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.

So called ‘Bohemian’ lace from 1911

 

While researching early twentieth century lace recently I came across a series of advertisements for ‘Bohemian’ lace in the American publication Lace and Embroidery Review. This magazine was aimed at the trade buyer and informs them that a new lace line for Spring will be ‘Bohemian’ lace, which it claims is already very popular in Paris, particularly in champagne and ecru colours. Now, I appreciate that Bohemia is a well-known lace producing area, famous for both its traditional and contemporary lace, but the ‘Bohemian’ lace depicted in the magazine article is described as a tape lace made up of ‘two and sometimes three widths of linen tape twisted in arabesque form and very lightly bound together by brides’. It continues by suggesting that the designs resemble Moorish architecture and are also reminiscent of vermicelli patterns made from soutache braids. The dictionary tells me that soutache is a narrow, flat, ornamental braid used to trim garments and therefore is indeed very similar to the tapes used in tape lace.

The advertorial tells us that these ‘Bohemian’ laces come in both handmade and machine made varieties. Tape lace was popular at this time and many women’s magazines included patterns to be made up at home. It was also easy to buy a variety of different braids and threads from haberdashery shops. However the laces in the images are all machine made varieties sold by the dealers Case and Co. I don’t think it is surprising that the manufacturers have repurposed the name Bohemian for their lace. Machine laces were often given the names of handmade varieties of lace, for example, Valenciennes and Chantilly, to describe the style of the lace. I think the price would have soon made it clear whether the lace in question was hand or machine made.

Using filet lace insertions in the home

 

This filet lace insertion is Italian and was worked in the seventeenth century. It appears on the cover of an early twentieth century edition of Needlecraft magazine (annoyingly none of these magazines are dated). The magazine includes several filet lace patterns and includes suggestions for using them to decorate clothing and household linen. It notes that this design ‘would make a fine flounce for a duchesse table cloth or for the edge of a towel’. It also recommends that this type of border should be combined with fine drawn-thread work.

These filet squares have been inserted in linen and although the piece does not include any drawn-thread work, four different cut-work designs have been used to break up the solid, woven areas. Strangely, the magazine says that if an insertion like this is added to plain linen it looks over-elaborate, but if it is combined with satin-stitch embroidery, broderie anglais or Hedebo work the ‘fineness of the border is justified and its beauty enhanced’. It seems odd to specify these three types of embroidery – what about cut-work, for example, does that enhance the beauty or not? Also you would think that adding all these different types of needlework would result in over-elaboration rather than the reverse! However, I do think the addition of cut-work in the image above enhances the piece, so perhaps the author is right after all.

Textiles along the Silk Road at the British Museum

 

I recently visited the new exhibition at the British Museum entitled Silk Roads and was interested to see examples of ancient silk as well as wool and cotton. The exhibition emphasises the role of the Silk Road in the exchange of ideas and goods between east and west and, certainly as far as the textiles go, concentrates on the period between 600 and 900 AD. The main image shows an embroidery of the Buddha emerging from a mountain, worked in silk thread on a silk ground. It was found in the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, China which was a major Buddhist complex.

The dyed silk fragments in this image were patterned with a resist technique which uses wooden clamps to cover parts of the material before it is put into the dye bath. The pattern of geese and flowers in roundels was used in Central and West Asia before it spread to China. The British Museum and Chinese experts have managed to reconstruct this dying technique as well as a weaving technique used to produce a silk textile known a samite. The example in the exhibition is a sutra or cover for scrolls with a pattern of two lions facing each other; another pattern that originated in Central Asia. Both the dyed silk and the sutra were also found in the Mogao Caves.

The exhibition also recounts the legend of the princess who travelled from the East to marry the king of Khotan, bringing with her the secret of silk production, by hiding silk worm cocoons and mulberry seeds in her headdress. The panel shows her in the centre with a woman weaving silk and using a comb beater like the one in the cabinet on the right.

As well as luxury silks the exhibition also features another more utilitarian textile of the Silk Road; wool. This shoe is made of felted wool with leather patches. It was found in the guard station of a hill fort and would have had a drawstring tied round the ankle to keep it in place.

Cotton also features in the exhibition in the form of this funerary banner of a high ranking Uyghur man. The history of the nomadic Uyghurs provides an example of the movements of populations along the Silk Road. Originating from the Mongolian Plateau they established an empire which lasted for 100 years. Following its collapse, some of the population moved south west and by 866 AD they had gained control of Gaochang in China, where they established the Kocho kingdom. The inscription on this banner is in the Turkic language of Kocho.

The exhibition also has examples of what may be Sogdian silk and fragments of woven silk found in Egypt and traded in the Byzantine empire. I enjoyed the exhibition but would have liked to have seen more textiles, however, I expect this is a reflection of the small numbers of textiles that survive from that time. There are some other beautiful artefacts, particularly jewellery, metal work and books and the exhibition runs until 23 February 2025 if you are interested in seeing it for yourself.

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.

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.

Fashionable veiling for hats in the early 20th century

 

Veiling for hats was fashionable in the early 20th century according to the February 1918 issue of The lace and embroidery review, an American magazine for lace buyers. Reporting on the items that were selling well in department stores, the magazine notes that veiling material was selling better than ready made veils, suggesting that women were buying netting by the yard and making up their own veils. The advertisements in the magazine suggest that there were two main styles of veiling, either a fairly long veil with a border design or shorter veils with embellishment across the face. The model in the main image above wears a hat with a deep, loose veil of hexagonal mesh with chenille dots in various sizes. The model in the image below shows the alternative style with a short hexagonal veil closely fitted around her face, embellished with a floral, scrolling design.

The article records that filet or square mesh was becoming popular but hexagon, diamond and fancy weaves were still selling well. It suggests that filet is better as a ground for angular designs, such as butterflies and leaves, while floral patterns are more effective on hexagonal meshes. It notes that all-over scrolls and chenille dots are fashionable, which is borne out by the illustrations. However, although velvet circles along the border of a veil are also popular, they do not wear well, because instead of being worked in chain stitch into the net they are cut out and stuck on to the veil and can come loose and fall off. I assumed all these veils and nets would be black but the article reports that purple, taupe and reddish brown shades were also selling well.

The artfulness of filet lace curtains

I’m always impressed by the beautiful designs that can be worked in filet lace. Working on a square grid would seem to be very limiting but in skilled hands quite naturalistic images can be formed, as you can see with the cherubs and flowers in this image.

To work filet lace the lacemaker first has to make the net background. This is generally done by starting at a corner of the work, which is secured to a fixed point. The net is then made by looping thread round a spacer (rather like a lolly stick) to ensure the squares of the net are the same size and securing them to the stitch above with a knot. The lacemaker continues making a line of net stitches, gradually increasing stitches on each side of the work, until the required size is reached. It sounds complicated and is difficult to start with, until you get into a rhythm and learn how to manipulate the various loops of the thread as well as the netting needle and the spacer. In her book The technique of filet lace, Pauline Knight includes some images of how to make the net, which are helpful if you are learning netting. However, today you can cheat and use readymade machine net for filet work if you find that easier.

Once the net is made, or bought, the design has to be darned into it. Again this is not as simple as just filling the area with solid stitching. The threads are worked over and under each other in a regular pattern, so that, for linen stitch, two horizontal and two vertical threads pass through each open square. Therefore the lacemaker has to work out the thread paths before starting work. Margaret Swain in her book The needlework of Mary Queen of Scots notes that Mary and her companions were keen needlewomen and particularly enjoyed puzzling out how to work filet lace designs ‘in an age that enjoyed mazes, anagrams and emblems’. So not only are these lace curtains beautiful they are also works of art and artfulness. 

Nottingham lace bedspreads

 The main product of the Nottingham lace curtain machine is obviously curtains but the same machines can also be used to produce other large lace furnishings such as tablecloths and bedspreads. The bedspread in the image above was advertised in the 1933 edition of the Lace Furnishings catalogue and the dimensions are given as 70 by 90 inches which suggests that it was designed to be laid on the top of the bed and not hang down the sides. Unfortunately no price is given.

This bedspread was advertised in a Samuel Peach catalogue of 1904 as being 82 inches wide and 108 inches long and the price is given as 7 shillings and 6 pence (7/6). The Peach catalogue also has some smaller bedspreads, approximately 80 by 90 inches and these are all lined with satinette. This extends their size and presumably makes them more hard wearing. These lined bedspreads cost from 8/6 up to 14/9 and if the customer wants a 10 inch frilled edge added, they have to pay 7/6 extra. The catalogue notes that when lined these bedspreads give an exceedingly pretty effect to any room.

Honiton lace bobbins

 

The characteristics of Honiton lace – its fine thread and the need for sewings – determine the type of lace bobbins required for the work. Honiton lace is a pieced lace, which means that the lacemaker makes individual motifs that are later combined with others to form the finished design and are generally applied to net. The work is fine so the bobbins do not need to be very heavy to maintain tension in the threads. Also, because Honiton lace is not a continuous straight lace but is made up of separate areas of work, the lacemaker is continually joining parts of the lace to other parts. For example, in the lace in the image, the zigzag lines are added once the two semicircles have been made, so the threads have to be joined to each side of the work in turn. They are joined with a ‘sewing’, which involves looping one thread from the worker pair through a loop in the edge of the main piece of lace and then passing the other bobbin and thread through the loop, then pulling them up tight to form a join. Therefore the bobbins have to be thin and pointed to make sewings easier. Because the thread is fine they don’t require a spangle of beads at the end to provide added weight like East Midlands English bobbins and the beads would also be a hindrance when making sewings. The simplicity of Honiton bobbins also extends to their head, which does not have to be the bulbous shape of the East Midlands bobbins because the Honiton thread is finer. In general, Honiton bobbins are not decorated in the same way as spangled bobbins either with names, dates and mottoes although some of them are decorated with nautical images, but we’ll look at those in another blog.

Raised work in Bedfordshire bobbin lace

 

There are several methods of producing raised work in lace, but here I’m just looking at those used in Bedfordshire bobbin lace. This type of lace is made face upwards (unlike Honiton lace which is made face downwards) so any raised areas have to be worked above the main pattern rather than worked underneath and then covered by the main design. The first step in making the solid, thin, raised leaves that lie above the open, wider, half-stitch leaf in the image above is to lift two pairs from the main half-stitch area and set them aside. The half-stitch leaf is then continued until the length required for the stalk for the raised motif has been reached. The stalk is then worked by plaiting above the main lace and the bobbins used to make it then rejoin the main work. In the next row, four pairs of bobbins are put aside to work the pair of leaves. The half-stitch base is continued and the leaves are made and then the bobbins rejoin the main work, and so on, until the motif is complete. The stalks and leaves will be loose above the main work, but attached at both ends so they are secured.

Another method of producing raised areas is by working raised tallies, which are the 'blobs' seen on the leaf in the image above. Tallies are woven areas that are usually square in shape (tallies pointed at both ends are known as leaves). To make a raised tally, the two pairs needed for the work are lifted from the main design and are then woven to make a long tally. This strip is then looped over a horizontal pin to keep it raised and the bobbins returned to work the underlying cloth stitch. A pin is often used in the middle of the work to keep the tally tightly looped until enough rows have been worked beneath it to keep it in place.

A different way of introducing raised work into Bedfordshire bobbin lace is to make a completely separate area of lace and attach it to the main work later. In this image you can see that the four petals on the top right hand flower are raised like a flap over the flower beneath. They were worked separately using the pricking for the larger piece of lace and then sewn in place once the main piece of lace had been completed.

The raised areas can be any part of the pattern, worked separately, and later sewn in place. While those raised areas made as the work progresses can be leaves, tallies or simple plaiting worked over cloth or half stitch. Why do lacemakers raise areas of the work anyway? Probably because it gives the lace a slightly three dimensional appearance and depth that is not seen with flat pieces, and just adds a bit of interesting detail.

Crochet lace

 

There are many types of crochet lace, including Irish crochet lace and hairpin crochet, but today I’m looking at the type of crochet lace patterns that were popular homemade crafts in the 19th and 20th centuries. The instructions for many of these designs were easily available in women’s magazines, needlework books and craft leaflets, many of them produced by the thread manufacturers. The equipment was a simple hook and thread and the work was portable and easy to pick up and put down if the housewife had a few moments of leisure between household tasks. The majority of these crochet items were made at home for use in the home.

Mats and doilies, like the one in the main image, were popular, but crochet was also used to make lace trimmings for clothing and household linen, such as this example from Therese de Dilmont’s encyclopaedia of needlework, which mimics needlemade reticella lace.

Another reason why crochet was such a versatile craft for the homemaker is that items could be made from a collection of smaller squares or medallions, which were easier to work than one large piece of lace, and could be assembled to form the finished larger item once enough squares had been made. An example is this chair back, which is also illustrated with instructions in de Dilmont’s encyclopaedia.

It is no longer fashionable to incorporate so much lace in interior design, but many families have heirloom pieces of crochet lace made by their forebears and although we do not use them in our daily lives we should acknowledge their beauty and not dismiss the level of skill involved in their construction.