Introducing Bone Lace - A Beginner's Guide to Working Early Bobbin Lace
By Gilian Dye
Publisher Cleveden Press, 2017
44 pages, 79 images including samples, patterns, diagrams
ISBN 078-0-9553223-7-2
"The fair maids that weave their threads with bones"?
This book of helpful hints is like trying out for a role in a Shakespearean
play. You are nervous. The director (Dye) recommends being very free in
your approach - copying and adapting to suit your threads/lines and their
proposed use, without relying on a rigid pattern/script or believing there
is only one way of doing things. This is what early lacemakers seem to
have done.
Early substitutions for bobbins were made from bones of small animals and
game birds - thus the name.
Dye efficiently describes equipment and materials/scene and props - and
has gone on to clearly show how to wind thread onto bobbins/use props, and
proceeds to the business of basic moves/stage directions.
Right away, you are introduced to 2-pair plaits and plait projects, which
launches the beginner into a variety of plaits in a sampler. It is sort of
like stage directions.
Now that the "rehearsal" is over, one can get to the main performance. As
in all her books, Dye simplifies what another author could make
complicated. All elements that are tricky to understand are clearly explained
(metal
threads, spangles, bits and pieces seen in early portraits that have been
deciphered by Dye and rendered in comprehensible directions).
The booklet contains many special tips that Dye has generously shared with
readers of Guild Magazines. To have put them in this booklet is a good
idea, because so many who make lace may not be members of a very large guild.
They would not have the benefit of these captured "pearls of knowledge"
had they not been published in this format.
This 44-page booklet can be easily tucked into your tote bag with
lacemaking supplies, and hardly add weight. If you have been collecting all
of
Dye's 16th and 17th century instructional booklets about working early bobbin
lace, you will want this one. The entire body of her work researching this
period in lace development is a wonderful way to introduce a new lacemaker
to the process, so they can add authentic lace elements to costumes of the
period.
The photo on the cover is of a gentleman who is a costumed guide at
Hardwick Hall in England. The small edging of bone lace on the rim of his
white
ruff is an important element of his costume. Learn to make "bone lace",
which requires a limited number of bobbin pairs, and you will discover
delightful ways to use it in 21st century applications.
To protect the various booklets in a crowded bookcase, you may wish to
consider what this reviewer has done - put them in a clear plastic legal
folder with tie from an office supply store - to hold them all neatly
together.
Should you benefit from a class with Dye, you can add all you collect from
that experience as extra documentation.
Jeri Ames in Maine USA
Lace and Embroidery Resource Center
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