First of all - thank you for your original dictionary: I have owned my
copy for a long time, and it's condition certainly shows use. I will be
happy to buy a new edition any time you produce one.
Here is a suggestion for you to track down. It is a subject that I have
tried to track down my self, but haven't got very far:-
Yak Lace. When I first came across this, I was reading the Ruth Bean
edition of Thomas Wright's "The Romance of the Lace Pillow". As I live
in High Wycombe, I was interested by the references to this lace being
made here. As you will see, there are certainly some contradictions
between this piece and the later one (quoted below). I haven't yet been
able to look into the sources quoted by these authors, which might
clarify matters.
Your own entry in your dictionary is quite brief, so I hope that you
will agree that there is scope for more. I was intrigued by your
suggestion that "Yak" was a corruption of Yorkshire, the county
supplying wool - it certainly sounds like it could have been a local
pronunciation. And might a Yak bobbin be the same as our local "Bucks
Thumper"?
All this certainly came as a surprise to me, and I'd like to know a lot
more - not just about the trade around High Wycombe, but especially
about making lace with multi-coloured wool. My apologies for the length
of this message, but I thought that others on the list might be
interested to find out about lace made from wool.
Many thanks,
Linda Walton
(in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, U.K.
where it's cold and damp, made worse by the men with a pneumatic drill
outside my front door, but they are trying to mend a really bad broken
water pipe, which has been pouring a stream down my drive and has made a
huge pool outside my front door for the last ten days - so I'm grateful
really, however distracting).
P.S. I find the quality of the text from my scanner varies with the
quality of scan I set, and can be made error-free. A poor original can
be much improved, you just have to accept that it will take the machine
a little longer to do.
* * * * *
from Thomas Wright's "The Romance of the Lace Pillow", Ruth Bean,
Bedford, 1982.
[Page 228] "About 1870 there began to be made throughout
Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, especially ar Newport Pagnell, High
Wycombe and Stagsden, a coarse, strong bobbin lace, the material of
which seems at first to have been obtained from the Yak animal. Most of
it, however, was made of Yorkshire wool. The designs of Yak, as it was
[page 229] called were geometrical, being copied from Reticella and silk
Maltese Guipure.
"One of the results of its introduction was the gradual extinction of
the Black Silk Lace industry, the centre of which at that time was
Haddenham near Aylesbury. High Wycombe obtained a name for its
wheel-like design, the Town Trot, which was made in enormous quantities."
There is a footnote:- "In North Bucks Mr. E. Godfroy alone used three
hundred pounds weight of wool per month."
"A brown lace with blue plaits made in widths of two, three and four
inches, which was used for dresses, valances, and for decorating
furniture, occupied many pillows at Newton Blossomville and other
villages in North Bucks. At Carlton (Beds) a very heavy worsted lace of
every imaginable colour was made in widths from half an inch to a foot,
but the black variety of Yak was most in demand. [There is a plate
showing a piece of Yak lace, but I don't think I can reproduce this for
you.] The fashion, however, for all kinds of Yak soon declined, and
eventually became almost extinct, except with respect to the cream
variety which is still sold for children's clothes."
There is another footnote:- "Gibbs's "History of Aylesbury", p. 622;
Bull's "History of Newport Pagnell", p. 196."
There is an additional piece on page 241:-
"Lace-making has never been a well paid industry. The worker fared best
in the Yak period, when she could make ten shillings a week."
I followed this up with an internet search, and got this webpage, from
Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum:-
http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/englishness-beds-maltese-and-yak-lace.html
Here is the part of the text about Yak lace, but there is more to read,
and also some pictures.
'Yak' lace
In Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), 'yak' lace is defined
as 'a coarse pillow lace made from the silky hair of the yak'. The
length made by Mrs. Campbell, however, was made from worsted sheep's
wool and was probably representative of the general quality of the lace.
Like other types of Torchon laces, this sample of 'yak' lace has a
geometric pattern and has a very wide mesh, making it quick and easy to
make, even for a beginner. The main decorative feature of the 'head'
(the fan shaped edging) of the lace is a simple, almost heart-shaped
block of 'half-stitch' weave. Wool, however, is not an ideal fibre from
which to make lace. Unlike linen, wool has a natural elasticity that
means that when the pins are removed from between the stitches the lace
shrinks to only two-thirds of the size.
Laces made of wool were known from the 17th century, but they did not
become popular until the mid to late 19th century. 'Yak' lace was a
cheap and popular trimming for underwear, christening dresses,
children's winter dresses and outerwear. Coarser forms of 'yak' lace
were used to trim curtains. In Victorian England, there was a strict
etiquette of mourning, requiring men, women and children to wear black
or dark shades for up to two years after the death of a relative. This
meant that there was a constant need for simple, black laces of modest
materials, such as 'yak' lace. The trade in this form of lace was also
helped along by a craze for wool garments, particularly undergarments.
In the 1880s. wool began to be promoted as a 'healthy' and 'sanitary'
fabric for all kinds of garments by Dr. Gustav Jaeger, a zoologist from
Stuttgart, Germany. Developing 'Dr. Jaeger's Sanitary Woollen System',
Dr. Jaeger sold his products at a London store and through catalogues.
Later, he sold the brand name to the Englishman Lewis Tomalin, who went
on to develop Jaeger into one of the best known British fashion houses.
* * * * *
Alex Stillwell wrote:
I have had so many replies. Thank you. The spread sheet sound good but too
complicated for me. I am reluctant to put it on CD. We all know people who
have copied whole books. That takes time and effort, copying a CD takes
seconds. Please come forward with suggestions for me to track down, I may ask
for help along the way.
Best wishes
Alex
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