Is coloured lace as non-traditional as most people seem to think it is, though?
In the V&A collection there is (or at least, was) a Spanish altar frontal, worked in needlelace, in full colour. If memory serves me well, it dates back to the late 1600s. There is a black and bright, topaz/kingfisher blue collar, worked in bobbin lace in the 1800s. I have written before about the yellow starch that was fashionable for dying ruffs in the 1600s, until the woman who brought the fashion to England was hanged for murder. When, in 1996, I went to Lille with friends to see the exhibition L'Europe de la Dentelles, many of the old pieces from other countries that were displayed were made in coloured threads. Lace that survives is mostly in dealer's pattern books, where white thread would have been sensible - lace was made by the yard and then when someone asked for so many yards in such and such a colour it was most likely dyed to order, the composition of the dyes probably having a detrimental effect on the thread hence little has survived the passage of time. (I'v! e had poor quality black embroidery thread, used for a cross stitch design on a cushion cover, disappear totally in five years). My mother in law and I went to the Nottingham Museum of Costume and Lace before it closed as they had in their collection a wedding dress which belonged to one of her forebears. We know it to have been worn around 1860, and the lace triming the brown dress was also brown (colour, not age). Think also of the stumpwork boxes that are worked in coloured and metallic threads as well as white. We take most of our impression of what lace was available from portraiture - and most portraits show white collars and cuffs. It is known that a good number of artists used their own stock of costume, props and models to prepare portraits ready for the face to be added, to save on sitting time. I doubt many artists could afford coloured lace, and so the pieces they owned would most likely have been white, thus making us think that all lace was white. Like most textiles, lace changes according to fashion. We know that it was Queen Victoria who started the rage for white wedding dresses, and probably an upsurge in the production of white lace to go with it. It is likely that the change from lace being made in white and dyed to suit, to being made in coloured thread, came with changes in fashion and thread production that meant a larger range of thread was produced in colour - not just skeins of silk and cotton used for embroidery. Jane Partridge ______________________________________ Devon said: But, it is an interesting question. From the need to qualify Needlelace with the term ???fine white traditional??? would I be correct in assuming that the use of color is no longer controversial and that colored pieces worked in buttonhole stitch are now considered lace? - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
