Reading the thread

 

I’m delighted to have a chapter in this fascinating new book about textiles edited by Lesley Millar and Alice Kettle. Entitled Reading the thread: Cloth and communication it considers the abilities of thread to record or communicate a story. The contributions are wide ranging including the history, construction and future of threads and their use in contemporary practice.

My chapter builds on my research into the Battle of Britain commemorative lace panel made by the Nottingham machine lace company, Dobson and Browne, at the end of the second world war. In this study I compare it with the handmade needlelace tablecloth made for Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, as part of the Belgian war lace initiative during the first world war. Although both these lace works seem quite different in technique and manufacture, there are many similarities between them. Both were designed as artworks rather than everyday lace and both incorporate iconography and symbols representative of the events of their time.

Importantly for the theme of the book, both lace artefacts communicate a story, literally and metaphorically. They both include the facts and dates of their respective wars but also the hidden story of the resilience of lacemakers and the power of lace to transcend war and result in two beautiful war memorials. The book will be published on 23 January by Bloomsbury, so not long to wait now.

Lettering in handmade lace

I often use lettering in my work and have tried various ways of incorporating it into lace. Generally I only include a phrase or a short sentence and often the idea behind the work is that the words have been caught up or trapped in the net of the lace on a curtain or veil. I have used a Bedfordshire bobbin lace technique to incorporate text into my subversive doilies project and also on some of my lace curtains (in the image above) and veils.

I have also added lace to net curtains using a tambouring technique. This involves producing a fine line of continuous chain stitches using a tambour hook and thread and is a good way of incorporating cursive script into the work.

In other curtains I have worked bobbin lace and then used threads from the lace to embroider the text across the background fabric of the curtain. I used this technique in ‘Whisperings’ where I wanted to incorporate a conversation of different threads of speech interacting with one another. I think these simple techniques suit the style of my work where I am trying to represent the thoughts of the lacemaker or imply that the words have merely been sifted from the air and trapped by the lace itself.

Early twentieth century Nottingham lace curtains

 

My article on ‘Early twentieth century Nottingham lace curtains: an ideal window furnishing’ has now been printed in volume 53 issue 2 of Textile History. It compares three collections of machine lace curtains from the archive of Nottingham City Museums and Galleries and begins by explaining how lace curtains were made and designed. During my research I also studied sales catalogues, retail advertising and advice manuals to see how different styles of curtains were promoted to different social groups. The advertisers and writers did this by suggesting certain styles of curtains for different rooms in the house and for different budgets and even sold parcels of curtains to furnish the complete home. The early twentieth century was a time of great cultural change as styles and fashions changed and simpler furnishing styles became popular. The manufacturers also catered for a large export market which again favoured different styles and fabrics compared to the home market. If you’re interested in reading the article for yourself, the publishers have provided 50 free copies on a first come first served basis through the link here. I hope you enjoy it.

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/UGGP82D3BMHQFZBMGTHS/full?target=10.1080/00404969.2024.2318661

More Turkish lace

There are two types of Turkish lace, one made using a fine crochet hook in a looping technique and the other in a knotting technique using a needle and thread. The cherry design shown in the image above shows both techniques as the scarf edging was made using the knotting method and the earrings were made using a crochet technique. For the knotting technique, the needle is inserted under the main thread then the length of thread is wound round the needle to make the loop and knotted in place. The difficult bit is controlling the size of the loops so they form a graded series that look like leaves. The leaves of the earrings are made using a fine crochet hook to pull loops of thread through each other to make a more solid looking leaf.

Both these two scarf edgings have been made using the crochet technique. The yellow one includes beads around the edge of the large scallop, to weight the lace as well as to catch the light and add sparkle. The other edging incorporates white and green threads. The base green design would have been worked first and the line of white loops added as a second round of work along the top. All the edgings were worked straight onto the scarves so the lacemaker could incorporate the hemming process into the lace work, rather than making the edgings and sewing them on to the fabric once they were finished. The lace is not only practical but also beautiful and even from these few examples you can see what a variety of lace can be made using these two techniques.

Fashionable veiling in early twentieth century New York

 

In 1911, the fashionable woman in New York was wearing millinery with veiling. According to an advertisement from the Hydeman and Lassner company, based in Fifth Avenue, ‘tuxedo mesh veiling’ was popular and was available in a variety of designs and colours including dotted effects. They also advertised ‘The storm queen’ waterproof chiffon cloth veil, which they claim is the only rain-resisting veil on the market. Other companies advertised all-over lace designs more reminiscent of fine knitting patterns, like the one in the main image.

What surprised me was the variety of designs and colours available. Some are floral, others are more cellular and there are numerous styles of net, some with different sizes of dots and others quite plain.

Among the variety of all-over designs I thought this frame veil was a good idea. It is advertised as following the fashion for heavy scroll designs, but includes an area of clear net in front of the face to allow the wearer to see more clearly.

Inscribed Honiton lace bobbins

 

In my blog of 19 June I looked at Honiton lace bobbins and explained why they are finer than East Midlands bobbins and don’t require spangles to weight them. Most Honiton bobbins are plain, but some are inscribed and decorated by incising their surface, in a similar way to scrimshaw, and then filing the incisions with coloured sealing wax. The bobbin on the right, in the image above, shows the typical triangular shaped incisions filled with red wax. The central area depicts a sailing ship with sails and rigging and a circle with simple markings possibly to represent the sun or a face. Round the top of the bobbin, three letters are inscribed, separated by triangles; these are presumably the initials of the owner or the giver. The inscription on the second bobbin is much more complex and more finely worked. It includes the initials SM at the top and the date 1817, but the name Elizabeth Matthews is inscribed in a spiral down the shank of the bobbin, which suggests that SM gave this bobbin to Elizabeth as a gift. Between the lines of the spiral are a ship, an anchor, a bird and a diamond shape, all linked with small patterns made up of tiny triangular shapes. This bobbin has also been coloured with both red and dark blue or black sealing wax. These bobbins are typical of inscribed Honiton bobbins in that they both include initials and ships, which were often so realistically drawn that the type of vessel can be identified. Other motifs used were animals, such as fish or birds, human figures and mermaids, stylised flowers, hearts and patterns of lines, bricks or triangles. If you are interested in finding out more, a good source of images is H J Yallop’s book The history of the Honiton lace industry, in which he includes several pages of these symbols.

Mary Bailey lace runner and poet

 

Mary Bailey was a lace runner in Nottingham in the early part of the nineteenth century, which meant she embroidered lace designs onto machine-made net. It was a skilled job requiring artistic talent, good eyesight and neat, accurate work and was essential to the Nottingham lace trade because, at that time, lace machines could not produce patterned lace, only net ground. Mary was one of many poorly paid lace workers whose lives generally went unremarked. But Mary was different, because in 1826 she published a pamphlet of 13 poems to raise money to help her to support her young children and sickly husband. These poems are not the anodyne verses expected from a working-class woman who knows her place. Instead they reflect her life and work, her hopes and fears and the struggle to give her family a decent life. One reflects on the hard work required to make lace and why it should be fairly remunerated. Here are the first two verses:

You ladies of Britain, we most humbly address/And hope you will take it in hand/And at once condescend on poor runners to think/When dress’d at your glasses you stand

How little you think of that lily-white veil/That shields you from gazers and sun/ How hard have we work’d, and our eyes how we’ve strain’d/When those beautiful flowers we run.

Another poem thanks the lady who came to her house with bread one evening when she had nothing to feed her children. One poem shames another lady who ‘desired me to pray for the death of my youngest child’ because she considered Mary had too many children. Another reports how Mary challenged two middle-class girls she saw tormenting a locust and highlights the morality of the story. Other poems record events in her life and people she knew. Mary died in 1828, two years after the poems were published, leaving her husband and nine children below the age of thirteen. I do hope they survived and prospered after all her efforts to look after them. What an amazing woman.

My information about Mary Bailey came from a booklet published by Five Leaves Bookshop in Nottingham in which her poems are reprinted and introduced by John Goodridge.