I was thinking some of that may be because B'berg was promoted in
the US in the needlework magazines. They do stress the importance of
careful, practiced work but the ease of making the lace is also stressed.
Not just lace, and not just magazines; the "sliding standard" had been evident in other textile crafts, and books on the subjects. It is only *now* beginning to "recover", as far as I can see.
About 20+ yrs ago, my SIL gave me a book on needlepoint for Christmas. Very informative as for the basics but, when I compared what was coming from under *my* needle to the "stuff" my MIL did 50 yrs earlier, I was appalled at the crudity (crudeness?) of it. I finally figured out that I needed canvas that was about half the size... :)
For many years, the "selling point" of the projects in self-teach books on textiles was that they could be done -- from start to finish -- over a weekend. The assumption being that women, who were just beginning to compete with men for "real jobs" while still having to do all the other traditional "womanly" tasks, didn't have the time or energy to spend a year on a single project before seing the results. And, the more "removed" the craft from its "peak" (in history), the simpler it had to be, because fewer people would be interested in perfecting the details, and the books and magazines had to *sell*...
So, Battenberg was "simplified" (dumbed down) in late 19th/early 20th century, the needlepoint and crewel later, the cross-stich, crochet and knitting *still* later... But they all got the same treatment, at least in the US.
The same idea was reflected in many of the earlier BL books (even in Europe); every one of them started from the "cross and twist" point, and covered as many lace techniques as possible, all on the pre-school (or thereabouts) level; it was a bit later, that books dedicated to a particular technique, assuming some *general* knowledge of Bobbin Handling 101, began to appear...
I'm thinking that Branscombe Point was taught from a different perspective.
That of continuing to have the lace being made and great care taken to
preserve the history of Branscombe Point. Nobody was trying to think of a
"quick" way to make Branscombe lace.
I think another reason for the disparity might lie in the fact that, in UK, there was but a small gap of time to bridge between the professional and the amateur attempts, so that the amateurs would have been aware of what it was *supposed* to look like. In US, OTOH, except for the Hadley's workshop, there was no professional tradition at all; the patterns were all aimed at amateurs, and "scaled" accordingly. They had to sell, and better safe than sorry, when it comes to earning a buck -- much like the earlier Harry Potter (US edition) books... :)
IMO... ----- Tamara P Duvall mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED]
