Gentle Spiders,
Some of you might remember Sally Barry, who used to be on Arachne in the list's "diaper days". Some of you might not remember her, but be in possession of her first book of Bucks patterns (50 of them) -- reproductions of samples from the Luton Museum's "Lace Dealer's Pattern Book" (photos of - hand made - laces offered for sale by a lace dealer). The second book ought to be out soon; she seems to have made the reproduction of *all of them* her life's mission <g>
While "mining for gold" -- looking for more patterns for the second book -- she came across an anomaly... One of the samples looked to be *machine made*!
She wrote to me, full of excitement of discovery, asked me to "check it out", and to tell her what I thought. Unfortunately, Bucks not being my favourite lace, I never thought to spend the money on the Lace Dealer's Pattern Book when it was published :) Additionally, even if I did have it, I probably wouldn't be able to *find* the particular sample (Sally, cunningly, wouldn't tell me *which* sample it was; she wanted too see if I'd catch it myself <g>). And, anyway, I don't make all that much Bucks (or even other Point Ground laces), I don't *study* lace, what do *I* know? I told her to run her suspicion past some *true* experts; let *them* say whether she's right or wrong...
Well... Apparently, this past weekend, she'd had a chance to do it. In spades! <g>
She ran it past Holly van Sciver (who's *the* Bucks expert in US). Holly also thought the piece was machine-made, but suggested that an even more reliable confirmation might come from Alexandra Stillwell (a Brit, and the author of "Cassell Illustrated Dictionary of Lacemaking), who happened to be teaching a class at that same weekend retreat. Ye gods, *Stillwell* thought the piece was machine made!
Nobody knows how that particular sample made it into the book (was the dealer, perhaps, not entirely honest?). Nobody knows "how come" the usurper snippet wasn't discovered when the entire book was taken apart and re-assembled, with the lace cleaned and re-shaped in the process several years ago...
Sally, still giggling in glee, says she's gonna have a ball with the snippet in her second book... I may not be a fan of Bucks, but I dearly love a mystery (even an un-resolved one <g>), so I'm looking forward to it. What "ticks me off" more than anything else is that I'm likely to be away *just* as the book comes out, so won't be the first one to share her "I'll be darned..." when she points out just which Emperor is lacking his clothes... :)
--- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) Healthy US through The No-CARB Diet: no C-heney, no A-shcroft, no R-umsfeld, no B-ush.
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