Cell lace from Plauen

 

I came across a short article about cell lace in a 1920 edition of The lace and embroidery review and was intrigued to find out what it was. It seems to have been an initiative by the Plauen lace manufacturers to produce a new type of lace suitable for the post-war period. The main idea seems to have been to create ‘as much lace with as little material as possible’. The article states that lace manufacturers can no longer make the type of lace they produced before the war because that lace requires more material than the industry can now afford. This aim to produce more cost-effective lace seems to be related to a scarcity of raw materials and a consequent rise in prices. The lace and embroidery review was a trade publication and this new type of lace design would have been of interest to manufacturers and lace retailers. The article notes that the designers aimed to create a machine-made lace that would be almost as good as handmade lace ‘regarding artistic value and technical production’ while keeping costs down, basically ‘a lace whose artistic merit would appeal to the select and whose price to the multitude’. The lace shown in the image was designed in the Richard Roeder studio and it is in keeping with the new styles of lace proving popular in Europe and America. However, I have never heard of cell lace so perhaps the term did not catch on or it was just a name used in the manufacturing trade and not by consumers.

Lace designs by Marcel Tuquet

 

Marcel Tuquet was a prolific lace designer working at the end of the nineteenth century. His designs are generally floral and incorporate a more decorative band at the side which also runs along the bottom of the lace.

A notice I’ve seen from The London Gazette of 1890 records that he and Marcel Boudard were partners in a lace curtain design business in Nottingham. They not only designed lace but are also recorded as the owners of a patent for a double action jacquard (the mechanism by which pattern was applied to the lace machines). They were not the inventors of the jacquard system but had obviously patented a modification to the system that was already in general use. The purpose of the notice in the London Gazette was to dissolve their partnership. This seems to have been an amicable split, with Tuquet taking on the lace design part of the business and Boudard the manufacturing side.

The designs in the images here were all made later in Marcel Tuquet’s career when he supplied lace curtain designs to the Christian Stoll company of Plauen, which produced design inspiration folders for the European lace industry. Whether he had relocated to Plauen by then (approximately 1900) or remained in Nottingham but sent his designs abroad I have yet to find out.

Machine lace imitating handmade designs

 

These lace trims were made in the 1960s on the Levers lace machine but they all have their origins in nineteenth century handmade lace. That is probably not surprising as a large part of the training for machine lace designers included copying old lace patterns and designing lace that appeared handmade. The fine little trim at the top resembles Buckinghamshire baby lace, a simple pattern that was one of the first a bobbin lacemaker would learn. The dainty black lace resembles Chantilly lace, a fine French handmade lace with an open net background and a design outlined with a thicker gimp thread. The two lower laces also resemble old Buckinghamshire bobbin lace designs, the upper one is similar to the sheep’s head pattern, another fairly simple handmade lace that a beginner would learn, and the lower one resembles floral lace, which was a much more complicated type of bobbin lace. Examples of these types of old bobbin lace patterns were kept by machine lace manufacturers in design portfolios specifically to inspire their designers and it’s interesting to see that these old designs were still inspiring lace in the second half of the twentieth century.       

Marcel Tuquet Nottingham lace curtain designer

 I’ve long admired the lace curtain designs of Marcel Tuquet and am lucky enough to have a folder of some of his Plauen designs published in 1900. I had always assumed that he was based in Germany or somewhere else in Europe but I have discovered a reference to him in Nottingham. The reference comes from the London Gazette in 1890 and is a notice that the partnership between Marcel Tuquet and Marcel Boudard, described as lace curtain designers, is being dissolved by mutual consent. It states that Marcel Tuquet will carry on their designing business in Nottingham and his partner will continue their lace manufacturing business. I’m now interested to know whether Marcel Tuquet moved to the continent by the time the design book was published or whether he remained in Nottingham and sent his designs from there to Plauen. If anyone can enlighten me please get in touch.

 

Renaissance patterns for filet lace

 

I've been studying some of the filet lace designs given in Federico Vinciolo’s 1587 book of lace and embroidery patterns and comparing them with more modern pieces. The book was very popular and was reprinted at least 17 times between its inception and 1658. No instructions are given with the patterns, it was obviously assumed that needlewomen of the time would know how to work them. In the filet or lacis section of the book the patterns are reproduced on a square ground and in some cases the number of meshes it covers are enumerated although this could be deduced from counting them on the grid. 

Some are square geometric designs, others are sections or corners of a design. Some are specifically labelled as handkerchief edgings, but they are 35 meshes wide so would have been quite wide. Some of the patterns are figurative with gods and goddesses representing the seasons as well as hunters with dogs. There are also individual animals such as a stag, peacock, lion and pelican as well as mythical beasts such as unicorns and griffins. 

Although most of the patterns are just made up of white blocks on a black grid I was interested to see a few that included some filling and outlining stitches which I’ve come across in contemporary pieces.

Thomas Lester and Bedfordshire lace

Thomas Lester was a nineteenth century Bedfordshire lace manufacturer who was responsible for some of the most beautiful English lace designs. The image above is taken from a cap piece he designed which is now in the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford. He exhibited lace at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London where he won a prize medal for his ‘improved arrangement of Bedfordshire pillow lace’. This was probably not an original design but an adaptation which showed that he understood the process of lacemaking and had an eye for designing. It is thought that he may have been able to make bobbin lace and his wife was definitely a lacemaker. In the 1850s there was a move away from the traditional point ground lace in Bedfordshire to the plaited laces which subsequently made Lester famous.

This image shows pages from Lester’s exercise book of designs in the Cecil Higgins collection. He was designing point ground lace in the early 1850s but after visiting the Great Exhibition, and in particular seeing that Honiton lace was not only a more free style of design but also was held in higher regard and fetched a higher price, he began designing Bedfordshire lace in a freer style using plaits to join the elements rather than grounds, which he used as filling stitches instead.

The designs often feature realistic plant forms and animals and the source of these may have been books of natural history, illustrated periodicals or Owen Jones’ The Grammar of Ornament which was used as a teaching aid at art schools. Such realistic natural designs were popular at the time and feature for example in Honiton and Brussels lace as well as other textiles. In the 1862 International Exhibition Thomas Lester was awarded a medal for his new type of lace, which he called ‘Bedfordshire white fancy lace’. He died in 1867 but the Lester family continued their lace manufacturing business in Bedford until 1905 and won medals in several exhibitions including the one in Chicago in 1893. However, the success of machine lace reduced their business considerably, particularly following the 1860s when the Levers lace machine became capable of producing imitation Bedfordshire (Maltese) lace, and they diversified into art needlework and Berlin work as well as continuing to sell ‘real lace’.

‘For better; for worse’ Amy Atkin lace mats

I’ve had a busy week writing about my response to the life and work of the first Nottingham machine lace designer, Amy Atkin, who although very successful had to give up work on marriage. The idea for using lace mats came from the work of the second wave feminist Judy Chicago who used place settings for famous women in her monumental installation ‘The Dinner Party’. She used complete place settings for her guests but I’ve just made place mats for Amy Atkin. Each one includes a strip of lace inspired by her lace designs, but only tacked in place, to show how easily women’s careers can be taken away from them and that domestic duties still have a huge influence on women’s lives. Each one also has part of the wording from the marriage service embroidered on it ‘for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer’ to reference the fact that she had to give up work when she married. Studying Amy Atkin’s life and lace designs, feminism, and the work of Judy Chicago has been interesting and making a practice based response seemed the appropriate approach to the research so writing about it is a great way to pull all those strands together.

Amy Atkin lace project

I’m getting on well with my Amy Atkin project – you’ll remember that she was the first female machine lace designer in Nottingham. The final piece will be four table mats with lace insertions in a reference to the theme of The dinner party by Judy Chicago which celebrates the lives of influential women. I’ve now made the lace for all four place mats using a needle run technique, which is basically embroidery on machine net, similar to Limerick lace. Although I don’t think Amy designed for needle run lace (her designs are all for machine lace), the early Nottingham laces were based on fine embroidery on machine net so I feel it is a suitable technique for the project. It also means that although I’ve been inspired by her designs my four designs have been specifically made for a different technique. One of the interesting things about Amy’s career, and that of other women of her time, was that she had to give up work when she married so my work will reflect that. The lace will only be temporarily attached to the fabric of the mat so that it can be removed at a moments notice, rather like her career, and the mats will each be embroidered with the words of the marriage ceremony ‘for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer’. My current preoccupation is deciding how big the mats should be, whether the lace should be inserted or attached to the side, what font to use for the text, and which stitch to embroider it in. A work in progress!

Amy Atkin lace designs

I’m making progress on my Amy Atkin lace project. The image shows my sketchbook and preliminary ideas for the finished lace. Amy Atkin attended Nottingham art School in the early 1900s and claimed to be the first female machine lace designer in Nottingham. Some of her designs and other items are held in the Collection of Nottingham City Museums, which is where I saw them. I decided against working her designs directly because they didn’t fit the short narrow format I’m using and also because I am working them in needle run lace on machine net rather than using a lace machine, which is what she designed them for. I’ve designed four panels using motifs from her designs and working in the same way as she did with a large motif at the base of the design and stylised flowers and foliage leading up from that. I’ve just finished the first panel and found the needle run lace worked well. It’s a technique I used on my response to the Battle of Britain lace panel and has relevance to the early machine lace trade, before the invention of the jacquard pattern system, when much decorated lace was made by using a needle and thread to add the pattern to plain net, so it seems relevant to the work of a machine lace designer.