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.