If you were trying to put together an exhibit to illuminate the nature of Binche, what would you include?
All the info Lorelei has provided :) Starting with the separation of the earlier and the later ("revival") forms. By the "revival" time (late XIXth c), Binche had a distinct style of its own; in XVIIIth c and earlier, it seems to have been less easily distinguished from all the other "fine, 4prs-per-pin" laces...
I agree with Lorelei that "Flemish lace" is a good start, though I prefer "continuous" to "straight" -- there were scallops in some of it and, to me, "straight" means just that. I'm not sure about "no gimp" as being an *identifying* feature -- Valenciennes has no gimp either (poor thing <g>), and Mechlin (Mechelen, Malines) not always.
Nor would I discount "snowballs" *entirely* -- they appear in all the "4-per" laces, but nowhere in quite the same profusion, if one is to judge by photos of laces which had been "identified" (one has to leave off doubting *somewhere*, no? Though I'm very reluctant <g>). It's just that, until the "revival", they didn't seem to show up as *varied* as they did later; there seem to be two or three different ones in any particular piece, not 6 or more. But, space-wise, they do seem to be more prominent in Binche than in Mechlin or Val or Paris or even plain Flanders.
I'm not a "historian" -- "practitioner" would be a more appropriate term for my "angle" of interest -- but I do look at a lot of pictures in search of points of reference and/or "sparks" for new designs. So I do not have Levy's book (at the time, I couldn't afford it, and I have not seen it for sale recently). But I am in possession of several books which deal with reproduced patterns of the "4-per" laces, and also one of just text and photos:
Dentelles Belges du 16e au 18e siecle, published by Musees Royaux D'Art et D'Histoire (no ISBN, no date, though looks to be recent) and written by M. Risselin Steenebrugen.
Of the text (in French) I understand nothing beyond the title and (most of) the captions. But there are a few photos of lace identified as Binche, a couple identified as Valenciennes, and another few identified as Malines (the rest are tape-type, a couple labelled "Flanders" and -- majority -- supposed to be "Brussels"), all from 18th c. The differences between the 3 (Binche, Val and Mechlin) are quite pronounced. (Devon, I'll s-mail you the booklet, if you think it would help. It would be *wonderful* if the Met set up a lace exhibition in a near future)
----- Tamara P Duvall Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd/
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