Lacemaking in 2021

How to survive in the age of Covid19

As you know if you read my previous post, I am in the process of preparing a program on bobbin lace for the April 2021 meeting (on Zoom, of course) of the Handweavers of Bucks County. And, as I believe I mentioned earlier, this project has led me to delve into a treasure trove of old books and materials acquired more than 20 years ago from the estate of a woman who had an abiding interest in all things fiber-related, especially lacemaking.

So, yesterday morning, I went in search of an antique lace pillow that I knew we had packed away somewhere, with the aim of photographing it for this post. I found a box labeled “ B.Lace Pillow” which I opened expecting to see the antique equipment that I knew I had seen somewhere down in the ‘catacombs’ that is our basement. I hauled the box out into the light and was quite surprised to find something quite different from that which I sought.

Instead of the 100-year-old (or so) pillow, I found this one of a more recent vintage, from the 1940’s or ‘50s.

Although I had never seen this one before (it hasn't been out of the box since before my husband moved in with me over 21 years ago), I recognized it immediately. In fact, quite recently, I saw a picture of an identical one.

A couple of days earlier, among some old books on lace, I came across a little box of folded instruction cards published in 1943.

The inside of the card contains detailed instructions for making your own lace pillow (“The Lace Loom”) including a precise list of the materials. Also included in the folded card is a tissue paper pattern for the cover and a photograph of the finished article:

This pillow was clearly made from the instructions on this card. It is fairly light-weight, flimsy even, and the roller moves around rather loosely, which would make it quite hard to keep the threads under tension. The thread itself is a fairly coarse crochet cotton and the lace is correspondingly thick and heavy.

But I do not make these observations out of mockery or a sense of my “superiority” as a lacemaker. Far from it—very far. The person who made this lace pillow, as well as the lace on it was learning to make lace the hard way—by reading descriptions of the process and by making her own equipment via instructions printed on 5x8 inch cards in a tiny font. Put aside for the moment my comment about the flimsiness of the pillow and the difficulty of using it, you can see that it is very carefully made using the best materials available. And the little sample of the lace, while made of very heavy thread, and thus not very dainty, is still very competently executed.

I have had the benefit of learning through in person instruction from skilled teachers who were themselves taught lacemaking by experts.

My first forays into lacemaking were not made by looking back and forth between pillow and arcanely coded instructions that referred to bobbins by number and hand movements by sequences of “ c’s “ and “ t’s “. I suspect that I would have abandoned the endeavor very early on had that been my only option. Instead, I got to watch in-person demonstrations of each new technique. When I made my first little samples, I had a teacher looking over my shoulder telling me which pairs of bobbins to pick up next and how they were to be maneuvered.

This brings me to another observation about living through a pandemic in 2020 as opposed to the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, when lacemakers in Europe were coping with the privations of a world at war as well as the pandemic.

There was no internet in 1918, the period of the most recent worldwide plague. Our last few years have been turbulent ones, even without the scourge of Covid19. In some ways, the internet has been another curse of modern times. When we allow ourselves to be sucked into the spiral of fear and uncertainty, of anger, paranoia and ever-spiraling outrage, the internet can seem like a gathering of demons.

But having this project to focus on has reminded me that I can choose to turn my back on the turmoil and the discord and instead use my high speed internet access to enrich my isolated life instead of creating anxiety and stress.

Downloadable versions of many old lace books that are out of copyright can be found on Gutenberg.org. Youtube has videos of some early lacemaking machines as well as both historical and modern lacemaking techniques. Wikipedia has fascinating biographical information about the authors of some of my old books. And many museums have put their collections online. The Victoria and Albert in the UK and the Smithsonian here at home have nice collections of lace and lacemaking paraphernalia to browse online, for free.

So even though it is still unclear when we will be able to emerge from our self-imposed isolation, we can still indulge in virtual travels not only across the world but also through time.

Stay tuned for my next trip.