Miss Channer’s lace mat

 

Catherine Channer was actively involved in the revival of the East Midlands handmade lace industry in Britain in the early twentieth century. She was a lacemaker, teacher and researcher and I’ve written about some of her work in this blog before. Today I’m looking at Miss Channer’s mat which she designed in the early 1920s using the technique for pricking the ground that she had developed following research into old lace patterns and their origins (see this blog of 24 October 2023). An image of the mat was published in her book Practical lacemaking published in 1928 which was one of the few textbooks for students and gave instructions and patterns for Bucks point lace. 

The mat in the book had been worked by Mrs Dixon of Clapham, Bedfordshire in about 1926 and is now in the collection of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery in Bedford. The mat became famous as a challenge for skilled lacemakers in 1991 when Ruth Bean published Anne Buck’s book about Miss Channer entitled In the cause of English lace. A supplement was published at the same time comprising an image of the mat and a full sized pricking of it, which had been adapted by Patricia Bury from an earlier version in her collection. Since then many lacemakers have worked it and their handiwork can be seen by searching for ‘Miss Channers mat’ on the internet. No instructions were given for the original mat or for the version published in 1991 so it is also interesting to see how it has been worked by different lacemakers and the varying number of pairs of bobbins they used to complete it. I have never made Miss Channer’s mat but I do admire the skill and patience of those who have.

Development of English bobbin laces

 

I’ve been carrying out more research into Miss Channer, who made and studied lace at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and she has some interesting ideas about the developments of the English handmade lace industry. She notes that in continental Europe most of the finest lace was made in convents, which provided a ready access to money and ability, in the form of cultured patrons and a resource of talented, hard-working, young women who could be taught how to make and design lace. In effect the convent took on the roles of ‘manufacturer, merchant, capitalist and instructor’. In contrast, with few convents, the English handmade lace industry had little capital or organisation. Teaching was undertaken by village lace schools which was variable and depended on the ability of the lace teacher, and design remained in the hands of a few families. Lace was generally made by villagers in their spare time to supplement their family income and bought by travelling lace buyers or local retailers. Miss Channer praises English lace designs and the dexterity of the lacemakers but laments the lack of organisation and that there were few places to learn design and little time for the lacemakers to concentrate on their work amid the other calls on their time.

She notes that most English bobbin laces were originally attempts to copy foreign styles that were adapted by the local lacemakers to produce lace styles that became typically English. She gives as examples Honiton pieced lace which was introduced to Devon from Flanders in 1662, French point ground lace introduced to Buckinghamshire, and Maltese guipure lace taken up in Bedfordshire in the second half of the 19th century. All these laces were developed and altered by the local lacemakers to produce the three distinct types of English laces known as Honiton, Bucks point and Bedfordshire. The image at the top shows a typical Bucks point lace with integral ground and outlining gimp thread, and the lower image is an example of Bedfordshire guipure lace.

Miss Channer’s research into pricking lace grounds

 

Miss Catherine Channer was a lacemaker, teacher and researcher who was actively involved in the revival of the English East Midlands lace industry in the nineteenth century. As well as teaching lace, as part of the revival, she collected lace patterns and recorded information from older lacemakers with a view to preserving the history of the lace trade. Reading about her work recently I came across her ideas about the origins of some East Midlands laces. She considered that most of the designs had been brought to the area by lacemakers from Flanders and had since merely been altered and adapted by the local designers. She reports that when she asked some old designers in Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire how they pricked the grounds (the patterns for the background net) of their patterns, they replied that they used the ‘cards’. She asked what these cards were and was shown some white cards pricked with holes in the correct placement for working point ground (the simplest net background also known as Lille ground); with different cards for different sized meshes. She asked where the cards had come from and was told “We’ve always had them”. She suggests that the cards had been brought from Flanders by the original lacemakers. Miss Channer was impressed by the accuracy of the cards and after analysing them discovered how to prick the ground on graph paper for the benefit of designers who did not have access to the cards. She explains how to do this in her 1928 book ‘Practical lacemaking’ and explains how to use the pricking for point and honeycomb grounds (both shown in the lace in the image above) as well as kat stitch. I think this shows not only that Miss Channer was a remarkable woman but also the importance of a researcher knowing the craft she is studying and therefore realising the importance of her discoveries.