On May 7, 2008, at 11:53 AM, Bonnie Booker wrote: > I think you are right. There has been mention from 16th c. of Queen > Elizabeth's favorite cauls being made of chains. Could this have been > done the same? There were "crochets and hooks" counted in Queen Mary's > belongings when she returned to the court of Henry VIII. Then there is > a cope in a Spanish museum they say is trimmed in crochet. It seems > strange these things keep popping up but everyone says crochet didn't > exist until the 19th century. Maybe it just wasn't the fad until then.
Santina Levey says in _Lace: A History_ that there is a braid used as trimming mentioned in the 16th century (1580s) Earl of Leicester's inventory that she thinks is chain stitch made with a hook -- but she doesn't say *why* she came to that conclusion. Caul headdresses may have been trimmed with something similarly chain- like, but all the cauls I've seen have turned out to be made of solid fabric with diamond-shapes embroidered or couched onto the surface; they are not open hairnets in this era, or if they are, they are made in netting and always lined with fabric. Unfortunately, most of the supposed identifications of "crocheted" trim or "crochet hooks" earlier than at least the mid-1700s have turned out to be flawed when examined closely. The "hooks and crotchets" in Queen Mary's wardrobe are a classic example -- once you see them, you realize that they are dress hooks, used for fastening the opening to a dress (like modern hoks and eyes, only bigger) or for looping up portions of the skirt. They are basically a little flat rectangle of metal with a bent-metal hook that is more or less semi-circular in shape -- the modern item they remind me of is a cup hook (for hanging cups in a cupboard. We have surviving examples still attached to garments that demonstrate clearly how they were used. As I've said, I'm quite willing to believe Bjarne's example may be chain stitches and attachments made with a hook; I'm not dead set against there being crochet in the 18th century. But I see so many people jumping to conclusions from incomplete evidence that my initial response to most such suggestions is extreme skepticism until someone shows me really good evidence -- which it looks like Bjarne's example is. Yay for that! Really, I do understand why people keep trying to find crochet earlier. But we have so many examples of new things originating suddenly and then becoming fads in a very short time -- even in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, when we don't usually think that of that happening -- that I don't see any need to think crochet was around for any length of time before it "caught on." My favorite example of a quick fad is, in fact, the rosary, which originated in more or less its present form around 1470: an amazing 100,000 people from all over Europe joined rosary confraternities in just seven years, from 1475 to 1481. ____________________________________________________________ O Chris Laning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - Davis, California + http://paternoster-row.org - http://paternosters.blogspot.com ____________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
