On May 11, 2005, at 11:21, Antje González wrote:
Thank you very much Luda for the pattern.
I have already seen it in Carolina's web page (thank you Carolina for making
it possible). The pattern is lovely, really. I see that it is a small
pattern and that it is made with fine thread. I always thought Russian lace
is made with coarser thread. I am wrong then?
Luda does say that she is using thread which is easily available to her, so here's the explanation for why the pattern is so fine...
But, also, if you look at old Russian Tape laces, you'll see that they were made in all kinds of scale, including very fine. I think, in some ways, the "Western Revival" of tape lace of this kind (as opposed to Tape Lace connected with needle-made stitches, like Battenberg) has done more harm than good to it.
The "rude, crude, peasant lace" idea seems to have become a canon since Palliser's "History of Lace" (first published in 1875) and the photos included in the book tend to support it; the lace is made in either thick threads (looking congested after many washings, if old), or else it's made (probably in the West, new) in threads too fine for the pricking, looking like a shapeless mess (much like some of the "reproduction" Binche, BTW <g>)
Russian Tape lace has been made for sale long past the time machines tok over the production of "cheap lace"; in order to compete with machines, most of it *has* been rather crude. Secondly, by 1917, things have changed politically; "Russia" (now USSR, having swallowed other countries as "Soviet Republics") had confirmed its pre-revolutionary paranoia about secrecy, which included innocuous subjects like lace :) In practical terms, that meant that lacemakers in the West, however enchanted by the techniques, were not permitted to study the details of old patterns. But they were permitted to buy the new designs and that's what was reproduced. But the new designs were no longer made for the nobility (all nobility having either fled to Paris or been butchered by the new regime) ... And thus a vicious circle of misconceptions about the Russian Tape Lace came about.
But it can be made in any thread - coarse or fine - just as any other lace...
Thanks, Luda, for the lovely Snowdrop pattern (and thanks, Carolina, for letting her post it on your website); it'll make a lovely twin to Louise Colgan's (also oval) Milanese "Dogwood".
-- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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