Bobbins of Belgium: A book of Belgian lace, lace-workers, lace-schools and lace-villagesKellogg, Charlotte
History
Bobbins of Belgium: A book of Belgian lace, lace-workers, lace-schools and lace-villages
Kellogg, Charlotte
Brussels lace committee; Lace and lace making -- Belgium
Monsieur told me later that in his region if the wage of the good
worker can be raised to 50 cents per day, she will be able to live, and
will be content to remain at home before her lace cushion rather than
to go to the shoe and cotton factories of Thielt.
The advanced pupils were eager to uncover their treasure. Nearly all of
them had protected their round cushions with a circular piece of thick
blue glazed paper, with a hole in the middle. Through the hole they
worked with their rather heavy cherry wood bobbins, on the meshless
guipures of Cluny and Bruges and Flanders, which this school prefers.
Several were finishing the collar and cuff sets of rather coarse
but pretty Bruges with its characteristic rose and trefoil, seen so
commonly in shop windows, and which are especially effective when worn
with cotton or linen frocks. The Guipure de Flandres pupils were making
square insets for table and tray-cloths of simple, geometric designs.
Two girls were at work on what they called Guipure de Milan, of a wide
spreading branch and flower pattern.
However, the most interesting lace was not the guipure but the Point
de Flandres or Old Flanders, with its elaborate mesh base, just now
experiencing an interesting and encouraging revival, in which the
zealous Baron van der Graeht felt Thielt should assist. A half-dozen
older girls were executing doily and table center rounds in this lace,
after the Committee’s very popular Swan pattern. They were using a
fairly coarse linen thread, and working the rich, solid mesh with eight
bobbins. “Whoever would make the Old Flanders mesh must be willing
to play a game of patience,” Madame had once said to me. The dull,
plain woven parts of the pattern are brilliantly outlined by a still
coarser thread, and in the “jours” or open-work spaces are the much
loved snow-balls characteristic of Binche lace. Because of its combined
strength and beauty, there could hardly be a more successful lace for
general use than this Old Flanders, sometimes called Antik.
While it was once the most generally made and most celebrated of
Flemish bobbin laces (it was known in every part of Flanders in 1500),
it had been almost forgotten for generations, but even tho it has been
little remembered for some time, Old Flanders may be said never to have
died. In certain regions, that of Antwerp for instance, it is found
continuously on the garments of priests. It is the lace that remained
always at the base and from which the other bobbin laces, from time to
time, sprang. It is to be hoped that the Committee’s laudable effort to
revive it will bear increasing rewards.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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