I think the probable explanation here is that in the 20th Century, odd
lengths of machine made lace were referred to as "tattings". This is
also the more likely reason why, when demonstrating, we get so many of a
certain generation insisting that we are tatting, when in fact we are
making bobbin lace!
When it was fashionable to make the tape laces - Branscombe, Battenberg,
etc in the late 19th to early 20th Centuries, you could buy tapes that
were specially shaped to give picot (purl) edges, and these were also
attached to machine made lace to turn insertions into edgings. So
quilling was possibly some kind of spiral motif that could be added in
or appliquéd to a piece?
In message <[email protected]>, Nancy Neff
<[email protected]> writes
There are several
reference to "tatting and purl", but as it is under the
heading of "Lace
Manufacturers" in the "Nottingham Annual Register" for 1840, I
gather it is
at least a reference to tatted lace: http://tiny.cc/f02y8. In an
1842 list
of "Tariffs or rates of duties" there is listed "tatting" as a form of
lace,
as well as "purling", "gimp", and "quilling": http://tiny.cc/8zgeo. Does
anyone know what purling and quilling are, as used in this reference? (I know
modern meanings, of course.) I don't have my OED here in Stratford CT.
Okay,
I've wasted a couple of hours going through all these references, but I
found
it interesting that there was apparently this entirely different use of
"tatting" for bobbinet or tulle, and perhaps for something else if
"warp-tatting" is not the same thing, even though the first use in 1817 does
appear to be to some form of ladies' handwork at least.
--
Jane Partridge
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