What can one add to Gil's authoritative accounts? Gil, I have loved your articles on early lace for the Lace Guild. I hope there will be more.
I have been reading some of the old lace books from the digital archive - including the Romance of the Lace Pillow - I can't remember whether it is in here or another book but there is mention of Coventry Blue lace. There was also mention of 'inflammatory' green shoes with matching lace rosettes (green being regarded as the colour of lust). Body-Linen ie underclothes became of much greater importance around the time lace was emerging due to a shift in medical thinking. The miasma theory of disease - carried on the air - was becoming prevalent. This had the strange effect of turning people away from bathing as it was thought to be unhealthy. Frequent hot baths by opening the pores in the skin left one vulnerable to invasion of pestilent vapours, and with plague and sweating sickness (a virulent influenza) small pox ... there was plenty to be vulnerable to! What we describe as "sponge baths" rather than immersion together with clean and frequent changes of body linen became the accepted practice, and fashion reflected this. Decorative edgings peeping out from under top clothes allowed one to advertise ones underclothes - a practice unthinkable to the Victorians! Louise In cool, showery Cambridge. The Weatherforecaster described this week as 'Autumnal' I thought she was exaggerating until I drove into work today. Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 16:47:47 EDT From: gil...@aol.com Subject: [lace] coloured lace Over the past two years I have been looking at the lace from the sixteenth and early seventeenth century that survives in UK collections. I have been able to study nearly a hundred linen edgings and insertions that are still attached to their original garment or household linen, and around sixty examples of gold and silver lace (on cushions, gloves and other accessories). Two of the metallic laces (both surface decoration and associated with Bess of Hardwick) include coloured silk threads (one blue, one green). Three of the linen insertions and six of the edgings also include coloured silk threads, mostly black, but three are pink/red silk and there is one jacket in the V&A with an edging of cream linen and red wool. The colour of the linen I have seen ranges from bright white to completely unbleached. At that time it was not possible to successfully dye linen thread Most of the black silk is in a very bad state - the mordant used in the dying process to fix the colour tends to rot the thread, and this is one of the reasons why so little coloured lace has survived from that period. Several portraits of the time show black silk lace around the neckline and there are vast quantities of gold and coloured silk lace used as surface decoration - not to mention the gold lace on the knee sashes and shoe roses of the Sackville brothers and other 17th century men of fashion. There are five little samples of linen edgings attached to a letter written by Elizabeth Isham to her father in about 1620. I have just worked them in spring shades of green Sylko sewing cotton and they look great so I am looking forward to trying more of the early lace in colour. Gil, hoping for a sunny early morning in NE England so she can photograph the green lace. - - - 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://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003
