Dear Nancy I suspect there is a misunderstanding. In her 'The Technique of Bucks Point Lace' p.75 Pam Nottingham states that: 'In the past very few patterns had corners as lace was worked by the length round a pillow. most of the corners for the narrow, traditional edgings have been designed within the last 30 years [writing in 1981] to satisfy the demands of the modern lacemaker.' She is referring just to those narrow edgings which would have been bought by the yard and mounted round a handkerchief with a gathered frill to get round the corner. The method devised to make worked corners on them is the familiar methods of using a mirror and hoping for the best, using a mirror and adjusting to be workable, using a mirror and adjusting to look good, or the asymmetrical corner, which when successful works well and looks good, but is far harder to do! this makes more sense for the modern lacemaker who does not in general make yard after yard but would make just sufficient and make it to measure the handkerchief. P. 136 of the book has a superb 19 century made handkerchief, but a much wider border. Anne Buck's 'Thomas Lester, his Lace and the East Midlands Industry 1820-1905' has many show handkerchiefs with wide borders and elaborate corners, mainly Beds, but some Bucks, including on p.26 a partly worked draft, showing how designers worked then. It has a central reverse and symmetrical corner. The pattern features are drawn, and look as though a mechanical method was used to produce symmetry - tracing paper no doubt. The designer has written 'Honey Comb' and 'pt' where they are to be used, and has constructed geometrically the honeycomb and point ground on one side only, leaving the other for later, presumably, but put the markings for tallies in the ground, and for mayflowers (cloth stitch squares) in the honeycomb - not always in the right places for the latter! leonard...@yahoo.com In London, less said about the weather the better Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2019 15:25:32 -0400 From: "N.A. Neff" <nancy.a.n...@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [lace] Lassen question
I guess I have to confess that I believed a source and shouldn't have, or I totally misunderstood her: Pam Nottingham was emphatic that she and her students were the first to design flat corners for edging handkerchiefs, in the mid-twentieth C. She must have meant only Bucks because I've just surveyed handkerchiefs in the Met's on-line catalog, and there are lots of flat corners from the 19th C but in other types of lace. I saw only a couple of joins, but the pictures aren't detailed enough to tell whether there are joins hidden in the gathered part around a corner. - 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/
