I always think it’s a little like cooking: Seven people make Irish Stew. This one cuts her carrots crosswise into buttons, that one quarters her carrots and cuts them into chunks. Everybody’s potatoes look a little different. This one leaves out one ingredient. That one likes to put in plenty of parsnips. They are all making Irish Stew.
Then people who don’t know much about cooking show up, and start labelling the stews. This one is from the lady on Broad Street. This man lives over by the park. That cook works in a restaurant. The restaurant down the street makes it a different way. And so Broad Street Stew, Park Stew, and Restaurant Stew are born - and there are two different kinds of Restaurant Stew, and people who learn about the two will argue forever about which one is the real, true stew. That’s the sort of thing that has happened in the lacemaking world. There are hundreds of years of vibrant history. Sometimes lacemakers moved long distances. The might be refugees or they might have been deliberately brought in to an impoverished area, to bring in a new way to make money. They teach the lace from the place they come from but it changes slowly over the years, and by the time the collectors and labellers show up it is noticeably different and gets its own label. Or, sometimes two laces are basically the same, but then people will pick and poke at them because they’re sure there must be differences because they come from two different places. That is why museum workers tear their hair out trying to figure out how to label laces (I’m sure Devon will chime in about her travails). We can broadly separate laces by the techniques used - point ground laces, for example. The laces you mention fall into that category, along with many Continental laces like Tonder, Bayeux, Chantilly … Then there are tape laces, part laces like Honiton and Duchesse … Then there are some funny hiccups, like how Honiton lace was not made in Honiton and I’ve been told a lot of Valenciennes was made at Binche and vice versa. In the interests of clarity I think our geographic way of naming laces should be superseded by some other method. But I’m not in charge of these things ;-) Adele West Vancouver, BC (west coast of Canada) > On Jan 23, 2019, at 10:15 AM, Susan <hottl...@neo.rr.com> wrote: > > What differentiates one from another?! To prepare for some lace study visits, > I am making samples of Bucks, Devon Trolly, Downton & Malmesbury plus a few > items from the Luton Museum lace dealer’s pattern book. As I was leafing thru > several books, I stopped dead in my tracks. Some patterns looked very similar > to Little pea, plum pudding & maids in a row—except I wasn’t looking at a > book on Bucks! Say what!?! It made me wonder, if these lace samples were all > spread out on a table, how would they be identified? Thread—they all seem to > be cotton (so far). Thread weight—some seem a bit finer. Individual > motifs—there’s definitely a lot of crossover in shapes & fillings. Bucks > seems to feature more florals, otherwise the geometric components are highly > similar. Multiple grounds are mentioned but is this the defining feature of > each? Or is it the combination of shapes/motifs that separates Luton from > Bucks etc? What Am I missing in my first cursory observations? Sug! ge! > stions are welcome. Many thanks. Sincerely, Susan Hottle, Florida USA > - 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/
