Hello all-
A friend passed along an article about a lace factory still operating in
Amsterdam--
Amsterdam, New York State, that is!
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>From Schenectady, NY The Daily Gazette, March 28, 2008
JESSICA HARDING Gazette Reporter
Lace mill stands alone in state
Tucked into one of the forgotten areas of Amsterdam, Willow Street is like
stepping into the city's past.
While the area was once a hotbed of activity, with flourishing textile
and carpet mills, the road is now eerily quiet, lined mostly with empty
buildings and unused space.
One family, though, is trying to keep tradition alive. The Bouck family
of Perth a year ago purchased what remained of Bojud Knitting Mills and
continues to make face under a new name: Willow Street Lace.
While some textile mills in the area have survived, Willow Street Lace
is the only mill in New York and one of only a handful in the country that
make lace.
The mill's massive rooms are filled with storage, old Steel and
machinery. Where the lace-making operation occurs, thousands of spools of
thread so fine it looks like a spider's silk are fed into the machines to
create intricate patterns.
"When someone buys a curtain, you don't know what really goes into
that," Jenny Bouck said.
The patterns for the lace are on cards with thousands of tiny holes in
them. When the machine comes to a hole, the needle puts the thread down.
Only one of Willow Street's remaining 11 machines is operated by a
computer. The rest are controlled by hand.
The company's three employees watch the spools of thread carefully and
quickly change them as they run out.
Alien Bouck has even designed some patterns himself, and some of the
patterns are copyrighted by the company and can be found only at Willow
Street Lace.
Bojud moved to Amsterdam in the mid-1960s and was one of the larger
textile mills in the area.
It made lace along with fabric for gloves, material for jerseys and
hats, fabric for curtains and sheer fabric for playpens., In the company's
heyday in the late 1970s and 1980s, it had more than 120 machines running 24
hours a day in two buildings. It employed nearly 200 people and billed
about $100,000 per day. Alien Bouck said.
Alien Bouck joined Bojud as a laborer in 1982, when he was 17.
— He then moved up the ranks to run his department and was promoted to
plant manager in 1995. In 2006, Bojud was going out of business and Bouck
thought he'd buy it.
"I already knew the ins and outs of the business, I knew the machines.
I didn't want to start over somewhere else, and I like what I’m doing,” he
said. “I thought, ‘might as well give it a try,’”
The pair bought Bojud in May 2007.
Bouck makes the raw material for his customers, who then sell the
material to “converters” who dye the lace lace or shape it into what the
final customer needs.
Bouck said he mostly makes lace for apparel such as lingerie and for
home furnishings.
He is currently working on an order that will eventually be turned into
curtains at Disney resorts. His patterns have also sold in Macy’s and
Victoria’s Secret.
With debts piling up and competition from overseas, the Boucks are still
struggling.
In order to make ends meet, the family rents out space in the building
to University Custom Mill Works, which has its main operation in the Edson
Street Industrial Park. Jenny Bouck also works two jobs and helps out when
she can at the mill.
"We've been working night and day just to keep production going," she
said. "It's been hard." The pair has also applied for Empire Zone benefits,
but while the building is in the zone, the company has not received state
approval because it cannot guarantee job creation numbers, Alien Bouck said.
Despite the hardship of competing with larger businesses overseas .and
paying down debts, the Boucks are proud to have preserved a little bit of
Amsterdam's history.
"This is what Amsterdam is known for," Jenny Bouck said. "It's also
cool to know that this is what is left of this 'type of business in New York
and there are only a handful of businesses across the country who do what we
do.
Photo caption: Allen Bouck, owner of Willow Street Lace in Amsterdam,
explains Thursday how more than 1400 spools of denier textured polyester are
fed to a machine that will make lace products…
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Amsterdam is about 40 miles west of Albany, NY--if that means anything to
anyone! You'll spot the name "Perth" too--we haven't always been terribly
original when it came to naming communities over here.
I can send a pdf file of the article to anyone interested.
regards,
Lorraine in Albany, NY
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