Above: Gemma Khawaja’s version of Needlepin, a lace tell. The Lacemaking Tells are unaccompanied counting songs and rhymes sung/chanted by young lacemakers, particularly used in the lace schools, when they are first being taught to make lace. These songs tended to be made up of fragments of ballads, nursery rhymes and sometimes even hymns, and …
Handmade lace is such an extremely slow process that it can no longer be done as a career. Today it tends to be a hobby activity. In order to find out about current handmade lacemakers and their thoughts about lacemaking, I contacted some lacemaking community groups. These were The Meridian Lacemakers (Peacehaven, East Sussex), Southwick …
Saint Catherine According to the legend, St Catherine of Alexandria was a virgin martyr who converted to Christianity and was imprisoned tortured, sent to be broken on the wheel (which shattered at her touch) and eventually beheaded. Because of her association with the wheel, she is the patron saint of wheelwrights and other crafts people, …
Here is a legend about the origin of lace in Venice, found in a newspaper called the Placer Herald in 1899. The article reads: A Legend of Lace-Making. Many are the myths banded down in relation to the origin of lace-making and of the number one has to select her choice and pin her faith …
Jack, be nimble! Jack, be quick! Jack, jump over The candlestick! Jack jumped high, Jack jumped low, Jack jumped over And burned his toe! In some parts of Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire the lace-makers’ feast day was St Catterns Day (St Catherine’s Day) on November 25th. St Catherine was the patron saint of lace-makers (and …
Above: Music inspired by The Fox ballad, by Gemma Khawaja Above: A version of Long Lankin ballad, by Gemma Khawaja Songs sung by lacemakers (before lace became mechanised) tended to be very dark and macabre in tone. Lacemakers were mostly female (though there were some male lacemakers, though they are less common and this topic …
The practice of adding “spangles” (rings of coloured beads) to the ends of bobbins (the East Midlands ones in particular) seems to be a unique trait of English bobbin lace makers. I wondered why the East Midlands style of bobbin had the added spangle, and not the pointed-ended Devon bobbin. I have since learnt that …