard cards that programme the lace machine. Those cards would then have been used in a lace factory to make the lace. Some large lace factories had in-house designers, draughtsmen and card punchers but many smaller companies relied on outside companies for their designing and draughting work.

The draught is made up of hand-painted rectangles indicating different operations for the lace machine. There is no standardised colour code, but in general red indicates back spool ties, green indicates Swiss ties and blue represents combination ties. The draught also has hand written instructions around the side describing the type of lace (filet combination in this case), the width of the repeat and the fineness of the lace. Unfortunately there is no date on the draught but the design has a 1930s feel to it so it may be from that time.

Needlelace stitches

 

I’m always amazed at what beautiful lace can be made with just a some thread and a sewing needle. This lace mat is a simple design of leaves and flowers worked on a large scale and clearly shows the variety of needlelace stitches that can be used to provide different textures and densities. The lacemaker would have begun with an outline of the main parts of the design couched onto a backing fabric and would then have worked filling stitches into the open areas. After that she would have made the bars that link all the parts of the design together. And finally she would have worked blanket stitch around all the outlines, possibly over a couched thread to raise the outlines slightly, to add definition to the design. The finished lace would then have been detached from the backing fabric.

The filling stitches are all variations of blanket stitch, which can be worked across the area to be filled, either close together to form a dense area or wide apart to form an open one. A line of thread can be taken across the area and the stitches worked over that to add density. The blanket stitches can also be worked in pairs or groups to give a more brick-like appearance and these can also be worked over a line of thread as a variation. The image above shows two types of double net stitch (where two blanket stitches are worked in pairs across the area to be filled) and one example of double net stitch worked over a line of thread, showing a few of the possible variations.

This photo shows a small sample of double net stitch, showing how it is worked across the area to be filled by making blanket stitches into the loop left between the stitches of the previous row. If a line of thread is taken across the work it is incorporated into the line of stitching. As you can imagine any number of stitches can be grouped together to vary the density and appearance of the lace – the possibilities are endless.