Devon I don't know the name for the kind of lace you describe, but I can tell a story. Back in the 1980s I went through a period of going to the textile department of the Art Institute of Chicago, nearly every week, for most of a year. One time they included in the laces they let me study was a piece that looked like continuous Valenciennes in its design. But when I looked at the back I saw it was a part lace, with lumps and knots at the end of motifs, and knots where the ground was sewn out onto the cloth. I told them "this is not Valenciennes, your ID is wrong". They kept insisting it was Valenciennes. I kept insisting that the structure was not Valenciennes structure. We never had a meeting of the minds. It took me some years before I realized that they were naming the lace based on where they thought it was made, with no reference whatsoever to the structure. But myself, as a lace MAKER, structure was far more important that geographical origin.
Your note is the first time I've come across a mention of this type of lace, with a time component tacked on. Mid 19th century is very interesting. I think the lace we commonly refer to as Valenciennes, the Val style, dates from the end of the 19th and early 20th c. I am not sure that any 18th c Val looked like the Val we usually think of. Lace was made there, but it used a great variety of grounds, not the 4 strand ground that we think of as Val. That latter ground seems to be attached to the late 19th ce-early 20th version. There is a ground used in Binche (which includes 18th c Val) that has 2 strands per leg with a cloth crossing. This strip has several variants that can be worked on the "little snowflake" grid. http://lynxlace.com/images/lace808.JPG Lorelei -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Saturday, January 14, 2017 11:20 AM To: 'Arachne reply' <[email protected]> Subject: [lace] Valenciennes de Gand, but not quite... I am engaged in a cataloguing project - 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/
