On Mar 12, 2009, at 9:09, [email protected] (Devon) wrote, in response
to Liz:
Both Vecellio and Vinciolo's books show edges with bands of squares
that
don't remotely match in any way, - and are not even the same size so
they don't
match up in the repeats!!
I have had the opportunity to look at a lot of pattern books and
reprints of
pattern books and they all do this. I think that the reason is that
being
pattern books, they are trying to show as many patterns as possible,
but they
anticipate that the maker will take one or two and work out the
pattern of the
garment from them.
The same quote in Liz's original message caught my attention, so I'll
just tack on my ha'penny worth to Devon's.
There *are* a few patterns in Le Pompe (Book I and Book II) where the
band (or, what I think of as "extender") *does* match the rest -- ie
the wider, usually "pointed", part -- of the lace, not only in the
spacing of repeats but in using the same design elements in both parts.
But, while the accord in repeat spacing is fairly common, the use of
the same design element in both the "point" and the "extender" is
extremely rare -- I think I found only 2-3 such patterns in the two
books.
I agree with Devon that the reason was, probably, to give the lacemaker
as many ideas as possible, without having to carve too many printers
blocks and using too many pages of paper. Some of the patterns, for
example, will have picots on half of the "model" but be smooth on the
other half and the lacemaker (or the patron) then chooses what suits.
In that same spirit, most of the narrow -- 6-10pairs -- "indepenent"
patterns in those two books would have, probably, also been employed as
"extenders", replacing the ones shown with the wider laces. Even though
they look more like insertions or somewhat fancy entredoux (spell?) to
us, today.
A bit like buying "mix and match" swim suits, except that they (the
early lacemakers) seemed too be more "into" the "mix" part of the
process than into the "match" part :)
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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