Reading the thread

 

I’m delighted to have a chapter in this fascinating new book about textiles edited by Lesley Millar and Alice Kettle. Entitled Reading the thread: Cloth and communication it considers the abilities of thread to record or communicate a story. The contributions are wide ranging including the history, construction and future of threads and their use in contemporary practice.

My chapter builds on my research into the Battle of Britain commemorative lace panel made by the Nottingham machine lace company, Dobson and Browne, at the end of the second world war. In this study I compare it with the handmade needlelace tablecloth made for Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, as part of the Belgian war lace initiative during the first world war. Although both these lace works seem quite different in technique and manufacture, there are many similarities between them. Both were designed as artworks rather than everyday lace and both incorporate iconography and symbols representative of the events of their time.

Importantly for the theme of the book, both lace artefacts communicate a story, literally and metaphorically. They both include the facts and dates of their respective wars but also the hidden story of the resilience of lacemakers and the power of lace to transcend war and result in two beautiful war memorials. The book will be published on 23 January by Bloomsbury, so not long to wait now.

Pat Earnshaw’s lace research

 

I’ve been doing quite a lot of writing about lace over the lockdown and am constantly grateful for the amazing research carried out by Pat Earnshaw in her beautifully illustrated books on lace. Although there are numerous books on handmade laces and their identification there are few books for the general reader on machine made lace and it is here that Pat’s books are invaluable. Her book ‘Lace machines and machine laces’ gives very clear descriptions of the workings of the main types of lace machines, their history and development. While her book on ‘How to recognise machine laces’ is excellent for revealing how to distinguish handmade and machine made laces – often through very subtle signs such as the construction of the picots edging a piece of lace. Her books on the identification of handmade laces and her book on lace fashions are also highly readable and packed with useful research but it is the ones on machine lace that I’ve been using most recently. I see from the flyleaf of one of my books that she graduated from Reading University and as well as qualifying as a teacher she was also a lace consultant to three prestigious London auction houses. A very talented woman who I for one am very grateful to.