Lori An interesting question. But very difficult to do. The reason is that we have very few certainties, and the evidence must be evaluated. The only hard evidence we have is the laces themselves, and portraits painted of individuals whose life dates are known, by an artist whose life dates are known. From this we can construct a tentative timeline of how the fashion changed, and how the shapes of collars and headdresses resulted in surviving laces having those shapes. A caveat here is that late in time, fragments of early laces may be cobbled together into shapes fashionable at the date the cobbling was done. I have started collecting photos of paintings in an effort to start this kind of reference online. https://www.pinterest.com/lynxlacelady/boards/ Go down about 3/4 through my boards, and that is where the set of photos are, tentatively divided by time.
While we can't rely on the portraits to exactly reproduce the lace, we can get a general idea of spiky or dense, the shapes of the edge (deeply scalloped or nearly straight), floral or geometric. We cannot rely on most books published before the mid 20th century. We have to judge whether the writer is a scholar/historian or someone with no training in how to interpret evidence. Here is a chart I made some years ago to try and pin down how influences from one area and era affected subsequent laces. It looks like sphagetti, or what a cat does to a ball of string. http://api.ning.com/files/mTj-BQWRfI3gvX7wkBtthdP5oGSdVjTosLQkjNKXSBuO4arckV iVm8-BkRQrCYqOq3hveHQ917MdeTcxXWyUuHfGaaO*gvBs/lacehist2.jpg Santina Levey identified another possible kind of source to help with dating. Weavers of high quality, high fashion brocades and velvets sometimes produced sample books showing the kind of work they could to. If a design in the pattern book is strongly similar to the design of a particular lace, it may be reasonable to assume that one was copying the other (in either direction) to produce laces or fabrics in the current fashion. But you would have to go to museums which might have such sample books in their collections. One clear time boundary for embroidery on net, or for bobbin part laces appliqued onto clear net, is the date that the net making machines were built. But even that date doesn't give us absolute certainties because the first date a machine capable of the job is built does not mean that the net was widely available and reliably available. You only set up a workshop when you know you can get the background net in sufficient quantity all the time. The latter date is the important one, and it is not absolutely clear. Thread used is another possible, but we had a discussion on laceioli about this issue, and it turns out to be problematic. Cotton was mixed with linen long before purely cotton threads were reliably available. http://laceioli.ning.com/group/identification-history/forum/topics/general-p rinciples The only way you can get an understanding of the timeline is to view as many laces as possible (photos, if close up enough, do help a great deal), study as many portraits as possible (with dates attached). Studying this question is endlessly fascinating. I know for certain that I will not get to the end of it in my lifetime. I spent 6 years in graduate school studying medieval history, so I understand how historians think and how they use evidence. I also understand how evidence can be misused. Of course, then I was dealing with written documents. Lace history uses a different kind of evidence, but the principles are the same. Lorelei Halley -----Original Message----- From: owner-l...@arachne.com [mailto:owner-l...@arachne.com] On Behalf Of Lorri Ferguson Subject: Re: [lace] Bucks point Has anyone ever made a Time Line of the dates of various laces and/or events that affected lace and the lace industries? Lorri Ferguson - 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://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
