Lucie The first thing is that city women would have had access to laces made in the countries of their close trade partners. So for English areas, English laces of the period, probably not the best quality. And for French areas, French laces.
Point ground laces were widely made in both countries and would be appropriate. Also Mechlin laces made from designs similar to point ground laces. (Straight laces of that period it is often difficult to tell whether it is Mechlin or point ground -- the designs were virtually identical. It is just those tiny telltale vertical stacks of stitches in the Mechlin which identifies that kind.) Another factor is that point ground and Mechlin laces of that time were distinctive: from the beginning of the Napoleonic era to the early 1820s the fashion laces had very short repeats -- 1 inch or a little more -- and the ground would be spotted with square tallies, or tiny empty circles of gimp. The headside would have a straight and flat edge. It was only in the 1820s that scalloped edges came back into fashion. Now these remarks describe the fashion laces. If you have access to Santina Levey's book, her photos will show you this. (I'm getting all of this from her book and from the laces at Chicago's Art Institute of Chicago. Santina Levey was invited in to identify the collection in the 1980s, and I was studying the laces there just after she had been through. So the staff read me her descriptions of each piece. I saw more pieces there than are in her book.) But it is likely that the very best fashion laces may not have been sent across the water. After all why send good stuff to a wild and far away place when you have perfectly good buyers at home? Probably lesser quality or even unsellable lace was sent across the water. There is also the Ipswich lace production: local and homegrown, point ground. But I'm not sure what time period the Ipswich lacemakers were active. I know there is someone in arachne who does know. Lorelei Halley - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachnemodera...@yahoo.com
