Dear Janice, Lorri and others,
Thank you for all the interest. Hopefully this thread will help shed more
light on a very important part of American handmade lace history.

Janice writes: "One thing I did notice though was that the Smithsonian lace
had a left footside whereas most English lace to my knowledge have a right
hand footside.  Maybe Karen can explain why the change of side if the lady
who produced the lace originally came from England
​."

Elizabeth Lord Lakeman was born in Ipswich​, MA in 1767 and moved to
Hallowell, Maine upon marriage. She worked one of the original Ipswich lace
patterns as a young woman living in Ipswich, MA. It is now in the
Smithsonian collection, where you can see it at:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_645070
​
or

as the last object
​ ​
by searching Smithsonian lace collection
​.​
 It corresponds to one of the samples from 1789-1790 at the Library of
Congress
​ (number 9)​
.  Later in her life she made the white point ground lace
​ that is​
left on her Ipswich pillow when she died at the age of 94.
​
At this point we do not know where the first lace teacher in Ipswich, MA
came from or when, but since about 600 lace makers made lace in Ipswich, MA
in 1790, lacem​aking had been practiced
there
​ ​
for a long time. Most likely the original teacher came from the
​c
ontinent or the Downton area as the footside is on the left.
​
Lorri writes:
"
If the bolster was situated opposite of the photo, wouldn't the foot side be
​
on the right.
​"​
 The bobbins are no longer attached, but the direction is still clear from
the finished lace in the back and the broken threads from the bobbins in
the front of the pins. This and all the Ipswich, MA samples have the
footside at the left.

Karen - in sunny and cold Delaware, USA ​
 ​

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