Hi Devon and Lyn, I think all modern Binche falls into "Point de Fee" or "Fairy Lace", except for a few recent designs done by AnneMarie Verbeke-Billiet, Kumiko Nakasaki, and a few others, in the old style. All the commercial Binche lace, for the tourist industry, is Point de Fee.
About the style of the lace itself: "modern" Binche, that of the last 150 years, is a more open cobweb-y lace, almost always with lots of tallies forming motifs. This lace is often cotton (or if linen the thread will be thicker than the finest thread pre-1800 of course, because of the extermination of the flax cultivars for the finest linen threads, during the French Revolution.) There are older instances of Binche that have some tallies but they are much rarer, and the older Binche is more densely woven, although it can be very light-weight because of how extremely fine some of the pre-1800 linen is. This is my understanding (as of today :-). Lorelei may want to differ on some of it. The terminology is a little confusing anyway, since it could be argued that "Binche" only first appears in the 19th C (making Point de Fee a synonym of Binche lace), and that all the earlier pieces are old Valenciennes. Nancy Connecticut, USA - 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/
