Gentle Spiders,
My copy of "Tina, the Little Lace-maker" (by Mrs Georgie Sheldon, 1892 and the Rocky Mountain Lace Guild, 2004) arrived this afternoon in the mail - tra la! And, likewise, "oooh la la" - fantastic, superb, brilliant job, RMLG! No wonder it took you 8 years to accomplish; just the bibliography list is mind-boggling... :)
Since I'm, presently, at loggerheads with *two* patterns (both on the drawing board still, though one is also being tested on the pillow), this was a welcome diversion, and I tore open the envelope eagerly. DH, observing the emerging content (another lace book; what else?), perceptively and resignedly asked what was available in the freezer for his supper, and, my nose in the patterns (I often look at books back to front), I told him what and where, and removed myself to the living room, where I assumed the proper Victorian attitude - stretched out on the sofa, with a novel...
I'd read most of the book when it was first serialised in the Lacenet (the RMLG's newsletter) and then the whole of it more recently - when I borrowed a copy from Clay - so there was no urgency about reading the story; I spent a pleasurable hour or so just looking at pictures and reading some of the non-story bits. Then I plunged into the melodrama... :) Which is what prompted me to write...
In the Foreword (I've never before seen a book which had a Preface, a Foreword and an Introduction, all in one volume; all on top of Acknowledgments <g>) Vasna Zago (it was a delight to see *so many* Arachne names in the book) says:
"While Mrs. Sheldon mentions many kinds of laces by name in the book, this should not imply that she was exceptionally familiar with lacemaking. In the 1800s, fashionable women still wore many kinds of lace and knew them by name"
Not exceptionally familiar, no; we do get the "pins stuck in and threads wound around them" image that's so typical of observers unfamiliar, first-hand, with the craft. But she must have done some research beyond the buying and wearing of laces even for that. And, especially so, to have produced the following scene:
Tina, newspaper advertisement in hand, is looking for employment as a lacemaker with a Brussels manufacturer and seller of laces. To test her lacemaking abilities, he takes her into the workroom (where "at least 50 girls and women" were weaving the threads around the pins), and lets her work on an already started - and complex - pattern. She does, and discovers a - repeated - mistake (and here we thought that was the tale-tell sign of machine-made lace only! <g>). She points it out to him, he acknowledges it *is* a mistake, calls the supervisor and bawls her out for negligence ("you are very careless not to have discovered it. Here is more than a meter of fine lace spoiled"), then asks:
"Who set up this pattern?"
"Monsieur knows that I set up all the difficult patterns, and that I make no mistakes" asserted Madame Fouchard [...]
"Well, you have made one this time, at all events. See! Here, and there, all along the piece, and that fool of a girl did not know any better than to go on making it [...]"
I found that scene *fascinating*, given that it seemed so coincidental with our recent discussion of diagrams. And dove-tailing so nicely with what Dorte told us about Karen Trend Nissen, and how she'd learnt lacemaking - her teacher would start every new piece for her, make a repeat, and that served as a sample to follow (instead of a diagram)...
It hadn't even occured to me - when reading Dorte's message - to wonder what would happen, if the teacher made a mistake in that first repeat... :) And the student didn't have enough knowledge/skill to discover it and, at least, *question* it (human nature being what it is, it's probable that the teacher - like Mme Fouchard - would have claimed it was no mistake <g>), much less *correct* it ...
It's amusing to think that, in the past, people might have got as dependent on their "teacher sample" as we now get on a diagram. And that a mistake in a sample might have produced yards and yards of faulty lace (and no-one the wiser, unless Netina happend to stroll by <g>), just as a mistake in a diagram can :)
Yours, worrying about messing up my own diagrams (for want of a twist-mark, the lace was lost <g>),
--- 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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