On Jun 2, 2007, at 10:08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jacquie) wrote:
Your question about Queen Ann Lace certainly generated a lot of
messages
but didn't really answer your question
Yes, I noticed that! What I was more interested in "is there any way
to work
out when plant names first became lace somethings", ie before that lace
wasn't a part of the public consciousness.
I noticed it too :) I thought your original idea was brilliant but, as
the various bits of (often almost hidden) info trickled in, I realised
it was, probably, a blind alley, as far as dating lace went.
One message suggested that the plant itself was still rare in James'
Anne's time (ie, there might not have been a reason to *re-name* it).
Another said that it was likely to have been the Sentimental Victorians
who had named it thus (by which time, hand-made lace was already being
edged out by the machine-made).
So, are there for example, any ancient herbals (if that is the correct
name
for the documents covering the use of plants) which pre date the
development of
lace so they referred to plant x as one thing, whereas later ones (at
some
point in the 1500s presumably) started calling the same plant as lace
something,
then that could be an interesting pointer for when a wider awareness
of lace
left the courts and lacemakers and became part of general acceptance.
I think the research on that would be 3-pronged, actually:
1) make a list of plants which have "lace" in their names and the areas
of their habitat.
2) search the dictionaries for when the terms began to be used (Oxford
is pretty good at that, but my copy of it is still missing tons of
words/phrases, even though it has to be read with a magnifying glass.
Now missing also <g>)
3) look at the old (probably Middle Ages; there wouldn't have been all
that many before the invention of the printing press. OTOH, the
manuscripts, held in monasteries and in the royal libraries, might have
been preserved with more care) herbals. Though those were, usually,
limited to medicinal plants, so some plants might not appear in them...
OTOH, many plants that we now think of as weeds *had* been used for
medicinal purposes, so, who knows what could be found there...
It's a fascinating possibility.
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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