Hi Vickie: I think you're right about the purpose of the balls. As to the bonnet, it certainly looks like a variant of the Dutch 'hul'. I once took a 's Gravenmoer class from a Dutch lady who described the bonnets in detail. I don't remember all of what she said, but part of it was that there was often a wire frame for the hats, and sometimes bulbous spirals of wire that sat on either side of your face. They varied a lot from place to place so you could often tell a stranger by their strange bonnet. At the course I bought a book: 'Kant uit Vlaanderen en 's Gravenmoer', which says, in part:
"Lille or Beveren lace was used for the bonnets of the wealthy. These were fine laces with Point de Lille from Flanders displaying flower and leaf motifs while 's Gravenmoer lace was a coarser lace, less intricate and therefore less expensive." This bonnet, though, seems to use a more traditional Flanders lace, with a heavier, (possibly metallic?) thread looped back and forth to create the solid motifs. The book considers only bonnets from the area where 's Gravenmoer was made - perhaps in other areas the Flanders techniques would have been more popular. "There are regional differences in the use of bonnets. Various methods of starching were used, as well as colours of starch. The points of the lace of the 'hul' were folded upwards when starched. After starching, they were set over a casque under which a small black cap was placed to conceal the hair." These laces were made with linen, and it looks to me from the pictures that linen is used here, too. I don't know if the dark colour is because they used unbleached linen, or because they used bleach linen with a heavy starch that has since changed colour. If the metallic threads were originally gold-coloured, it would have made sense for the entire thing to be starch with a gold-coloured starch, which could easily have changed to this brownish colour over time. I hope somebody with far more knowledge of Dutch laces will comment. Adele West Vancouver, BC (west coast of Canada) PS: The teacher also said that for the average person lace was usually used just to trim a plain linen bonnet - and woe betide you if you trimmed your bonnet with a type of lace that was above your station in life - even if you made the lace yourself! On 2014-08-20, at 5:39 PM, Vickie wrote: > Hello everyone, > > I have a friend that purchased a very old appearing, unusual lace bonnet > made with metallic thread from an eBay vender. > > Since I have never seen anything like it I turn to your wonderful knowledge > to help her guess at the age, style, and material etc. There are two heavy > metal balls hanging from two sides, possibly to provide weight to keep it on > when worn because the lace is very light weight she says. > Photo site: > http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/ - 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/
