Devon The question of tape laces from the 17th and 18th centuries is very complicated, extremely complicated. Firstly, from about 1650 to at least 1750 and perhaps into the 19th century, both Flanders and Milan produced laces which are nearly indistinguishable in technique, types of design and so forth. Santina Levey does claim that Flemish laces are more likely to carry the braids across the back of the clothwork parts. And she says this is true whether the ground was worked as a Val mesh ground with many bobbins, or whether it was worked as a single zigzag braid going where it needed to to connect the various parts together. See her plate 214 A and B. Her plates 200 to 214 cover this period.
What I have seen at the Art Institute of Chicago led to me utter confusion at first regarding the history of tape laces. (Remember that Santina Levey work WITH the Art Institute's staff to identify their lace collection. And the laces I saw had her labels on them. If she is dead wrong then all the museum's ID's are dead wrong, too. I think this unlikely, but possible.) I saw laces identified as either Flemish or Milanese tape lace, and a few from Hungary, which I could not distinguish in any way on the basis of style, motifs or working method. I saw laces with a constant width tape (using only a set number of bobbins and not adding anything) identified as Flemish and some as Milanese. I saw laces with variable width tape where bobbins had to be constantly hung in and cut out as the tape meandered and made flower and leaf shapes that required thinner and thicker tapes. I saw pieces that looked like very primitive constant width peasant tape laces which, in fact, were made of discrete motifs that started and ended and required the whole collection of bobbins to be cut off every 6 inches, with complicated thread paths and not simple tapes. I saw crude meandering designs with no grace from either place. I saw graceful and charming animals and plants in tapes labeled "peasant". Many tapes had a single two pair braid meandering and holding the motifs together. Many had a Valenciennes type ground worked with a whole lot of bobbins hung in after the motifs were finished. (You could see how the direction of working changed to conform to the spaces they needed to fill--a sure clue that these weren't straight or continuous laces.) Many of the Milanese tape laces were wide -- about 18 inches or more -- with a large cross or other religious symbol worked in. These must have been intended as altar frontals. During the last half of the 1600s some Flemish tape laces were worked in very fine thread, finer than the Milanese tended to be. In these I saw the first experiments in raised work, appearing just before 1700, about 1690-1700. They would have little bits of narrow tape with pinholes only on one side, and the tape would cross over itself (tenstick or rib). What I had expected to see was simple constant width tapes being the early ones, and the complex tapes being the more recent. But what I found was mostly, but nor always, the reverse. The large scale ecclesiastical laces may have been the later Milanese laces, bypassed by the development of Brussels in Flanders, and relegated to conservative and out-of-fashion church use. It appears that the Flemish and Milanese tape laces of 1650-1700 were the precursor to 18th Century Brussels lace (probably the pinnacle of free/part lace design, technique and complexity for all history). But as to specifically Russian wedding aprons of the 17th century -- I haven't a clue. What about Davidoff? Might there be some photos in there that might help? I also have Yefimove and Belogorskaya RUSSIAN EMBROIDERY AND LACE 1982. ISBN0-500-01358-6. The 17th century bobbin lace in that book is gold and silver bullion lace, some tape, some a mesh grounded straight lace. The true tape laces only appear with 18th century labels (18th century = 1700-1800). I don't know if the photos reflect actual types of lace common in those times, or just an accident of preservation. Older linen laces would deteriorate. Lorelei - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
