Hi Brian No doubt you will receive replies from people more qualified than me to answer your questions on Honiton bobbins/lace - but here goes.
The recorders of census returns tended to use their own terms for occupations. So the term ‘lace worker’ could have cover almost any work connected to the production of lace depending on who was filling in the return. The term ‘Lace sewer’ probably applied to the workers who joined the sprigs of lace together to form larger items i.e. shawls, collars, veils, length edgings etc. This could have been by either mounting/sewing the sprigs onto pre made machine made net or joining them together with handmade lace ground or ‘brides’ which were plaited similar to Bedfordshire lace. The number of bobbins needed to make the smaller fine Honiton sprigs was far fewer than was needed to produce the borders/lengths etc of the heavier Northants/Beds/Bucks laces of the East Midlands. Hence there were probably few actual bobbin makers in the smaller Devon geographical Lacemaking area and as you know only too well even less were decorated. Also as Brenda has pointed out also many bobbins were passed down through families. I doubt there was enough work to employ many full time at just producing bobbins. Also the decorations on Honiton sticks could have been added at anytime during the bobbins lifetime unlike the more elaborate decoration of EM bobbins which on the whole could only be done during or prior to production. Any questions? Diana - 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/
