Lace History

Malmsbury Lace

by Alice Howell

Malmsbury is a town in Wiltshire, in the north of England. During the 17th and 18th centuries, malmsbury lace was a thriving cottage industry. Joan Blanchard, author of "Malmsbury Lace", has traced the history of this lace from its beginnings as old English bonelace, through the period of French and Dutch settlement in the county of Wiltshire, and through the lace's gradual decline to its resurgence today.

The lacemaking seemed to die out in the late 19th century and was revived very early in the 20th. This revival seemed to end about the time of World War II, but enough people were still alive to document this lace.

Malmsbury lace is similar to Bucks and Downton, though there are key differences, and as fine as Honiton. The book contains 30 patterens, including 23 traditional ones such as Annie's Pattern that Alice is currently making on her travel pillow with Malmsbury bobbins. The traditional Malmsbury bobbins are unspangled because the thread is very fine and the weight of spangles would snap the thread. The bobbins are straight and plain, with a flat end. The pillow is like a huge football and quite round. A pattern was then called a 'parchment' and it had fabric ends stitched on to it which were pinned to the pillow. This was called a 'peel'. When at the end of the pattern, the bobbins were wrapped and the lace moved to the top of the 'parchment'. The thick outlining thread (gimp) was called bunting. Passive threads were called straight cottons, and tallies were known as basket filling.

Malmsbury lace is a point ground lace, similar to Bucks, but finer. the lace is a very fine geometric lace made at angles from 52-60 degrees. The patterns in the book are made on a grid of 13 holes to the inch, but some of the original laces were finer. The narrowest lace was 1/4 inch wide to be used as an insert between pieces of lace or fabric. The thread generally used was as fine as Honiton: 140-180 in Brok cotton. The patterns in the book are sized to Brok 100.

Joan Blanchard has done an excellent job of compiling the history of this lace, and a collection of patterns. The patterns include a sequence of edgings, a bookmark, and an assortment of motifs including one small enough to use for an earring.

Malmsbury Lace by Joan Blanchard is published by Batsford 1990

Tatting

from: Introduction to Tatting Patterns and Designs by Gun Blomqvist and Elwy Persson

One of the earliest records that we do have is the 'The Royal Tatter', a poem by the English poet Sir Charles Sedley in 1707. The central figure in the poem is Queen Mary II (1662-1694) who is described at her homely pastime of tatting. This means that the craft must have existed at least as early as the seventeenth century.

Tatting reached a height in popularity in European countries in the second half of the eighteenth century. It appears to have been a craft which the ladies of rank especially enjoyed as it is easy and graceful. There are several portraits from the period showing ladies engaged in tatting.

Interest in tatting lapsed from the end of the eighteenth century until the mid-nineteenth century. European fashion magazines were largely responsible for the revival. They began to restore enthusiasm by printing descriptions of tatting techniques, offering guidance, and even arranging competitions.

People worked with great liveliness and imagination and produced articles which were both useful and ornamental. These included lace for the handkerchiefs, underwear, children's clothes, and collars as well as a variety of small squares and round pieces for inserting into cushions, handbags, and table cloths. This revival only lasted until the early 1870's. Once again the coarseness of the materials seems largely to account for the decline in interest.

Not until the 1920's did tatting regain its popularity. Materials had improved by this time and the shuttles were more manageable. Also a great number of pattern books appeared on the market at the time. Interest waned after the war years, and only revived again lately.

Nottingham Lace

by Margaret Palen

Nottingham, in the midlands of England, has long been famous for its lace, though it has always been machine-made rather than hand-made bobbin lace. The 2002 Nottingham World Lace Congress lectures reflected this with local history. David Springett lectures on East Midland lace bobbins and their makers. His lecture and photos can easily be found in his 2nd edition (1997) "Success to the Lace Pillow."

Sheila Mason, Director of the Cluny Lace company in Derbyshire, manufactures of Levers and Raschel machine laces, lectured on "Nottingham Lace From Hand to Computer in 250 Years". She began her lecture. " I realize that among textile fraternity, and yourselves in particular, hand made lace is regarded as the 'real' textile, while machine-made lace is considered an imitation." She went on to say that machine-made lace adopted the names of various hand-made laces, and that there is a lot of poor machine-made lace around. By the end of her lecture she hoped to have persuaded the audience that Nottingham machine-made lace is a textile in its own right and is equal to, although different from, hand-made lace.

Because the lace machine was invented in Nottingham, it became the center of machine-made lace. In 1589 William Lee of Calverton (a village about 8 miles Northeast of Nottingham), invented a knitting frame that was used to produce hose. The frame and technique were standard for 200 years. By the 1750's fashions were changing and silk and cotton stockings for men were no longer in demand. About 1785 a second type of knitted net appeared in Nottingham on warp knitting frames 44 inches wide. However, the knitted nets from the stocking and warp frames didn't have elasticity or durability.

Frameworkers wished to imitate more closely the twisted pillow laces. The first successful frame which twisted together threads to from lace net was patented by John Heathcoat in 1809. The Heathcoat bobbin net machine was followed by many different twist frames, the most important being the Levers machine invented in Nottingham in 1913 by John Levers. The fabrics produced on the Levers machine were called "bobbin lace." This caused some confusion between the hand and machine made laces. Until the 1960's Levers lacemaking was concentrated in the East Midlands of England, but the area also had a small percentage of plain net and curtain lacemaking. The largest amount of curtain lace was made in Scotland and continued to be made there until the end of the 20th century.

From the beginnings of the industry until the end of the 20th century, at least 99% of the lace and net made in Britain passed through Nottingham. It was only natural that lace made on machines in Britain came to be called "Nottingham Lace." The largest buyer of Nottingham Lace was North America. Lace shipped through Nottingham traveled to the USA on nearly every passenger vessel that crossed the Atlantic and some even went down with the Titanic. In addition to the lace manufactures, a second group promoting Nottingham as the center of the machine-made lace industry were the machine builders. The Nottingham builders built 99% of the world's twist lace machines and many of the warp lace machines. In the USA the lace curtain machine was simply called "The Nottingham Lace Machine."

Nottingham lace made on Nottingham built machines weathered the radical changes in women's fashions in the 1920's, the depression of the 1930's, and two world wars. However, from the 1950's the great British industry of machine-made lace began to decline. Increasingly, British lacemakers closed down. In the the opening years of the 21st century, the mass of lace production, formerly passing through Nottingham has disappeared to countries where wages are much lower. In China, wages for working are much lower and there are few, if any, restraints on the number of hours or days worked or on working conditions. There is often government, EU or world Bank money to buy the latest expensive lace machines in these countries that is generally unavailable in Britain.

The British machine-made trade still exists, especially in the high quality nets and laces, but in a modified form. In 250 years lacemaking by machine has traveled from hand-operated frame to state-of-the-art computer-controlled machine.