Copying lace styles

 

Having seen ‘imitation lace’ being described in my late 19 century needlework dictionary as a type of tape lace (see last week’s post) I was interested to see how Pat Earnshaw defined it. She wisely does not use the term imitation lace but does discuss copying and convergence in her book on the identification and care of bobbin and needle laces. She suggests seven possible permutations of copying, starting with ‘same time; different area; different technique’ in which she includes all the machine lace copies of different handmade lace techniques, such as machine-made Chantilly lace. Chantilly lace is the fine black lace seen in the image above and the handmade and machine-made versions are often difficult to tell apart. Initially I thought the example above was machine made because of the way the outlining has been done but on closer examination I found the lace had been made in fine strips, later joined together, which is a feature of handmade Chantilly lace.

Under ‘same time; different area; same technique’ Pat mentions the convergence between Bedfordshire lace and Maltese lace, as well as that between Honiton and Brussels laces (image above). In ‘different time; different area; same technique’ she includes the raised needlelaces of the 17 century, which were copied in the 19 century for sale and exhibition as well as for the domestic lacemaker as we saw in my previous post about imitation lace. There were also laces in the category ‘different time; different area; different technique’ such as the 16 century reticella designs that were copied in the 19 century using the Schiffli machine. I think Pat Earnshaw has confirmed my original scepticism about the label ‘imitation lace’. Most laces seem to be influenced by ideas and techniques from other places, and as Pat suggests sometimes this is copying and sometimes convergence. However it was always with the aim of selling more lace to the consumer, by keeping up with fashions and making the lace more cost effectively.

Brussels application lace veil

This beautiful lace veil was shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851 by the Belgian company Delahaye. The description in the Art Journal Catalogue published at the time and from which this image comes states ‘‘The patient labour and perseverance necessary to complete these exquisite additions to the toilette of beauty can scarcely be understood by those who have not witnessed their slow growth in the manufactory, in which years are consumed in the production of a single veil’.

Brussels application lace was indeed beautiful and time consuming to produce as it included both fine bobbin lace and exquisite needle lace. Patricia Wardle in her book on Victorian lace describes the manufacturing process and the specialised workers it involved. The drocheleuse made fine strips of bobbin net for the background net, which were joined together by the jointeuse. Flower motifs were made by the pointeuse in fine needle lace and the relief or more three dimensional areas were worked by the brodeuse. The bobbin lace motifs were also made by two specialist workers; the platteuse made the solid parts of the design and the formeuse added the intricate filling stitches. All of these elements were assembled into the final piece in the workrooms of the lace manufacturer by highly skilled striqueuses. By 1851 when this beautiful shawl was exhibited the background net was much more likely to be machine made rather than the drochel of the early nineteenth century but the other parts of the work would still have been made separately and joined together with ‘patient labour’ as the catalogue suggests.