On Jan 30, 2007, at 0:06, Ellen Winnie wrote:
This subject is dragging me out of lurk mode ;-)
Always happy to be of service :) Glad you did; new voices are always welcome -- and interesting
I have worked some of the Le Pompe patterns and I would never work from the woodcut. I don't think the pricking would be accurate or even. Just the nature of woodcuts.
Ah... Originally, I did that for speed; didn't want to take the time off to see if I could "true" the pattern. But, now that I have, I've become a convert, so, let me be "the devil's advocate" :)
1) As Leonard says, all the indications point to there being no prickings used at all, at least for the *plaited* laces (the tape ones, I'd guess, were a different story). Prickings were expensive and not all that easy to come by; if you needed to be able to change the size, even if you ever made a single pattern, you'd still need several. I'm not as skilled as those lacemakers were, so I need *something* to guide my pin placement. "A woodcut, even inaccurate, is better than nothing" was my line of thinking.
2) Surprise! The woodcuts (or, at least, this particular one -- Le Pompe, Book I, p 17, pattern B) are *much more accurate* than I'd have expected. I pre-prick my patterns and, to check that I've pricked all the holes, I lift the pattern to a light source and look at it from the back. I was *astounded* at how evenly-spaced those pinholes were. So much so, that I made another copy, cut through it in the middle of a repeat, and then tried to "marry" it to the first strip (as I would, if making continuous lace). The match was as seamless -- at all 3 repeats -- as anything I get from 20thc books. My opinion of the 16thc woodcarvers has just soared, almost to the level of my admiration for the 16thc lacemakers.
3) Working directly off a woodcut, lets you test the compatibility of the thread-to-size very quickly; all you have to do is answer a question: does this (x) number of pairs cover the line in the woodcut? If it doesn't, your thread's too fine. If you can't see the line under the threads, or if you can't make a full TCTC between one point and the next, your thread's too coarse.
That was an important discovery to me, because... I just couldn't *stand* working with the xyz-d Kreinik cord; I hated every minute of it, even though the results seemed OK, size-wise (lucky guess <g>). And *then*, I discovered that I have miscalulated the number of pairs -- I need 22 or 25, not 18 or 21. By which time, I couldn't add them gently... So, I cut off the 21 pairs and decided to move to the original size (as pictured in Levey/Payne) and linen. But what size linen? I was reluctant to wind all 25 prs, only to find they didn't fit. So I wound 3 and tested them on a short piece (the "crooked X", with picots, on the lh side, which I think is a *3*, not 2, pair plait). Couldn't see the line and couldn't fit even one full pass between picots (and I think it needs two). So I wound 3 pairs with another size of thread and, once it tested positive, I wound the other 22. Am back to where I was last night -- between a quarter and a third of a repeat -- but it's working fine so far.
4) Even with an electronically drawn pricking, there'll be variationsinthe *pillow* pricking. At least, when *I* pre-prick :) The pricker's needle is always a "hair off"-- to the right, to the left, to the back... Add in hand-drawn prickings (I never learnt enough 'puterese to even try designing that way), and the inaccuracies mount, despite everything we do to minimize them.
5) Consider old, *drawn* prickings, which people used over and over and over... They had been really sturdy to begin with but, with time, the holes would enlarge. Were those -- many times re-used -- prickings any more accurate than a brand-new woodcut (such as I'm using)? I don't think so. The inaccuracy of the old prickings is one of the reasons everyone's trying to true them.
6) As a friend wrote to me (in private), commending me for using the woodcut as a pricking:
prickings can sometimes be *too* acccurate and it's the slight irregularities that make the lace 'live' (too many reproductions of old lace look completely dead to me).
Something to consider... :)
I currently have obtained some gold and silver jap that I am going to play with this weekend.
DMC mi-fin (fil or and fil argent) may have some potential -- both size-wise and stability-wise -- if they're still available (my own two spools are several years old). It was an expensive thread even then, but cheaper than the japan thread.
BTW, Tamara, I have drafted two prickings from lace in paintings and a few more from extant pieces - interested?
Very much so! Would you consider sending them to the IOLI Bulletin for publishing? With *dates* for the paintings?
I got a *very strong* response (on and off the list) to my last night's question, and it was all "yes, I'd love to see old laces reproduced in the Bulletin". And, while it was all from IOLI members, it wasn't all from SCA; the Renaissance folk are interested too, as are other, later, re-enactors. The thing is... Those who are serious about being accurate to the period they're working in cannot move *forward*, which would create an anachronism. But nothing stops them from moving back; "my grandma left me this piece of lace/pricking" is a perfectly reasonable excuse for having something from a previous era. The SCA is the most hemmed in; the others less so.
The time seems to be right for exploring the mysteries of the early laces :)
Back to lurking!
Please, don't. *Pretty* please? -- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
