On May 17, 2006, at 9:29, Diane Williams wrote:
[...] brand new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and
Museum. (We spent an hour in the museum and an hour
in the gift shop!) An hour isn't nearly enough, but
we zipped through a special exhibit they had on the
First Ladies. There were a few dresses and I was
trying to peer closely in the dim light to look at the
lace on the dresses. There were only a couple that
had lace. One I distinctly remember was from the
1820s and had what looked like tambour on it. [...]
Tamara wrote:
(didn't one of the American First Ladies wear, on her
husband's inauguration, a dress of machine-made lace
given to her by a Nottingham factory?)
I think that must be the dress I remember hearing about; certainly the
date is one that's been buzzing in my head (without being specific <g>)
And the tambour lace --part machine-made (the tulle) and part hand-made
(the design at first, later on just the picots at the edges) -- fits
too.
Where I heard about it was _in Nottingham (Arachne '98)_, when I went
to the lace shop located in Severn House (seemed an appropriate name
for the place, since I was spending my husband's -- whose name is
Severn -- money. Made a point of sending him a postcard of the house,
too. The cheapest item on the horrendous by my standards bill of sale
<g>). They had lots of machine-made lace items for sale, both of the
"Nottingham lace" (the "tambour", though now that everything is made by
machine, the edges are no longer as impressive) and the chemical kind.
I also happened to luck in on the one day of the week that they had
demos of BL to show the customers the difference. Once the
demonstrating ladies realised that I was a "clued-in American", we had
a nice chat about hand-made lace. Not to be outdone, one of the
sales-clerks chipped in on the side of machine-made by mentioning the
First Lady dress. That led to a spirited, 5-point (there were 2
sales-clerks) discussion of lacemaking in general, which lasted till a
group of American tourists -- on the trail of Robin Hood, rather than
lacemaking -- poured into the shop. I heard the dress mentioned again;
I think it must be a standard selling point... :)
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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