Reviving a topic from a couple of weeks ago regarding when were corners worked as distinct from gathering the lace.
I have just had another glance through the November 2003 Lace Society newsletter prior to filing it, and noticed that in the extract from "The Illustrated London News" February 1869, the illustration clearly shows a corner being worked on an enormous bolster pillow. The piece of lace is narrow, and appears to be a typical Bucks mass of pins. The pillow is so large (the diameter is similar to the lacemaker's shoulder to seat measurement) that the working surface is similar to a mushroom pillow. The bobbins are unspangled, but I suppose could be deemed thumper-ish. The text though refers to the bobbins (50 or 60 of them, far more than illustrated) as being spangled so the drawing obviously came from "the archives", rather than being done from life. I'm not sure that the writer has quite got the hang of the method as the description is "Round the pins, when rightly fixed, the thread is thrown and woven together by the bobbins.... " All in all, despite a passage covering the hours needed to make lace and the poor wage earnt, it is a very romantically written piece finishing with the prediction "....... in all probability, the operation of lace making will, like the spinning wheel and other matters once so familiar, soon become a thing of the past. Jacquie - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
