On Jul 6, 2007, at 21:32, Beth Mccasland wrote:
Mine came in today's mail,
Mine's still somewhere in the outer space (possibly rerouted through
Scotland <g>). OTOH, my OIDFA Bulletin came a long time ago (maybe
Monday?); I just finished reading it today. So, I suppose, I shouldn't
be complaining. The only reason I'm impatient to get the IOLI Bulletin
is that I have an article and a pattern in it and, as usual, am anxious
to see what possible "oopsies" I may have comitted, while my brain
short-circuited (happens so often, I hardly notice it anymore <g>). I'm
especially on pins and needles this time, because Jacquie (laceandbits)
wrote:
Your bit on the plaited laces is very interesting, you should read it!
Given that most Brits have a warped sense of humour (why I love them!),
that sounds rather ominous :)
I have to ask, was the worked corner in the book?
Nope. That's my contribution/distortion; the original woodcut (Le
Pompe, book II) is as straight as an arrow -- an insertion (or, more
likely, lace which would have been applied on top of the fabric). You
can see it on the "Professor's site", ie at Arizona U:
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/books.html
Somewhere. Can't find it at the moment... But it's p.12
That may answer the question of - Did "they" do worked corners in BL?
Not in this case, no.
But, I've been looking at a lot of pictures (photos of paintings,
greatly enlarged) and my belief that corners were absent in lace till
mid-late 19thc ("common wisdom") is beginning to shake in its
underpinnings a bit. Some of those -- deeply-scalloped -- edgings, on
those large 17thc flat collars, look "suspect". They don't look as if a
straight piece was was mitered through the scallop, making a new
scallop out of two halves (or whatever). They look more as if an
entirely new scallop had been fitted into a gap between the two
straight, right-angled, pieces.
Reason I think that, is that those "corner scallops" are slightly
different in design from all other scallops. Yet, they're *consistent*
with the rest of the design as well as being perfect as to where the
joins would have been. And they don't look as if they'd been pieced,
either, though it's hard to be certain. IOW, it's the same thing I do,
when I try to design a corner: carry on with the (straight) lace
pattern for as long as possible, and then improvise a bit to fill in
whatever gap there is, while trying to stay true to the pattern as much
as possible.
To me, the question now is not so much "*did* they make corners?", but
more "*how* did they make corners?" Did they make them "on the go",
same as we do -- ie adding/removing just a few corner pairs? Or did
they make two straight pieces, position them at right angles, then
add/remove *all the pairs* needed to fill in the triangular gap and
make the corner-scallop?
I'd need more than looking at paintings to answer that one; I'd need to
look at the actual *collars* and under a microscope, too (or photos of
the wrong side of the lace, taken under a microscope. The hugely
enlarged photos of various laces that Devon'd sent me to chew on were
*priceless* in decoding the woodcut)...
Beth McCasland
in the suburbs of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
where it's hot and muggy with afternoon thundershower
Hot an muggy here too, though no rain for the past few days. As someone
on my "lefty blogs" said: "you go outside, and you sweat like a
Republican testifying on oath in Congress"
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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