[lace] Machine lace and its manufacture

[Liz Ligeti.]

Quite a few years ago (25 or more!) my daughter Helen and I were demonstrating
Lacemaking at a local “Craft Happening”, and an elderly gentleman came by,
and stopped and had a good look at the lace on display, and watched us
working. Then, when we spoke to him, we found out he had come to Australia
from Britain, in the 1950s, from Notting ham, as they had sent some lacemaking
machines out here, and he was sent with them, to set them up and teach the
Aussies how to operate the machines.  It was very interesting to hear about
it.

A few years later, the Guild organized a visit to the Lacemaking factory –
where machines were turning out the narrow, edging, lace by the yard, - and
they still used the punch card system. Gosh! It was a noisy place!
There were other machines – adaptations of the lace machines, I think, that
were churning out Knicker elastic – the men’s type with the brand name
worked into it!  Some wider elastic was for boots & shoes!
It was very interesting to see, - but I will stick to the hand made bobbin
variety of lace – it is much quieter, - and nicer!!!:)

Regards from Liz. In Melbourne, Oz.

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Re: [lace] Machine lace and its manufacture

[Maureen]

David

the list in Gillian's book, it appears there were 11 ships according to the NSW 
Immigration Boards List.

Maureen
E Yorks UK


> On 26 May 2018, at 17:36, Maureen  wrote:
> 
> David
> 
> According to Gillian Kelly's book there were a lot more ships than three, but 
> it seemed the Australian government didn't want them as Lacemakers so the 
> lacemaking  machines were left in Calais.  The website 'The Australian 
> Lacemakers of Calais' gives a lot of information on the subject.  And then, 
> as you say, the goldrush happened.   If you can read Gillian's book 'Well 
> Suited to the Colony' you will find it very interesting.
> 
> Maureen
> E Yorks UK
> 
> 
> 

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Re: [lace] Machine lace and its manufacture

[Maureen]

David

According to Gillian Kelly's book there were a lot more ships than three, but 
it seemed the Australian government didn't want them as Lacemakers so the 
lacemaking  machines were left in Calais.  The website 'The Australian 
Lacemakers of Calais' gives a lot of information on the subject.  And then, as 
you say, the goldrush happened.   If you can read Gillian's book 'Well Suited 
to the Colony' you will find it very interesting.

Maureen
E Yorks UK

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RE: [lace] Machine lace and its manufacture

[David C Collyer]

Devon,
I suppose that as we enjoy the lavish handmade flounces of mid-century royal 
lace, we should spare a thought for the English machine lace makers who were 
collateral damage, forced to become farm hands in Australia.

My understanding is that there were 3 shiploads of lace makers from Calais. The 
people from them settled in Adelaide, Sth Australia and Maitland in NSW. Their 
intention was to establish a lace making community but then in 1851 the gold 
rushes happened and they all dispersed.
David Downunder in AUS

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[lace] Machine lace and its manufacture

[Tess Parrish]

Felkin, William. A History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace
Manufacturers, Burt Franklin, New York, 1967, 608 pages. Posted April 18,
2007. SAMPLE PAGE. REVIEW. Part 1: File size 10.1 MB PDF. Part 2: File size
12.5 MB PDF. Part 3: File size 11.9 MB PDF.

This can be found on the “Arizona”
site:(http://www2.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/lace.html) under Lace and
Books.

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Fwd: [lace] Machine lace and its manufacture

[Devon Thein]

Maureen,
Thanks for placing this in time for us. It was the February
Revolution, the revolution that overthrew Louise Philippe that forced
the departure of the lace workers to Australia. From Wikipedia it
would appear that this led to Louise Napoleon, Napoleon III taking the
throne, and resulted in the finest moments of mid-19th century lace,
the gorgeous wardrobe of the Empress Eugenie, and the immortalization
of her lace bedecked image by the painter Winterhalter. I suppose that
as we enjoy the lavish handmade flounces of mid-century royal lace, we
should spare a thought for the English machine lace makers who were
collateral damage, forced to become farm hands in Australia.
Devon

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Re: [lace] Machine lace and its manufacture

[Jane Partridge]

Having had a quick look down the Guild's library catalogue, I'm fairly certain 
it was this one "MASON S A Nottingham Lace 1760s to 1950s" - which is about the 
machine lace industry, and I do remember nothing was in the title about hosiery.

Jane Partridge

From: Devon Thein <devonth...@gmail.com>

Subject: Re: [lace] Machine lace and its manufacture

I would like to suggest that it is William Felkin's book, A history of
the machine-wrought hosiery and lace manufactures that Jane is
referencing. It is written in a very amusing style in 1867.

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RE: [lace] Machine lace and its manufacture

[Maureen]

Dear Jane, Devon and others

Jane and your email sent me scuttling to get my book out, Well Suited to the 
Colony  by Gillian Kelly.  The Naponic War ended in 1814 and it is believed 
that the first lace machine was smuggled into Calais in 1815.  Until then the 
English were not welcome in France. This is St Pierre le Calais and not Calais 
as we know it today as the inhabitants of Calais asked that the machines were 
moved from Calais as they were noisy. By 1824 there were 412 English living in 
Calais and by 1841 this had increased to 1420.  At that time the machines were 
making net for decoration in Paris,  more than likely tambour as it was not 
until the 1830s a man named Jacquard provided the help and information to 
enable lace to be made on a machine.  As a result of  the French Revolution the 
lacemakers left Calais in 1848 and had a four month trip[ to Australia.  
Approximately 1000 people emigrated to Australia to take up new lives, most had 
their fare paid under the 'Bounty' system but some funded it!
  themselves.  Ironically they did not take their machines with them and became 
general labourers, farm hands etc in Australia.   See the website of The 
Australian Lacemakers of Calais, which was set up in 1982 as people started to 
research their ancesters,   which gives more information.

I have several hundred photos from Gillian Kelly as well as information and 
photos from the then Chairman Richard Lander as I was giving talks etc about 
the subject.  They both answered lots of questions for me and were extremely 
helpful and happy for the stories to be told in the UK.   

I think I did a review of the book in about 2007 and then wrote an article, 
which had drawings with it but not by me,  giving further info etc for the Lace 
Guild a few months later.Anyone who was in the Lace Guild at that time will 
have seen the article and book review.

I can give further information etc but must dash as I have to collect youngest 
granddaughter from school.

Maureen
E Yorks UK

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Re: [lace] Machine lace and its manufacture

[Devon Thein]

I would like to suggest that it is William Felkin's book, A history of
the machine-wrought hosiery and lace manufactures that Jane is
referencing. It is written in a very amusing style in 1867.
I am quite interested in the example of lace that Alex posted on her
site that is part handmade and part machine with embroidery. We were
just looking at a piece in the museum, 08.180.260
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search#!?q=08.180.260=20=Relevance=asc=0=0
Elena, who was interning with us then, pointed out that it was machine
made! What was interesting was that there were two parts to it, like
the piece on Alex's blog. there was a larger area of a machine mesh
which look sort of like cat stitch, and then a border of a finer
machine mesh which is exactly like point ground. (Recognizing point
ground made by machine is something I would like to learn how to do,
since the thread movements are often identical, I don't know how to
figure this out.) The surprise to me was that they were making two
different meshes on the machine, then embrodering them. For some
reason, I had assumed that we went from a plain tulle to the ability
to do flowers, without gimp, and then finally to flowers with gimp.
The concept that they were setting up the machines to do two adjacent
different grounds and then handing them off to the hand embroiderers
was news to me. Then, I looked at the Felkin book and saw something
similar on Plate XII.Then I remembered that we had seen something
similar in a salt print by the famous photographer Henry Fox Talbot.
He had made a photo of a piece of lace in 1845 Here is a link
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/289186?sortBy=Relevanceft=Henry+Fox+Talbot+laceoffset=0rpp=20pos=1
In fact I saw something similar in another Henry Fox Talbot salt print
book up at Yale, but didn't get a photo of it.
It is possible that Henry Fox Talbot was taking a photo of a piece of
lace that was made far in the past, since presumably he didn't care
what era the lace was. But, I asked Gunnel what she thought the date
on the piece was and she said 1830s. I always think of the big blondes
as being 1830s, so I guess i need to go back and look at the smaller
borders of that era .Are they typically characterized by two different
meshes side by side?
Seeing Alex's piece where they attached a strip of the handmade to the
embroidered mesh is very interesting. It is clearly a period of
intense experimentation.
Yes, it was quite likely the same people transitioning from hand
lacemaking to embroidering net.
Devon
PS. I think it was the Napoleonic Wars, not the French Revolution that
was the instigation for expelling English lace workers from France.

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[lace] Machine lace and its manufacture

[Jane Partridge]

There's also a book in the Guild library about (I think this is the title, but 
not sure, it's been a while...) The History of the Nottingham Lace Industry - 
which goes through the trials and tribulations of those lace makers who worked 
with machines rather than bobbins. From the cottage industries with stocking 
frames in their homes to the lace factories - the sometimes terse relationships 
between employers and employees, lock ins and lock outs, strikes which risked 
livelihoods in days of no state handouts, the rise of the unions and the power 
they had over employers, and probably the biggest threat to employment (which 
affected both hand and machine industries) - changes in fashion. 

I may be wrong, but I have a feeling I read somewhere that most of the luddites 
weren't the actual workers - they were troublemakers who came from other areas 
- though of course some would have been. Those who were caught ended up being 
prosecuted, jailed and in some cases on the gallows. 

I went to the exhibition in Loughborough Museum which was connected with the 
book that Maureen mentions - it told the tale as to how Heathcote's machines 
moved first from Loughborough to Nottingham, then with opposition there, to 
Tiverton in Devon, and then were broken down and smuggled to Calais. At a time 
when they were trying to increase the non-convict population of Australia, the 
workers were offered a one way ticket with an incentive payment, hence the 
reason many families moved on. I can't remember any mention of the Revolution, 
though, Maureen - wasn't that in 1789 and thus well before Heathcote's 
machines, which I think came into production round about 1808 - or did France 
have a second revolution (I have vague memories from history at school of 
something being 'bloodless')?

As hand-lacemakers we at times are up in arms against the machines that took 
the work away, but a good number of handworkers transferred to the factories 
because of better pay and in some cases, conditions, and they were all people 
fighting for their livelihood in days when a change of fashion, or a poor 
cotton harvest, could put them all in the workhouse. In Liz Bartlett's book 
about the Lace Villages, she points out the difficulty she had in finding out 
about the life and work of the Bucks lacemakers because the job was so 
connected to poverty no-one wanted to ever think or talk about it again.

Jane Partridge
(Whose Nottingham-born husband has both Bedfordshire (hand) and Nottingham 
(machine) lace makers in his ancestry)

From: owner-l...@arachne.com  on behalf of Maureen 


Following on the discussion about the above topic, there is a book called Well 
Suited To The Colony, written by Gillian Kelly from Australia, which tells the 
story of the manufacturers of machine lace from when they left England due to 
hard times to go to Calais France and then when they left France during the 
French Revolution, their journey to Australia and what happened to them after 
that.  It is well worth reading. 

Not only was hand lacemaking a hard lifestyle, see the stories of the children 
at lace schools but it was for the machine Lacemakers as well.

Maureen
Yorkshire UK

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[lace] Machine lace and its manufacture

[Maureen]

Good morning

Following on the discussion about the above topic, there is a book called Well 
Suited To The Colony, written by Gillian Kelly from Australia, which tells the 
story of the manufacturers of machine lace from when they left England due to 
hard times to go to Calais France and then when they left France during the 
French Revolution, their journey to Australia and what happened to them after 
that.  It is well worth reading.  I was asked to review the book for the Lace 
Guild and it opened my eyes to their way of life and how they were treated.   
There is a website called The Australian Lacemakers of Calais which was set up 
by descendants of the Lacemakers and is very informative and helpful.  As a 
result of me doing the book review, I then bought a copy, made contact with 
both Gillian and Richard, the then Chairman of the group and got lots of 
information and help from them as I did a talk or two to tell their story.  And 
I am a dedicated hand lacemaker, but it did change my perce!
 ption of machine lace and the makers of it.

Not only was hand lacemaking a hard lifestyle, see the stories of the children 
at lace schools but it was for the machine Lacemakers as well.

Maureen
Yorkshire UK

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