Hi Adele !
What I know about reconstruction probably won't help you much. But I
took a class from Michael Giusiana last summer, and we were given HUGE
files of extremely high-definition scans of old lace. When it was
printed out, the 1" X 12" piece of lace was 54 inches long!!!
Obviously, it had to be printed on a specialty plotter, and it was
expensive. But from there, we were able to literally trace the paths of
the thread pairs onto tracing paper. In some cases, the lace was
somewhat mangled, and it was hard to see what happened to the threads.
But the assumption was that if you're advanced enough to be doing
reconstructions, then you "know" how something like that is usually
made. (HUMPH!) I was quite frustrated at times. I think I had
chosen a poor example for a first effort. But once you have the repeat
done, you do another tracing, this time cleaning up your work as you go,
and using the color code to create your diagram. Then you take it back
to the printer and have your big diagram reduced to the size we usually
work with.
So a picture in a book would be very hard to do in this manner, because
when you start blowing it up, it becomes so fuzzy you can't see anything
clearly.
Michael is teaching a class this summer at Sweet Briar, and the laces he
has chosen for the reconstruction work are beautiful and very clear! It
should be quite an exciting workshop!! Anyone interested can write to
me privately for more information.
Happy New Year!!
Clay
Clay Blackwell
Lynchburg, VA USA
Adele Shaak wrote:
We don't have a lot of fireworks around here this time of year but my
neighbours said it with pots and pans and their voices. Oh, and the
odd car horn. We do have four huge fireworks displays in the summer,
put on by different countries, and last year when one started with a
giant "BANG" at 10 pm my apartment, which is on the ground floor, was
instantly filled with eau de skunk. The poor little fellow must have
been right outside my window and severely startled. If you haven't
ever smelled fresh skunk spray, thank your lucky stars!
I have spent some time this holiday trying to make a pattern of an old
piece of lace from a photograph in a book. Does anyone have any tips
for this? It's an early pattern (ca.1650) and is not made on a grid,
so just getting some graph paper and drawing in the pin holes won't
work. I have tried several methods over the years and none has
succeeded - I don't know if it's lack of skills and technique or a
simple lack of patience!
But I am determined, so what I have done this time is scan it and
enlarge it so it fills the page, then I drew around the figures (it's
one of the laces where there are several trails making up a deep
scallop) and then I shrank the line drawing to what I think is an
appropriate size for the lace. Now I've filled up 30 pairs of bobbins
with what I think is an appropriate size of thread, and I'm going to
try just making the lace freehand with the line drawing as a guide. It
is quite a complex piece of lace and I don't know if I'll be able to
do it but will let you know how it goes.
Adele
North Vancouver, BC
(west coast of Canada)
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