I once saw quite a fascinating slide show presented by Lia Baumeister. She had discovered that the Netherlands had an index of every painting in the country and she had isolated all the lacemaker ones. She showed picture after picture of very nice interiors, women in fur pieces, and attended by servants, making bobbin lace. Her thesis was that it was practiced by middle to upper income people, possibly for purposes of enjoyment. It was quite convincing. I have always thought that bobbin lace making might have been among one of the skills that a young woman of good family may have been trained in to prepare her for marriage in that era. From time to time I see things in texts that suggest that. Virtuous women, domesticity and textile production are often associated, even when it doesn't make economic sense. Even my mother bought a sewing machine when she got married and attempted to make her own curtains. Ladies often do embroidery ostensibly for household use, but primarily for enjoyment. I have always identified with the Nicolaes Maes painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. _http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110001376_ (http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110001376) The description reads, "Maes painted a number of domestic scenes such as this one between 1655 and 1660. The woman's quiet absorption in her work may have been intended as an example of wifely virtue, a subject belabored by Dutch authors such as Jacob ("Father") Cats." Whether this picture reflects wifely virtue, or whether it depicts mom absorbed in her lacemaking while the baby has thrown its cup and rattle on the floor in a futile attempt to get mom's attention is up to the viewer to decide. I think it is the latter. Probably my daughter would agree. But then again, oil paintings are not photographs. Sometimes the artist is trying to make a picture of a woman using her hands. Sometimes the artist wants to paint rich fabrics and beautiful interiors. After all, you have to sell these things to people for decorative purposes. There is an oil painting by the American Impressionist Robert Blum, in the Cincinnati Museum of an entirely different period, from the late 19th century, showing a group of well dressed and beautiful young women making bobbin lace in what appears to be a Palazzo in Venice. As my superior at the museum has written about this painting, we have spent a lot of time discussing whether it was the case that young heiresses ever took lace lessons in Venice, or whether Blum wanted to paint young women in nice clothing using their hands in a beautiful sunlit interior. Although my superior leans toward this theory, I nonetheless live in hope that some day I will hear of young heiresses making lace in Venice. Lady Evelyn seems to have had some kind of lace instruction in Venice, although I am told that she had such fragile emotional health that a group class would probably have been impossible. Sigh. How fascinating that Vermeer's Lacemaker was owned by Napoleon III, whose wife Eugenie was one of the biggest consumers of handmade lace of the mid-19th century. On the subject of fictional works that include lacemaking, I am afraid that my faith that authors thoroughly research every aspect of a fictional work has been badly shaken by the fact that authors often contact me for information. The way this goes is that they have already constructed an elaborate plot which involves a preposterous account of lacemaking. One of them that I can think of involved a concept of hand lace making that reflected the idea that lacemaking doesn't take much time and that a single individual could be turning out veils at an almost industrial rate. They are just doing a little fact checking, to assure themselves that the facts they have made up are correct. When I attempt to explain why it is totally at odds with anything that could have happened historically, they get a little frantic because they don't want to rewrite the book. They have already had enough trouble making the characters and plot work out without wanting to go back and study lace history extensively to illuminate what they thought was a peripheral detail. So, I would say that almost anyone on this list probably knows more about lace than any writer of fiction. Devon
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