Attitudes to bobbin lacemaking in the nineteenth century

 

I spent an interesting day at Luton Museum last week researching the decline and revival of the handmade lace industry in the nineteenth century. I was interested to read about Catherine Channer’s interviews with lacemakers at the end of that century and the differing attitudes they had to making Bucks point lace. She found that the older women, aged over seventy, had fond memories of making lace. Many of them told her how they loved making lace and would happily sit all day at their pillows. They told her it was nice, clean work and reasonably paid. One old lady told her she loved her pillow and said “When I was a girl I spent all my pocket money on my pillow; I loved to have it nice. I had some beautiful bobbins, bone ones with beads on them and names, and my pins had different coloured heads”. However talking to middle-aged women Miss Channer got a completely different response. Many of them said they hated lacemaking because it was badly paid and they wouldn’t want their children to do it. One reported that she hated it so much she burned all her bobbins. Another said “It’s an awful trade lacemaking” which is confirmed by another woman saying “If you go lacemaking you’ll never have salt to your porridge”. Why was there such a difference in attitudes? Mainly because the older women had been working at a time when handmade lace was valued and the patterns had been beautiful to work. The middle-aged ones only remembered an industry in decline, when they had poor patterns and thread and had to work hours under pressure for little reward. Today we are fortunate that lacemaking is a leisure or artistic activity, and we are not working with cheap materials under time pressure for a few pence, so like the older lacemakers we can enjoy our pillows and lacemaking.