Alex
Would I be correct in concluding from this that you favor the âBuffalo
Wingsâ school of thought on this? Buffalo Wings is a term that makes no
sense, but everyone knows what it is. (Buffalo Wings are a comestible
consisting of chicken wings with a spicy sauce, which may or may not have
originated in Buffalo, NY) Should I put you in the âPoint dâAngleterreâ
column?
One problem with Leveyâs nomenclature is that she says âIn general,
therefore, the names used in this book are tied as tightly as possible to the
known factsâ¦â
As in Alexâs research, we are getting new facts all the time and some of
them are crazy. For instance, Levey deals with the fact that people in
Bedfordshire were making Maltese lace. But, now we know that people in Saxony
were making Maltese lace complete with little Maltese crosses. Would it be too
much of a stretch to say that when it comes to fashion laces they were making
everything everywhere?
It is totally unfortunate that so many technique names like Milanese are
location related. Another issue I have found is that do you label the
technique Milanese if the piece seems to have been made in Flanders, something
you surmise from the thread and the fillings?
In cataloguing the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt, they took the approach of
categorizing entirely on the basis of structure, so that you have categories
like âneedle lace, hexagonal groundâ. This was adapted from the
curatorâs observation that there was no way that he could tell where
something was made. But, this was also an imperfect approach. I myself went
into the museum wishing to see Point de France and it took a bit of cogitating
between me and the collections manager to figure out which of the categories
this fit into.
We do have collectors, dealers and makers who come into the museum. Often they
have been reading sources on the internet which tend to predate 1923, the US
copyright free date. So, words like Alencon, rather than merely a structural
description are often on their tongues.
Devon
Sent from Mail for Windows 10
From: Alex Stillwell
Sent: Saturday, April 1, 2017 7:01 AM
To: Arachne reply
Cc: devonth...@gmail.com
Subject: [lace] Point d'Angleterre or Brussels bobbin lace
Re:
From: <devonth...@gmail.com> Subject: [lace] Point d'Angleterre or Brussels
bobbin lace
When I wrote my Illustrated Dictionary of lacemaking I had many problems like
this and spent many hours thinking about them. Finally I came to the
conclusion that the bottom line is that words are a form of communication and
that what we say or write is correctly interpreted by the recipient.
Different
words have been used for the same variety of lace at different times, in
different countries, in different communities in the same country and whether
the name is used by a lacemaker, who knows the intimate structure of the
lace,
a dealer, who is trying to sell it or a collector who may know little about
either but thinks she does. Also, many laces have been made in many towns,
places and countries apart from the one from which the lace derived it,s
name.
We cannot ascribe any piece to a particular town or region unless there is
direct evidence. Sometimes design can be an indicator and sometimes
techniques, but even these can be unreliable. Researching Bucks point I have
found almost all the techniques, in the excellent OIDFA book on Point Ground
Laces, in pieces in the Lace Guild Collection, most of which would have been
made in England. At best the names of the different laces should be treated
as
generic and not a statement of where the lace had been made. I have recently
been researching a well known lace with an astounding result that I will be
releasing in the May edition of the Lace Society magazine. It shows how
little
we can be sure of regarding the areas in which lace was made and how much
research needs to be done.
Happy lacemaking
Alex
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