Shell and others, Since I subscribe to the digest, I just saw the posts about Ipswich. I think your question has been answered well by other members. Marta Cotterells book Ipswich Laces is the most comprehensive. The black silk Ipswich laces from 1789-90 are some of the best documented early handmade laces made in the US, as 21 samples exist in good shape at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Anyone can go there and study them. I have reconstructed most of them at this point. They are fascinating as they all have many quirks. Some, if not most, were probably made by pricking a pattern from a snippet of lace. They are not as regular as we are used to today. The few that have more than one pattern repeat shows quite a difference between the two repeats. The number of twists in the picots and grounds vary a lot within each piece. These laces were made for sale, not as a leisure time activity. Two of the lace samples do not have a full repeat, and it is the same pattern with two different grounds. (They are among those I have not reproduced yet). Point ground (as in current Buck's Point) was only used as a filling in one of the samples. It was a very new technique in the 1790. At this point we do not know who introduced lace making to Ipswich Ipswich, Massachusetts, or when, only that a quarter of all females in Ipswich made lace in 1789-90. Hard to imagine today.
Karen in Washington, DC - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
