On Apr 7, 2007, at 17:38, Leonard Bazar wrote:
Tamara commented that the wood cuts' accuracy is brought out by using them - they make very accurate prickings.
I'm reconstructing a (plaited, mostly) piece from LPII for the next Bulletin and I tried to true the pricking and bring it up to modern standard (ie pin-dots instead of pin-loops as markers for "picots", etc). After several tries, I finally gave up. Maybe the woodcut can be improved using a computer design program but, sure as sure, I was unable to even approximate its accuracy, doing it with pencil and tracing and graph papers. And, a modern pricking has a whole lot *less information* contained within; that's probably one of the reasons we need diagrams.
I ended up cutting out one segment which *had* a serious mistake (IMO, based on the fact that out of 4 identical elements it was the only one where the threads travelled in the other direction) and piecing the rest together. And I needed to re-space a couple of picots and put in one which the carver had missed. And that's for publication; for myself, I worked on the woodcut "as is"; by the time I got to the messed up part, I could recognize it as a mess up, because I was beginning to understand the pattern. I had a bit of trouble correcting it but that was *because* I was working on a pre-pricked pricking :) When I pre-pricked, I didn't notice it; consequently, the holes (winkie-pins) were in the wrong places. But they were off only by a millimeter or so; when I tried to prick right next to them, I ended up with larger -- and less reliable -- holes.
If a skilled lacemaker were working without a pricking, directly on a pillow, that wouldn't have been an issue at all.
We then went on to consider whether prickings were originally used for all, or whether the plaited ones could be worked freehand - I think jury still out!
The above is one reason why I think that chances are the lace had been made without a pricking. Reason 2: if you used a page of the book as a pricking, you'd be spoiling the obverse for any future use. Books were expensive, even though no longer as expensive as they had been before the printing press was invented. Reason 3: if you made a long piece of the lace, you'd need two prickings, to leap-frog. Reason 4: the break in the pattern doesn't overlap, ie you can't just fit new pricking below the old one and continue working -- the beginning and the end don't match, either abutting or overlaping.
And, of course, there's the matter of enlarging/reducing the pattern depending on what its use is to be and the thread used; if you use the woodcut as a pricking, you're locked into whatever size it happens to be in the book. And to give you some comparison: in the Levey/Payne edition (all of Book I and selected pages from Book II) the prickings are 119% of the ones I got in a reprint of the reprint of the Vienna edition of Book II.
If they used prickings at all, it would not have been the woodcuts. It would have been home-made drawings on parchment. And, unless every lacemaker was an accomplished draftsman as well, it might have been more trouble (and expense) than profit.
However, looking at the new selection, and indeed the old ones again, it's noticeable that some have white holes in the black plaits at junctions only in a few places, suggesting to me that the author expected pins to be used sometimes, and sometimes not.
I think those junction holes (and identical ones not at junctions) aren't so much pin-holes as real holes, ie achieved by manipulation of threads (two workers working ot from the centre, or a twist on the worker, etc). Those laces have enough "picots" on them to hold the lace down and under tension. Any pins at junctions are likely to have been temporary *supporting* pins, ie pins which were placed under a stitch (a la Point Ground), not in the middle of a stitch (a la modern Torchon ground). Those pins would have left no trace behind them.
One other thing the author has done which I found helpful with the few of those I've played with is that the thickness of the lines indicates whether it's a four-bobbin or thicker plait
Sometimes it does. Sometimes you can get fooled (I did; will be writing all about it in the Summer issue of the IOLI Bulletin <g>)...
- though that hasn't helped me with Gil's challenge, the pattern on page 7 of book 1. Has anyone cracked it?
I've been eying that one for a while; not because of Gil's book (which I have yet to get), but because I like it. But it has soooo many pairs... 64 if you assume the plaits are 2-pair; 93 pairs, if you assume that each plait/tape is a 3-pair one (the lines in the woodcut are pretty uniform in thickness). But, if you made only one section (and reduced the number of bobbins), you'd lose one (or two) "points of interest" (the "rosettes" in the middle of squares, like the ones with "tallies"), unless you had a 3 "rosette-in-a-square" repeat.
I had asked Santina about it, and she said she hadn't,
I've heard that Santina doesn't, herself, make lace. And that it's one of the reasons the book (Le Pompe 1559) is so historically inaccurate when it comes to the reproductions.
but if I was automatically assuming bobbins always worked in pairs, I could be wrong, and she sent me a photo of a similar, though simpler, piece, in which the triangular tallies had at least 10 threads, and were used as a reservoir to carry them from one section to another, and some of the plaits look like 3-threaders.
I'm pretty sure I know how to make the triangular "tallies", which aren't "tallies" any more than the Le Pompe "picots" are picots. But you're right, it would require for each plait to have 3 pairs (or maybe even 4) not 2, because each such "tally" needs 4 *pairs*, not 4 threads, and, even with 3-pair plaits, you have only 9 prs at your disposal, while the line between the two triangles requires another 2, it looks like (ie, you'd need 10 prs, minimum)...
Those triangular "tallies" are more typical of (slightly later) Genoese than Venetian lace. As is the other "challenge" -- the "rosette-in-a-square" just below it. The two -- long, twisted, single, travelling parallel to one another -- pairs are rare in early Venetian, but seem standard MO in Genoese plaited laces. But, again, they require 10 pairs, not 6 and not 9, which would be all that's available if all the plaits were as unifom as the woodcut seems to suggest...
Even the little "rabbit ears/ribbons" around the squares (extended tips of the "rosettes") are a bit of a puzzle :)
The longer I look at the pattern, the more I think that the only way those rosettes can be made is if we have 3-pair plait/tapes throughout, *with one exception*: the plait/tape bisecting the rosettes vertically would have to be a 4-pair-er. You'd need to add the 4th pair to the vertical edges too, for balance... 98 pairs for the piece. Would make a lovely scarf, I think but, with so many pairs...definitely not my speed :)
And, of course, with 3 prs in most of the plait/tapes, all the crossings would pose a challenge of their own, since the tight, little (pinless) windmills won't work any more... :)
Even if you don't *like* that kind of lace, you have to appreciate the enormous amount of skill and knowledge that went into making it.
PS Thanks for the info on metallics and on the book on Hardwicke Hall. Something to chew on...
-- 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]
