I thought I'd take advantage of a quiet list and report on my recent lace encounters. Nancy Drew isn't my usual reading (hardly even read it as a child, not recommended by my librarian mother, I can understand why), but I recently came across "The Secret in the Old Lace" and had fun reading it. Judging from the descriptions, the author had likely been to Bruges and visited The Lace Center. There are great descriptions of the city, architecture, canals etc. that make it sound very inviting, and of course Nancy Drew is her usual perfect, know-it-all, all-powerful self. Here's what the book has to say about lace:
"She led the girls to the Lace Center where supplies were sold and lace makers could take courses in their craft. There were two types of lace, Hilda explained: bobbin lace which originated in Belgium and needlepoint lace which developed at the same time in France. 'Those are bobbins,' Hilda said, pointing to a tray of wooden objects which resembled miniature bowling pins. 'They are attached to linen threads and serve as weights when the threads are combined in intricate patterns But first, the kantwerker or lace maker chooses a wooden mold to work on. Like one of these.' She indicated a stack of disks about a foot and a half in diameter. One side of each disk was a mound covered with canvas. 'They're called pillows and are filled with seaweed,' the girl continued. 'After the kantwerker chooses her pattern, she copies it with pins which she sticks into the pillow. The threads are woven around the pins and then the pins are pulled out.' " Well, a good try even though she didn't get many of the details right. Of course Nancy finds some antique lace and jewellery and solves the mystery after seeing a painting (Le Cavalier et le spectre noir by Dirk Gelder, the book says) showing a man wearing lace cuffs. She describes the lace this way: "Nancy, in the meantime, was studying the intricate pattern in the lacework. Woven around the words was a scene of some sort. A geometric figure seemed to be the focal point. It was oblong with vertical stitches that curled into a knot at the top. Above the figure was a diagonal design that formed a baseless triangle. Nancy thought it was very strange." Perhaps someone else can identify the lace from that description, I sure can't. She obviously has better eyesight than I do, to be able to describe something that well from a painting. The words "written" into the lace were "Je vous aime" (sic). (One would think they'd get that bit right.) But she's obviously seen machine made "tourist" lace with inscriptions written into it, and it feels like she IS trying to describe a piece of lace, without knowing enough about it. I was reading the book in bed in a hotel room, and laughed so loud in places that I could have awakened the whole building. Obviously the author is more than a bit muddled about some of the details, but it's still encouraging to see lacemaking mentioned in modern children's literature, even if it's hokey and inaccurate. Now when I see Barbie with a lacemaking kit...then I'll know we've gone mainstream. I did a quick check for the artist and painting but there's no way of verifying either without more info. And I don't know why I was surprised that my search brought up a synopsis of the actual book (complete with more inaccuracies) from the Nancy Drew webpage: http://www.nancydrewworld.com/lace.html JulieO in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada where the snow is gone, the days are long and it's definitely spring. [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
