Hi Everybody: Alex - looking forward to that book of yours!
Haven't seen this "Lace News" thing so am only following the discussion in ignorance, but I have two thoughts and one bit of new information: 1. Are we sure that the lace being labelled Regency means it was made in the Regency? I'm not thinking about using old prickings here - I'm thinking of the world of embroidery where you will find, especially in old magazines, techniques ascribed to any old historical period that the publishers thought would sell magazines. Then people studying that technique decades later don't realize what happened and they painstakingly ascribe a technique to a time period it never had anything to do with. 2. As you probably know, in the 19th century people loved to label stuff and they might not have been drawing on accurate knowledge when they did the labelling. You don't know how deep that wrong labelling has crawled into a museum collection and I know I have had the experience of seeing something wrongly labelled in a museum collection, and the museum's experts have assured me I am wrong solely because what they've got on their label was what was on the label in the collection when they got the item. New information: LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, has mounted an exhibit called "Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail 1700 - 1915". Their catalogue has been published as a book, and I've got a copy. One beautiful dress, very simple and probably made for a younger woman, has a full-length lace overdress they describe as completely made of handmade Bucks Point - in linen. The date is circa 1818. There is a closeup of the lace pattern - quite a complicated lace flower with the net embellished by areas of point-d'esprit. It appears as though the fabric of the dress has been built up from strips of the patterned lace spaced a couple of inches apart from one another, with plain bobbin net in the middle, and with a hem edging of a wider lace, but there isn't enough detail to be sure. If anybody has gone to LACMA and seen this dress (it had a bright yellow underdress) I would love to hear your thoughts on how it was constructed. The item number is M.63.54.5 Adele North Vancouver, BC (west coast of Canada) > Dear Arachnids > > I have been researching Regency Bucks for over 15 years and found the 'Lace > News' article interesting. Unfortunately the information about the dates, > presumably from the booklet by Jean Eke, Angela Brown and Sandi Woods is > inaccurate. I would have thought that the 'firat port of call' for anyone > researching Bucks would be The Luton Museum Lace Dealer's Pattern Book. My > edition dated 1998 contains illustrations of nine samples of Regency and one > containing both standard Floral Bucks and Regency Bucks. The the date given > for the pieces in the book is stated as appearing to date from around 1820 to > the end of the century. > > The lace we see in collections is the lace that has been regarded as worth > being looked after and keeping'for its beauty and monetary value with most of > the less interesting and less well made pieces probably being worn out and > lost over time. Therefore it is not surprising that pieces like the simple, > narrower pieces illustrated in the Luton Museum book have not been preserved. > > Laurie is correct in saying that I am including Regency Bucks in the Floral > Bucks book I am currently writing. I am currently making the lace and writing > about Regency, dressing a doll in a chistening robe trimmed with it and then I > have the last project, underclothes for a doll using some very fine Bucks, so > it should not be too long now. > > Keep lacemakin > > Best wishes > > Alex - 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
