Jeri and Annette Jeri thanks for posting that link. I just spent an hour looking through it all. There are some really spectacular pieces, but also some disappointments. In many cases I just wish the photographer had gotten closer to the lace. There are some mistakes in the description of what the laces actually are. And in some cases the distance of the camera makes it impossible to be sure if the description is accurate. The high points are an 18th century Honiton, which Santina Levey might have called late "Bath Brussels". Honiton that old is hard to find. There is also a piece with needle lace fillings which are much more complex than what one usually sees. Well worth searching through. Most of the laces appear on pages 6-9, I think. And I agree that the posted prices seem low. If collectors actually get the laces for the posted prices they will be cackling with glee for months.
I can imagine some reasons that a museum might sell off laces. If they have 30 pieces of point de gaze in their collection but only a total of 100 pieces of needlelace, they might decide that they should keep only the very best of each type and let the more ordinary ones go. Among the ones in this auction, the most interesting from the point of view of possible "best laces" is the Valenciennes lace shawl. The description says it uses a machine made ground. While this is possible, the kind of Val that is part lace construction is quite rare, in my experience. This is one of the pieces that I wish we had better photos of. The ground is very regular and all moves in the same direction. It could be machine made, but that would also be true of hand made Val. What is unusual is a triangular shawl made of Valenciennes lace. If the ground is handmade, that is amazing, and would have required a lot of piecing of strips. If it really is handmade motifs appliqued onto machine mesh that would be easier to accomplish, and remove it from the "spectacular" category to the "interesting" category. Anybody else have ideas about these laces? Lorelei - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003
