Subversive doily tape lace

 

This is a close up of the outer edge of the latest doily in my subversive doily series. I like working this Eastern-European style lace as it only requires a few pairs of bobbins at any one time. Most of it is a simple half stitch braid that forms a trail around the mat. The downside is that every time the trail connects with a previous section of the lace you have to join the worker pair to the previous work by making a sewing. I was taught how to make sewings when I learnt Honiton lace, which also requires them, but was never very good at them. However, I am improving with all the practice I’m getting! Also, this thread is quite coarse so the pin holes are fairly large and I can use a fine crochet hook rather than a pin to pull the loops through, which makes it all easier. Another interesting aspect to this lace is the placing of the pin holes. I designed the pattern myself, including where I thought the pin holes should be placed for the half stitch trail to flow nicely, but I find that as I actually work the pattern I’m having to change some of them. In some cases I need an extra pin hole to keep the half stitch level otherwise the angle becomes too steep and the trail looks as if it’s been pulled out of shape. In others I need more (or fewer pin holes) to negotiate a loop in the pattern more successfully. It has made me appreciate the skill of those lace designers who can produce a lace pattern that works efficiently every time. I’m making mine work by adapting as I go along, so I just have to console myself by thinking that mine will be unique, even though it is not ideal.

Early twentieth century lace scarves

 

These lace scarves were all advertised in the 1904 catalogue produced by Samuel Peach, a well-known lace manufacturing company based in Nottingham. They are interesting because despite being machine made they all copy different styles of handmade lace. The black lace scarf in the top image is an imitation of a fine Chantilly-style lace, popular at the time, especially for evening and mourning wear. The scarf is 82 inches long (slightly over 2 metres) and 11 inches wide (28 cm) and cost 8 shillings and 6 pence.

The second scarf ends in a very bold pattern, similar to crochet lace, although it is actually chemical lace. This is made by machine embroidering onto a sacrificial background, which is removed by chemical or heat treatment, leaving the embroidered lace behind. This scarf is narrower and shorter than the black one (63 x 6 inches; 160 x 15 cm) and costs 3 shillings and 6 pence.

This scarf imitates fine point lace, such as Buckinghamshire lace, and incorporates several motifs that are common in the handmade version of this lace. This one is much cheaper than the previous two scarves and only costs 9 pence. This seems quite a bargain as it is 52 x 4 inches (132 x 10 cm) in size.

The final scarf is also machine embroidered but this time the embroidery is worked directly on the net background. This technique imitates handmade tambour lace, which is made with a fine hook that the lacemaker uses to work a type of chain stitch through the holes in the net. This scarf is also quite narrow (66 x 6 inches; 168 x 15 cm) and only costs 7 pence, probably reflecting the small amount of lace it includes. Unfortunately there are no illustrations showing how the scarves were worn, but the catalogue does give us a snapshot of what was available at the time. 

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.