Lace making in Nottingham in 1884

 

This blog is based on an article written by a reporter called Bernard H Becker for The English Illustrated Magazine in 1884. It is not, therefore, an accurate description of lace, lacemaking, lace machines, or even Nottingham, but gives a flavour of how people at the time celebrated the lace industry. Describing the history of the machine lace industry, Becker notes that in 1810 Nottingham was known for the production of machine-made net and tens of thousands of people in the town and the neighbouring counties were employed in needle running and tambouring net. The girls employed in this industry used needles or tambour hooks and thread to embroider patterns on to the net, which was held taught in a frame to make the work easier. He then quotes a story about John Heathcoat being inspired to develop his lace machine after a young woman told him her cousin had been employed in London by a man named Dawson who had made a fortune by making lace using machinery.

Becker was obviously visiting the Birkin works at Kimberley (shown in the image above) gathering material for his article as he notes that ‘it is a pleasant little run by rail to Kimberley from Nottingham and gives an excellent idea of the great recent extension of Nottingham and the surrounding townlets’. He also contrasts the conditions of Lancashire cotton workers with the lacemakers of Nottingham. He notes that the Lancashire mills are huge and the workmen’s homes are small and poor ‘suggesting the wide gulf which separates capital from labour and master from man’. In Nottingham, by contrast, ‘the transition from one condition to another is more gradual’ and workmen can hire machines and set up their own smaller manufacturers and ‘have opportunities of development, and with skill, ingenuity and conduct often succeed’ in bettering their life styles.

Although there are many small enterprises involved in the lace industry. Becker focuses on the ‘great mill at Kimberley’ owned by the Birkin family where he sees lace curtains being made. He comments that many children are employed in the works and the girls in particular are neat, quiet and of a modest demeanour. One of their main jobs is to wind the cotton thread from the spools on to the thin, round bobbins used in the lace machines and you can see a girl and a woman operating the bobbin threading machine in the image above. The work of setting up and running the lace machines is done by men and Becker praises their skilled work. The lace curtains are also designed by men who are trained at the Nottingham School of Art and Design in the studio on the top floor of the factory. The draughtsmen who translate the designs into the instructions for the lace machines are also trained at the Art School and Becker commends the school for the improvements in design it has encouraged. He also praises the conversion of Nottingham Castle into a museum, with help from the South Kensington Museum, which he says has ‘given new impetus to the arts of design’.

Once the lace has been removed from the machine, women are employed to check for holes and broken threads, which are repaired by hand. This drawing by A Morrow shows women mending the lace curtains, while the image at the top of the blog shows them checking the curtains. The lace then requires finishing, which involves starching, bleaching and gassing to remove the fluff from the cotton thread. Overall, Becker seems to have been impressed with the skill and dexterity of all the workers involved in the lace industry and pleasantly surprised by the working conditions and the way the industry had developed in Nottingham.   

Torchon bobbin lace

 

This image shows a typical example of Torchon lace, based on geometric shapes, including blocks of cloth and half stitch interspersed with spiders and rose ground, all surrounded with a fan edging. Torchon is often the first type of lace you are taught when starting bobbin lace making because it is based on grids and it is therefore easy to see which pinhole needs to be worked next. Also the patterns require no extra threads to be added or removed as the work progresses so the thread patterns are easy to follow. The filling stitches are generally variations on honeycomb stitch or rose ground. Two versions of rose ground are shown in this pattern, forming the blocks of small open squares. It also features two variations of spiders, with and without central holes and with 12 legs!

Torchon lace developed from the peasant laces of continental Europe, where it was often made and used in the home as a decoration for domestic linen. Santina Levey notes that Torchon means ‘dishcloth’ in French. In the first half of the nineteenth century Torchon lace was being made in France, Germany and Italy, but in the second half of the century it was taken up by the English lacemakers of the East Midlands and by 1900 Mrs Penderel Moody reports that it was also being made in Belgium, Russia, Bavaria, China, India and some African countries. Part of its appeal for domestic use is that if it is made of good quality linen thread it is easy to launder and lasts for many years.

Although Torchon lace is designed on grids or graph paper this does not mean the patterns are limited to squares, triangles and diamond shapes. Various types of graph paper are available including circular and sectional grids. The lace mat in the image above was worked from a design by Jane Atkinson using a circular grid and inspired by a motif on a Pueblo Indian pot.

I designed this three dimensional piece, inspired by modern architecture, using an irregular grid and leaving spaces between the main elements to allow it to be manipulated to form a sculptural shape. As you can see, Torchon lace has outgrown its reputation as a simple peasant lace and is now being used to design interesting contemporary lace works.  

Doily designs inspired by gothic architecture

 

I found these designs for doilies inspired by gothic architecture in a small leaflet produced by Coats Sewing Group in 1964. The introduction explains that ‘in this book the designer has turned to gothic architecture with a fresh eye and discovered, in the soaring pointed arches and the delicate stone tracery, a wonderful inspiration for crochet’. Unfortunately the designer is not named but the booklet suggests that one person designed all ten designs.

This doily with the pointed edges was inspired by the ceiling of Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey. You can see from the detail above that it features the portcullis and Tudor rose. These were both images used by Henry VII to validate his tenuous claim to the English throne, which he had achieved by conquest.

The portcullis was the emblem of his mother’s family, the Beauforts, through which he was related to royalty, and the Tudor rose was a symbol of his union with Elizabeth of York whose family had a stronger claim to the throne. The fleur de lis emblem you can see in the photograph of the ceiling was part of the Elizabeth’s coat of arms, but I think the crochet designer probably decided it was too difficult to reproduce in crochet and did not include it.

The Church of San Michele in Florence was the inspiration for another doily. In particular the star design at the top of the elaborately carved marble tabernacle. In the same way as before, the designer has not reproduced it exactly but has taken inspiration from it to produce a six-sided doily reflecting the six-pointed star.

The instructions for the patterns suggest that the correct tension is important in order to reproduce each design accurately and suggests altering the size of the crochet hook if adjustments are required. Detailed instructions for laundering and pinning out the crochet are also given. These include, accurately drawing the shape of the finished doily in pencil on to plain paper, using a ruler and set squares for squares and rectangles and compasses for circles. Then using rustless pins to pin out the lace, making sure that all scallops are the same size and all flower petals are pulled into the correct position. This all sounds a lot of work, but these gothic designs do rely on the shapes being accurate and reflecting the original architecture. In fact the leaflet does suggest how to starch them if you wanted them to be slightly stiffened to retain their shape.

Shaping sixteenth-century lace ruffs

 

Shaping lace ruffs was a skilled profession in the sixteenth century. It is said that Queen Elizabeth of England had her ruffs starched, shaped and set by the Dutch wife of one of her coachmen. Starch, which provided the stiffening for ruffs, had been introduced to England from Flanders in 1564. The shaping was achieved by using setting sticks, poking sticks and struts, which were held in the hand or in a holder, so they stuck out horizontally, and the frills of the ruffs were formed over them.

Ruffs were made from long lengths of fine fabric, generally lawn or cambric, sewn together to make a long piece and then gathered to form cartridge pleats and attached to a neckband. Without the addition of starch or shaping the folds of the ruff were soft and merely formed a frill around the neck. However, a skilled laundress could transform the ruff into a three-dimensional form, with the aid of starch and poking sticks. She could also make different shaped frills from the same basic form so that one ruff could look quite different each time she shaped it.

This image of monkeys ‘aping’ the fashion for ruffs shows the processes required to set a ruff. It was first washed, then covered in starch, taking care not to clog the holes of the lace with the liquid starch, and then dried. The starch was generally made from grains such as wheat or bran or from roots and could be coloured using plant dyes. Once the laundress was ready to set the ruff it was lightly dampened and ironed flat. It was then shaped using the poking sticks ensuring that the frills were all of the same size and the amount of fabric was divided equally between the sets. Once the shape had been achieved the ruff was ironed to fix the frills by pushing heated poking sticks into each set. To produce a ruff with a figure of eight appearance was more complicated and required the use of small pins to link adjacent sections together.

As you can see from the engraving of the monkeys starching ruffs, the fashion attracted much satire. It was a very impractical fashion, for example Queen Margot at the French court needed a spoon over 60 cm long to eat her soup because her ruff was so large. How she managed to eat soup using such a long spoon and negotiating a wide ruff I have no idea – I think I would have chosen something else to eat! However, fashion is often extravagant, fabulous and over the top and no fashions were more so than lace ruffs.

Venetian gros point needle lace

 

Venetian gros point is an Italian type of needle lace made in the seventeenth century that is characterised by three-dimensional lace scrolls in a baroque design. It was popular from about 1650 to 1660 and was made in fine thread, entirely of buttonhole stitches. First the outline of the motif was couched onto a background fabric and the base layer of filling stitches worked within the couched outlines to produce a flat piece of lace. The filling stitches were made by working one row of buttonhole stitches into the row above leaving spaces where required to make the holes in the patterns. Once the filling stitches are completed the thicker raised edges are worked. This is done by couching additional threads over the couched outlines and then securing them to the lace with closely worked buttonhole stitches. Much of the skill of the designer depends on raising some areas only slightly and padding others quite fully, to give contrast and a three-dimensional appearance to the finished lace.

As the buttonholing over the raised cordonnette progresses loops of buttonhole stitches or picots can also be added into the edge of the work. Once all the raised areas have been completed, separate rings of needle lace called couronnes can also be added, which can also be decorated with loops and picots. In fact the more decorated all the elements are the better! Finally the finished lace motif can be removed from its backing. This type of lace was made by a team of lacemakers each making separate motifs or specialising in different aspects of the work, depending on the structure of the workshop, with the beginners making the simple couronnes. Once the motifs were complete it would be the job of a specialised lacemaker to join them together to form the complete design. This could be done by sewing them directly on to one another or by joining them with thin lines or bars of buttonhole stitching.

Venetian gros point is a heavy lace that is seen to best advantage when it is laid flat so it was ideal for edgings, flounces and church vestments. This image shows part of a lace border dated from about 1660 which could have been used round a skirt, cuffs or church robe. When Venetian gros point was used as a collar it was spread flat over the shoulders and could also be used around the wrists of a garment or as a panel on each side of a neck opening.

By 1670 cravats had become fashionable for menswear. They comprised a long strip of linen with lace attached at each end, which was twisted round the neck and tied at the front, allowing the lace ends to be displayed below the chin and over the coat, as you can see in this painting from 1685 showing William III when he was Prince of Orange. The Prince has knotted his cravat, but an alternative style was to tie the ends together with a separate ribbon, passing round all the material and forming a bow at the front. The skill and time required to make Venetian gros point meant it was expensive. For example James II of England spent about £36 on a Venetian cravat for his coronation in 1685, which would cost the equivalent of over £4000 today. However, considering the work involved in making the lace, I really don’t think this is too high a price!

Bobbin Brown of Cranfield and his lace bobbins

William Brown was the eldest of ten children and was born in Cranfield in Bedfordshire in 1793. He described himself as a bobbin maker in the census returns of 1841, 1851 and 1861. This was unusual as most bobbin makers were not so specific and described themselves as woodturners or labourers. However, he was called Bobbin Brown by the local people so presumably his greatest trade was in lace bobbins. He had six children with his first wife, Sarah, but sadly she died in 1847 and in the 1851 census William is described as living with his unmarried daughter Mary. However, in 1857, at the age of 64, he married again, this time to a 44-year-old lacemaker called Hannah and they had two sons, one of whom it is thought later became a bobbin maker.

William’s bobbins are characterised by a small bulbous head with a slight dome at the top and a shallow pointed tail end. He made a large quantity of bobbins many of them inscribed with names and messages. His lettering is always coloured red and the letters are very neat although his spelling is sometimes incorrect, which may indicate he was not very literate. The bobbins in the image at the top of this post read from left to right ‘Sarah Ions my D[ear] Mother’, ‘My dear Father’, ‘George Burt my brother Jan 1856’ and ‘Love don’t forsake me’. Interestingly the bobbin with the spiral inscription follows a left hand spiral indicating that William was left handed. It also does not feature the characteristic domed head but I think the rest of the bobbin is so obviously William’s work that the head is a replacement, probably made by another bobbin maker to replace one that became chipped or broken.

The bobbins with single names in the next image read from left to right Mary, Dan[i]el, James, John. These are all common names of the time and William would probably have had a stock of them for sale in contrast to the longer and more complicated messages above which would have been specifically made to commission. The name bobbins also have very similar patterns of coloured dots at the back, which you can see in the image above, using his trademark colours of red, black and yellow.

William also made many bobbins inlaid with pewter. They were made by incising the bone or wood of the shank and then pouring molten pewter into the channels. They are called tigers, leopards or butterflies depending on the shapes of the pewter. All the bobbins in the image are tigers, because they have stripes of pewter, but the one on the right also includes  the name Joseph and a V shape called a butterfly. A leopard bobbin would include pewter circles. Over the years, the pewter used by several other bobbin makers has corroded and fallen out of the grooves in the bobbins, but William used a type of pewter with a low tin content which has survived well and gives a lovely silvery shine to them. William made a huge number of beautiful bobbins through his life, many of which survive today in excellent condition and are still used by contemporary lacemakers so I feel his nickname of Bobbin Brown is well deserved.

Lace fashions in 1919

This image of two elegant women at the races in Paris shows wide bands of lace being worn at the neck, waist and knees. The woman on the right also has a parasol edged with a  fringe of lace. This wide lace with a bold abstract pattern was probably Torchon or heavy Cluny lace or it could have been Swiss embroidered lace, all of which were fashionable at the time. An article in the American magazine The Lace and Embroidery Review for the year 1919 reports that many types of lace were fashionable in Europe and production had begun to increase following the ending of the First World War at the end of the previous year. In particular, reporters had found beautiful handmade applique, duchesse and rose point laces for sale in Belgium, of the style shown below.

   

 The London correspondent of the Review reported an increase in the use of lace in fashion especially in evening wear, as flounces on straight skirts and as short cap sleeves. However, much of this British lace was heirloom lace that women already owned rather than new purchases. The reporter noted that wearing lace had been considered slightly old fashioned but ‘Today laces make the elderly look young and the young even more youthful.’ They also noted that lace was quite scarce at the time so was also sought after because of its rarity value.

Reports from America suggested that one of the best selling laces was Valenciennes, but in Europe laces such as Chantilly, filets, venises and vals (Valenciennes) were also selling well. The sales of good quality laces, like the Chantilly lace in the image, were being buoyed up by the number of weddings and parties being celebrated following the armistice at the end of the war. The reporter noted that frills of lace, net and fabric were popular and women wanted lace frills on accessories, such as hats, handkerchiefs and veils, as well as on dresses and blouses. It seems that buyers and designers were keen to embellish clothing with lace and frills after the war years, but this fashion for lace was short lived as more simple designs prevailed during the 1920s.