Transcriber’s Notes
A few words in relation to era/dialect have been retained e.g. tho,
possest, stopt, dropt, slipt, distrest.
The frontispiece spelling of the Queen of Belgium is Elisabeth,
as shown in the photo with her signature. Throughout the main
text however, it has been spelt Queen Elizabeth. These spellings
have been left as printed.
In the Appendix, where there are two or more illustrations per page,
the words (Top), (Middle), (Bottom) have been used, to indicate the
link with the text and illustration.
p.292: changed 4 to _d_
Printer errors have silently been corrected.
BOBBINS OF BELGIUM
[Illustration: H.M. QUEEN ELISABETH OF BELGIUM]
BOBBINS OF BELGIUM
A BOOK OF BELGIAN LACE, LACE-WORKERS,
LACE-SCHOOLS AND
LACE-VILLAGES
BY
CHARLOTTE KELLOGG
_Of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, and Author of
“Women of Belgium”_
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
[Printed in the United States of America]
Published in February, 1920
Copyright Under the Articles of the Copyright Convention
of the Pan-American Republics and the
United States, August 11, 1910.
DEDICATION
To the women of the Brussels war-time lace committee—Madame Allard,
the Vicomtesse de Beughem, Madame Kefer-Mali, and the Comtesse
Elizabeth d’Oultremont, with admiration and gratitude.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Preface 15
Introduction 25
I. Turnhout 49
II. Courtrai 79
III. Thourout-Thielt-Wynghene 97
IV. Grammont 127
V. Bruges 143
VI. Kerxken 169
VII. Erembodeghem 189
VIII. Opbrakel 201
IX. Liedekerke 215
X. Herzele 231
XI. Ghent 247
XII. Zele 265
XIII. Appendix 275
Index 307
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
H.M. QUEEN ELIZABETH OF BELGIUM, _Frontispiece_
FIFTEENTH CENTURY PORTRAIT 32
Showing heavy brocade as yet unrelieved
by linen or lace trimming.
PORTRAIT OF CHARLES IX (1570) 33
Linen collar showing picot edge made with
the needle.
PORTRAIT TOWARDS END OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY 40
Showing collar ornamented with bobbin-made
cluny.
ANNE OF AUSTRIA BY VAN DYCK 41
About 1635, cluny lace made with bobbins.
ABBÉ BERRALY SCHOOL, TURNHOUT 56
General view.
NINE-YEAR CHILDREN MAKING POINT DE PARIS 57
POINT DE PARIS CLASS 64
On dark days lamps are lighted behind bottles
filled with water, the rays passing
through, fall in spotlights on the cushions.
WINDING BOBBINS FOR THE CHILDREN 65
POINT DE LILLE, OR POINT D’HOLLANDE 72
Mesh showing “Esprits” or dots characteristic
of this bobbin lace.
END OF A POINT DE PARIS SCARF ABOUT 2½ YARDS
LONG ON WHICH COLETTE WORKED ONE YEAR 73
IN THE ABBÉ BERRALY SCHOOL, COLETTE, 16-YEARS
OLD, WORKS WITH 1,000 BOBBINS 73
BELGIAN LACE MESHES (Plate I) 80
After Pierre Verhagen in “La Dentelle
Belge.”
BELGIAN LACE MESHES (Plate II) 81
After Pierre Verhagen in “La Dentelle
Belge.”
BOBBIN LACES 88
Malines, Point de Paris, Valenciennes.
CUSHION COVER REPRESENTING BELGIUM’S GRATITUDE
TO AMERICA FOR BREAD 89
Point de Paris lace combined with linen.
The lower right-hand centerpiece shows the
rose design, emblem of Queen Elizabeth.
BOBBIN LACES 104
Torchon, Cluny, Old Flemish, Binche.
TABLE CLOTH SHOWING ARMS OF THE ALLIES 105
Cut linen with squares of Venise surrounded
by filet and cluny; Venise made
with the needle; cluny with bobbins.
A “MARIE ANTOINETTE” IN CHANTILLY LACE 128
Made with bobbins, near Grammont.
CUSHION COVER 129
Center Venise, borders Valenciennes, lace
executed by 12 workers in one month,
embroidery and mounting by four women
in two months; design by M. de Rudder.
TEA CLOTH 129
Point de Paris, cock design.
LACE MAKERS OF BRUGES 144
BRUGES AND SIMILAR BOBBIN LACES 145
LACE NORMAL SCHOOL, BRUGES. BEGINNER’S
CLASS 152
Symbolic color pattern on left-hand easel;
demonstration bobbins attached to colored
threads at right.
BED COVER IN DUCHESSE OR BRUSSELS LACE 153
Made with bobbins; executed in Flanders by
30 women in three months; design by the
Lace Committee.
ROSALINE, WHICH CLOSELY RESEMBLES BRUGES 160
DETAILS FOR BRUGES LACE 160
Made with bobbins on round cushion.
DOILY SET IN POINT DE PARIS IN THE “ANIMALS
OF THE ALLIES” DESIGN, EXECUTED AT TURNHOUT 161
POINT DE FLANDRES OR FLANDERS LACE 176
Flowers made with bobbins, mesh with needle;
designs by the Lace Committee.
HANDKERCHIEF IN NEEDLE-POINT 177
Made near Alost. Both mesh and flowers
made with needle.
DETAIL SHOWING SEVEN DIFFERENT FILLING-IN
STITCHES 177
VENISE DESIGNS BY THE BRUSSELS LACE COMMITTEE 180
HANDKERCHIEF AND JEWEL BOXES; FLANDERS AND
VENISE OVER SATIN AND VELVET 181
VENISE BANQUET CLOTH PRESENTED BY THE LACE
COMMITTEE TO H.M. QUEEN ELIZABETH ON HER
RETURN FROM EXILE 192–193
Design by M. de Rudder; executed by 30
best Venise-makers in Belgium in six months.
CUSHION COVER IN VENISE 196
Pekinese dog; design by M. Allard.
TABLE CENTER IN FLANDERS WITH CENTER AND
BORDER OF VENISE 197
Design by Lace Committee; executed in West
Flanders by five workers in 15 days.
“THE TOURNEY” BANQUET CLOTH 208
Design reproducing a mediæval painting in
Tournai, executed in Venise lace by 10 workers
in one month, mounting and embroidery
by five workers in one month. Price in
Brussels, 1,000 francs.
“ARMS OF ALLIES” CUSHION COVER IN VENISE,
WITH DETAILS IN FLANDERS 209
NEEDLE-POINT SCARF EXPRESSING GRATITUDE OF
BELGIUM TO HOLLAND. PRESENTED TO H.M.
QUEEN WILHELMINA 216–217
Executed by 30 workers in eight months.
BOBBIN LACES 224
Malines; Application, flowers sewn on tulle;
Duchesse, with Needle-Point insertion.
APPLICATION DETAILS TO BE SEWED ON TULLE 225
Upper flower shows open spaces left by
bobbin worker for needle worker; lower
flower shows both bobbin and needle work
completed.
WEDDING GIFT OF MR. HOOVER TO MRS. PAGE 240
Executed in Venise and Flanders lace by 30
women working three months. American
eagles with outspread wings, protecting the
Belgian Lion enchained in the four corners.
FLANDERS—NEEDLE MESH, BOBBIN FLOWERS 240
VENISE LACE CENTER, BORDER OF VALENCIENNES 241
Lace executed in Flanders by 40 women in
two months; embroidery and mounting in
Brussels by four women in three months.
VALENCIENNES, SQUARE MESH 241
FAN IN NEEDLE-POINT 256
Executed by three women in six weeks.
“Shields of the Allies,” design drawn by
M. Knoff for the Lace Committee.
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MARRIAGE VEIL IN NEEDLE-POINT,
BELONGING TO THE COMTESSE ELIZABETH
D’OULTREMONT 257
It would take 40 workers about a half year
to copy this veil.
AT WORK ON DETAILS OF A NEEDLE-POINT SCARF
TO BE PRESENTED TO QUEEN ELIZABETH 268
NEEDLE LACE CLASS-ROOM IN THE TRADE UNION
LACE SCHOOL AT ZELE 268
NEEDLE-POINT ILLUSTRATION FOR THE FABLE OF THE
FOX AND THE GRAPES 269
IN THE ZELE LACE SCHOOL. JOINING DETAILS OF
THE NEEDLE-POINT SCARF PRESENTED TO QUEEN
ELIZABETH 269
PREFACE
I entered the lace-world by the grim door of war. For it was the
war-time work of the women of the Brussels Lace Committee that opened
the way to me.
Long before the war, Queen Elizabeth in Belgium, like Queen Margharita
in Italy, had sought means to protect the lace worker, through
centuries the victim of an economic injustice, not to say crime, and
to rescue and develop an industry threatened from many sides. In 1911
she gave her royal encouragement to a group of prominent Belgian women
who organized as “Amies de la Dentelle,” Friends of Lace, and began
a lace-saving campaign by trying to remedy the deplorable condition
of most of the lace schools, the defective teaching, long hours, and
pitiful pay. They could insist in the schools, as they could not
elsewhere, on the right to inspect, to grant or refuse patronage. They
subsidized worthy institutions, and advocated the establishment of a
lace normal school and of a special school of design. Education they
felt to be the main road leading out of the prevailing misery, and they
were making progress along this road, when suddenly the Invader poured
over their borders.
While other women hurried to open refuges and hospitals and
soup-kitchens, a few of the Friends of Lace remembered first the
lace-makers; and by November 1914, had effected a war emergency
organization, known as the Brussels Lace Committee, with Mrs. Whitlock
as honorary president. Unfortunately most of the lace dealers failed to
cooperate with them, but they won the approval of the powerful Belgian
Comité National, which, with the Commission for Relief in Belgium,
carried on the relief of the occupied territory throughout the war.
And with an initial gift of $25,000 from America to be converted
into lace, they were able to start their work. It soon came to be
directed altogether by four women; The Comtesse Elizabeth d’Oultremont,
Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth; the Vicomtesse de Beughem, an
American; Madame Josse Allard, and Madame Kefer-Mali. At the same time
the aid and protection of workers on filets and other commonly called
“imitation” laces, was assigned by the Comité National to another
group of women, the “Union Patriotique des Femmes Belges.”
The Brussels Lace Committee employed, as trusted business director of
their offices, M. Collart, generously released to them by the Allard
Bank, and as technical expert, Madame Sharlaecken, before the war with
the Compagnie des Indes, one of the largest lace houses in Belgium;
and as the work developed, an increasing number of designers and aides
necessary to a lace business were added.
During the first few months the situation seemed utterly hopeless;
thread was impossible to obtain; and even if the thread were
forthcoming, no one could say who would buy the laces they might
encourage the women to make; the Germans were cutting off successive
sections of the lace-making areas where they had established
sub-committees, and were forbidding communication with them. And yet
these four women continued bravely to create the foundations of a great
lace business—for an extraordinary commercial organization grew from
their efforts.
However, despite all their intelligence and devotion, such a result
would have been impossible but for a hard-won diplomatic victory.
In early 1915 Mr. Hoover forced an international agreement which
permitted the C. R. B. to bring thread for the Lace Committee into
Belgium, and to take out an equivalent weight in lace, to be sold
in the Allied countries for the benefit of the workers. England
required a rigid control of the thread, and that it be given only
to establishments open to inspection by the C. R. B. At one time
these thread shipments were stopt—a period of cruel anxiety for the
women—but happily after a re-adjustment they were continued. And
once these international guaranties were obtained, the Belgian Comité
National was able to arrange for the distribution of the thread to the
various, even remote, lace centers, and for the return of the finished
laces to Brussels. They granted the women a subsidy of $10,000 and
insured to each _dentellière_ the chance to make at least three francs
worth of lace a week—a small minimum, to be sure, but every one
understood it might be increased later, and that if each of the many
thousands of workers was to have an equal opportunity, it could not
in the beginning be more. After this the Lace Committee had at times
as many as 45,000 women on its lists. The work in the schools and out
of them began to bear fruit. The sweating system, and payment in kind
(in clothing and food) were practically wiped out, and inspection and
control established. Everywhere the standard of design and of execution
was raised; old patterns were restored and improved, and by the end of
the war 2,237 new designs had been added.
But this was not advance through open country. There was constant
danger that at any moment the way might be completely barred; at
any time the guaranties covering the thread importations might be
withdrawn. The Germans early originated a “Lace Control” of their own,
and tried in every possible way to win over the Belgian workers,
and to buy up all the lace in the country. They accused the Brussels
Committee of being a political and patriotic body existing chiefly
to defeat the occupying powers and the Flemish activists. Then there
were other courage-testing difficulties. But despite all obstacles and
perils, the women persisted, and continually the precious skeins of
thread, with their message of “Carry On” were flung out from Brussels
to the farthermost corners of the land, binding all together in a firm
and beautiful web of hope and confidence. For the enemy was right in
suspecting the Committee of a purpose deeper than that of merely trying
to save women from the soup-line; they carried on a patriotic work of
highest importance. To them I owe a personal debt of gratitude, for
they permitted me to follow their devoted service closely, and they
opened the door for me to a new world of beauty and interest.
INTRODUCTION
Lace is a tissue composed of mesh and “flowers” (pattern), or either
one alone, produced with a needle and single thread, or with several
threads manipulated by means of bobbins. It is the product of a natural
evolution from early embroideries and weaving.
We possess no contemporaneous history of the origins and development of
the lace art, partly, perhaps, because of the tradition, strong among
the initiated, of hiding its secrets, and of the consequent difficulty
of an outsider to master them, and partly because successive wars and
world cataclysms have interrupted or destroyed its progress.
We have ample proof, however, that lace in some form existed in remote
antiquity,—in early Egypt, in Persia, in Bysance and Syria, where it
was chiefly made by slaves; the Greeks and Hebrews speak of needle lace
as known throughout all time. It was not, in these oriental countries,
the delicate white mesh that we call lace, which would have been most
unbecoming to dark skin, but included richly colored passementeries
and filets and fringes, woven of gold and silver thread, of dyed wool
and cotton, and of the coarse linen fiber of the Nile Valley. It was
usually of hieratic and symbolic design, and sometimes sown with
gems—all capable of brilliantly enhancing the beauty of the East.
Egyptian ladies of 6,000 years ago trimmed their robes with elaborate
lengths of filet, and covered their dead with it. In the Cinquantenaire
Museum at Brussels there is the photograph of a remarkable little woven
linen bag, similar to one we might carry to-day, which was found in
the tomb of a Priestess of Hathor, bearing the mark of one of the
earlier dynasties. Its mesh is almost identical with that of our modern
Valenciennes, and it was undoubtedly made with bobbins.
Between ancient and mediæval times, the lace-gap is unbridged by
written record; we must gather what we can from the archeologist
and from the works of the sculptor and painter. Occasionally we are
thrilled by such a discovery as that of M. Bixio, who in excavating
at Claterna, an old Roman City near Bologna, came upon a set of bone
bobbins, lying in pairs, as we employ them in lace-making to-day. But
interesting discoveries are rare, and the body of our knowledge of lace
history so far is meager.
However, we are interested primarily, not in the ancient origins of the
two great lace groups, nor in early passementeries and filets and their
processes, but in the marvelous efflorescence of the lace art of the
Western Europe of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and in its still
lovely expression of to-day.
In mediæval painting, before the appearance of linen and its use as
trimming, or as lingerie, I know of no picture showing lace. Stuffs
were stiff and heavy, and ornamented with metal, or with gold or
silver thread. As they became more supple, we find, as in the portrait
of Wenceslas of Luxemburg (about 1360) decoration introduced in the
clipped cloth border of the collar and hood. This serrated edge
suggests the first simple Cluny lace patterns that appeared later. Then
we see the first linen showing through the slashed sleeve or above the
corsage,—one of many paintings illustrating this development, is that
of the Duke of Cleves, by Memling (second half of the 15th century).
And shortly afterward the first lace edgings appear, the beginning
of our lace of the middle ages, of its rebirth in Western Europe. The
search for these details of progress in the paintings of European
galleries is a fascinating and rewarding game; a Belgian friend of mine
has spent many years at it.
The flowering of the lace-art was part of the great Renaissance
(lagging behind, to be sure, the major arts) and now was no longer the
work of slaves, but regarded as an important, independent _métier_, and
happily it usually escaped the despotism of the mediæval corporations.
Italy, probably through her exploitation in the early part of the
15th century of her Greek Colonies, was its first western home, and
Venice, the center for the exquisite needle laces of which our museums
fortunately still preserve specimens. While laces made with the needle
and single thread were flourishing under the Doges, bobbin laces,
twisted and braided with many threads, were being made in Sicily and
in other sections of the country.
From Venice, the secrets of the art traveled easily in several
directions, and probably about the close of the 15th century by way
of the thriving port of Antwerp, to the industrious and beauty-loving
Flanders, where the seed fell on most fertile soil. Flanders possest a
multitude of workers already skilled in an allied art, that of weaving,
and the necessary lace material in her valley of the Lys, the finest
flax region of the world. Valenciennes, Lille, Malines, Ghent, Bruges,
turned to lace-making with a veritable passion; it spread throughout
wide districts of what are now Northern France and Belgium.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, the lace industry made phenomenal
progress, both extensively and intensively. Holland and England sent
continually larger orders to Flanders. As cloths grew finer and
softer, and the mode of wearing them more graceful, and as daintier
linens were increasingly employed, lace became ever more filmy and
exquisite. A worker spent perhaps a whole year on a single meter of
Valenciennes, one head-dress cost as much as 200,000 livres. Every lace
had its time, its season. During this epoch, needle laces were supreme,
as bobbin laces were to be in the 18th century.
Under Louis XIV lace reached its climax of perfection and beauty.
Colbert imported lace-women from each center where they had been
conspicuously successful. He encouraged the invention of new designs
and technique; he subsidized schools in many cities, at Reims, Alençon,
Arras, Sedan, and he threatened with the death penalty those who might
attempt to carry lace secrets beyond the French borders,—in every way
he sought to develop an art that should belong peculiarly to France.
Thus directed and subsidized by the state, and nurtured and stimulated
by a beauty-seeking court, whose love of luxury was still controlled
by taste and refinement, it is not surprizing that this lace-period
surpassed any other known. It was true of the Court of Louis XIV as
of that of Louis XIII that a _seigneur_ was known by the number and
quality of his lace points; some of them possest several hundred
garnitures. Unfortunately the workers did not profit by this brilliant
development,—they seem from the beginning predestined to be the
victims of a social and economic slavery.
But there were already evidences of an attempt to control a demand
for luxury that threatened disaster. With the 16th century, heavy
duties and excess taxes were levied upon lace. An edict, dated
1729, prohibited the wearing of it, in the hope of checking
over-extravagance in dress.
[Illustration: FIFTEENTH CENTURY PORTRAIT
Showing heavy brocade as yet unrelieved by linen or lace trimming]
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF CHARLES IX (1570)
Linen collar showing picot edge made with the needle]
After its _apogée_ under Louis XIV, lace-making was caught, along with
the other arts, in the tide of degeneracy. Its designs were marked
by fantasy and grotesqueness, rather than by the delicacy and beauty
of the preceding period; tho while it deteriorated in design, its
technique grew constantly finer and more complicated, until, from the
point of view of the workmanship at least, it seemed almost superhuman.
But in the second half of the 18th century, wearied of complications
and extravagance, people amused themselves by a return to simplicity.
The Marquise de Pompadour affected laces sown with simple “flowers,”
and Marie Antoinette went further in preferring a pattern of scattered
“points” or peas. With this return to the primitive in design, the
technique of lace reverted also. In many quarters, the sheer muslins
of the Indias gained favor over lace. Trade, already burdened with the
duties and imports that had grown up around the extravagant laces,
suffered further from the sudden popularity of the simple costume.
The death-blow of the industry in France was to follow close on the
heels of this new fashion. Since lace had been the particular pride
of the aristocrat, the Revolution made it a crime to appear in it. In
such one-time famous centers as Valenciennes and Lille, the bobbins
ceased, tho the industry of that region sought refuge farther west, in
Bailleul,—in Bailleul, dust and ashes to-day! Fortunately in Belgium,
lace-making generally survived the crisis of the Revolution, tho it has
suffered from succeeding disastrous influences.
At the opening of the 19th century and under the Empire, taste was
heavy, design rigid and military, with nothing in common with true
lace motifs. During the opening years of 1800 the invention of
machine-made tulle, brought from England to Calais, effected further
sad changes in the lace-world; scarfs, veils, entire robes of tulle,
ornamented with applications of needle or bobbin-made details—often
palms and laurel wreaths—were all the mode. People preferred these
to the exquisite lace jabots and flounces of the preceding century.
In 1833 cotton thread began to be used instead of the stronger linen
of the best lace periods. The delicate lace-art continued to suffer
with all the others under the general decadence of the reign of Louis
Philippe and the Second Empire. Industrial and commercial development
was the note of the age; the rich amused themselves in travel, in
new scenes and sports, rather than in fostering the arts. In fact,
during the thirty years following the war of 1870, lace seemed almost
forgotten except in America. The number of workers in Belgium fell
from between 100 and 150,000, to 50,000 or less.
But before the world was plunged into this last, most destructive of
wars, there had been signs of a renaissance in the decorative arts.
People had begun to read and compare, and refine their taste. The
rulers of Italy and France and Belgium were winning results in their
attempts to rescue, and to revive and develop the lace-art, which
had seemed threatened with extinction. Then came the war—and the
devastation of entire lace regions, like that of Bailleul in France,
and of Ypres in Belgium. It is true that many of the refugee lace-women
have been employed and encouraged during the four years, by certain
committees in France and free Belgium. And in occupied Belgium, the
unceasing efforts of the Brussels Lace Committee have borne rich fruit.
Whether the higher standards of lace design and technique, and the
improved condition of the lace workers—better education, shorter
hours, higher pay—will be maintained under post-war conditions is yet
to be proved. Over this difficult hour of reconstruction, of transfer
from war to what we fondly call normal conditions, we can but hope to
carry the hard-won gains of the testing period.
In this little book I make no attempt to present a history of lace,
or a detailed analysis of its processes. I have wished merely to set
down in simple form a few of my observations in the lace districts of
Belgium, as the war has left her. To follow them one does not need
even an elementary knowledge of the important lace forms, tho that is
easily acquired. For there are but two large groups; the needle-lace
group, and the bobbin-lace group, between which we learn quickly to
distinguish. We can not prove the time of their respective origins; as
we know them, they seem to have existed side by side, as they do in the
Belgium of to-day. Sometimes one was more popular, sometimes the other.
To place a piece of lace, we have first but to ask the question, “Was
it made with a needle, and by looping and twisting and weaving a single
thread; or was it made by braiding and twisting and weaving several
threads, by means of bobbins and a round or a square cushion?”
In general, there is but one technique for all needle laces, tho
there is no limit to the variety of stitches the needle worker may
employ. I have seen a scarf, made during the war for Queen Elizabeth,
in which there were many hundred different points. One comes soon to
recognize the important needle laces; the exquisite French Alençons and
Argentins of earlier days, with their meshes made with a buttonhole
loop, and their flowers stiffened with horsehair; the various
Venetian points,—Venise, Burano, and Rose point; and the extremely
popular Brussels point, with its gauze mesh and raised flowers. It is
characteristic of these needle laces, that the flowers are thrown into
relief, sometimes high, sometimes scarcely perceptible.
Bobbin laces may be made with a dozen or with one hundred times as many
threads, according to the design and width of the lace. They fall into
two sub-groups, the first including laces made with uncut threads,
in a single piece; the second, those made detail by detail, in which
the threads are cut as each is finished, the completed lace piece
being made by joining these separate parts. This second method was not
introduced until the latter half of the 17th century.
In the first group, made with uncut threads, are the early Clunys and
the common Torchons, Old Flanders, the beautiful Valenciennes, Point
de Paris, Point de Lille, Malines and Binche, with their delicate
round, or square or hexagonal meshes, from which the pattern blossoms.
Their flowers are flat, never lifted in relief, tho a heavy outlining
thread often sets them off brilliantly from the surrounding field.
The second bobbin group, in which the final lace piece is composed of
united details, includes black and white Chantilly, Blonde, popular
with Spanish peoples, Brussels Duchesse and Bruges Duchesse, most
frequently displayed in our American shops, and the finer Rosaline,
which was in great demand when the war broke out. This group of bobbin
laces admits a kind of relief.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT TOWARD CLOSE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Showing collar ornamented with bobbin-made cluny]
Some laces combine both needle and bobbin points. In the lovely Point
d’Angleterre, increasingly difficult to obtain, bobbin-made flowers are
united by an airy needle mesh. And the coarser Flanders lace has the
same composition.
[Illustration: ANNE OF AUSTRIA BY VAN DYCK
About 1635, cluny lace made with bobbins]
There are, besides, the familiar and often beautiful Applications, in
which either needle or bobbin-made flowers are stitched, or _appliquéd_
on machine-made tulle, or, rarely, on a tulle made by hand. And various
mixed laces, fantasies and embroidered tulles, as well as a whole
company of cheaper tissues called lace, but which can not honestly
claim the name, are trying always to crowd the true lace from the
market.
Naturally, the technique of any given kind of lace has undergone
various transformations through the centuries. The Valenciennes mesh,
for instance, first had round spaces, while square ones became more
popular later. During a certain period the introduction of jours, or
open-work effects, added an airy lightness to many laces.
I had the pleasure recently of being with a friend of mine, the
sister of the Belgian Consul-General at New York, Madame Kefer-Mali,
who has devoted twenty years to the study of lace, when she first
examined a lace collection lately presented to the Cinquantenaire
Museum. With magnifying glass I followed from case to case, as she
placed each specimen in its country and century, according to its
design, its mesh, the manner of directing the threads, the relief of
the flowers, the various stitches or the kind of thread employed. As
I listened to her, it was easy to appreciate why lace may become an
all-absorbing interest. Madame Kefer-Mali’s love for the lace itself
is now subordinate to her passionate desire to secure justice for the
lace-worker. As she takes a filmy length in her hand, her first thought
is of the talent and patience of the girl or woman who made it, of the
eye-straining, meticulous labor it represents, and of the pittance
still paid her for her gift to the world of art. Madame Kefer-Mali has
already won something for the _dentellière_ and she will continue to
fight for more.
Tho there are lace sections in widely scattered parts of Belgium, none
(except Turnhout) is so important as those of the two Flanders. Western
and Eastern Flanders form an almost continuous and unrivalled lace
region, which breaks up irregularly into districts, each celebrated
for a particular kind, or for several kinds of lace. However, it would
be impossible to draw an accurate map illustrating the Belgian lace
situation, either from the point of view of the varieties made and
their quality, or of the workers. It seems, indeed, at times that lace
was invented to defeat the statistician, for he no sooner reaches a
conclusion than it proves inexact; a factory rises near a certain river
and the lace women desert their cushions to accept its better wages;
in a village long devoted to Needle Point, young girls discover that
the bobbin-made Clunys pay better, or they marry and make no lace at
all until their children are partly grown; poor crops and resulting
misery may send others who have not for some time been listed as
workers back to their cushions. For, since despite the many schools and
work-rooms, the great majority of women still work at home, lace-making
is peculiarly sensitive to every change in family and community life.
We may say, however, that despite constantly shifting conditions,
Western Flanders forms a great bobbin-lace area, unquestionably the
most important in the world to-day, while Eastern Flanders has been for
centuries and still is, famous for its needle points.
Unfortunately, too, because of the miserable lace-wage (in Belgium,
before the war, it averaged about a franc a day) this industry has
been regarded always as a supplementary occupation, on which the
family could not rely for its main support, and which was not capable
of organization and amelioration as other industries are. The slavery
conditions have undoubtedly been due chiefly to lack of good schools
and constructive lace training, and to the system by which a _facteur_,
or first buyer, collects the laces, to re-sell them to a _fabricant_,
or dealer, who in turn may sell them to a larger fabricant—a system
permitting any number of intermediaries—and also to the fact that the
women, scattered as they are throughout the agricultural regions, have
never protected themselves by forming syndicates. The first step toward
emancipation has been taken; the new teaching is under way. The fatal
system of the many intermediaries remains to be dealt with—to be swept
away. And it is hoped that feeling the new power education will give
them, the dentellières will at last find ways either through unions or
by other means, of protecting themselves.
For the rest, fixt data are difficult to obtain. The lace industry can
not be captured and subjected to cold analysis and tabulation. It must
be studied differently from other industries that can be localized. As
in learning to know the garden flowers of a country, one must go from
doorstep to doorstep, so if one wishes to understand lace, one should
become familiar with its _milieu_, the family and community life from
which it springs. In a sense, then, these little journeys to lace
districts which are the subjects of my chapters, may suggest more about
what lace really is than a more technical and formidable volume.
I
TURNHOUT
_Lace Children of the North_
Lace is the flower of Belgium; the white blossom that springs from the
teeming plains of the Flanders, from the agricultural districts, and
from the mournful Campine of the North. During the long and solitary
winters, when work in the fields is impossible, thousands of women
and girls and little children turn to their lace cushions, and dreary
rooms are enlivened by the music of the flying bobbins. If the lace is
Needle Point, and lacks the accompanying click-clack of the shifting
_fuseaux_, it nevertheless gives purpose and value to the otherwise
almost unsupportable winter days. However, despite the time that must
be subtracted for weeding, for gathering the all-important potato
crop, and for other farm duties, summer with its bright light and long
day, is the true lace season; it is only then that some of the finest
varieties can be executed. Coarser pieces must be substituted for the
dull, eye-straining days.
To be sure, some lace-making is still carried on in certain cities,
but very little. This delicate _métier_ can not successfully combat
the influences of the social and industrial groupings of the larger
centers; the living wage, the shorter hours, the distractions of
cinéma and café. The cities remain the logical centers for the normal
and training-schools, for assembling, and display, and sale; but the
age-old patience of the lace-maker is born of a certain ignorance and
isolation. This does not mean that the industry may not persist still
on the fringes of some of the larger cities, or flourish in nearby
villages—it does; and in three conspicuous instances, until the war,
it remained the dominating activity of a city. Bruges, Ypres, and
Turnhout, could truly be called “lace cities.” Now there are but two;
for Ypres, the pearl of Flanders, is gone.
Turnhout, a town of 24,000 inhabitants, in the Northern Campine
district, is not only a “lace city,” counting 6,000 workers, but if one
considers its long list of excellent lace-schools, the fine varieties
made there, and the quality of the workmanship, it appears sufficiently
important to challenge the leadership of Bruges. However, Turnhout
stands practically alone in the north, while Bruges is the center
of western Flanders, one of the largest lace contributing areas in
Belgium, and promises, therefore, to hold for a long time her title of
first lace-city.
It is strange to think of Turnhout as a remote town, since it is
scarcely two hours by motor from Antwerp; but the first glimpse of
the intervening sand wastes of the Campine region awakens at once a
sensation of loneliness, of isolation. I made the journey in late
November, reaching Turnhout about noon of a low gray day, just as
hundreds of golden-haired children—no mists could dull the bright
gold of their hair—were clattering along the stone sidewalks in their
wooden shoes, on their way home from school. As always, I marveled
at the way they could leap and run without losing their sabots. They
were “lace children,” nearly all of them part of the little army of
1,800 in the lace-schools, and because of the intelligent work of the
soup-kitchens and dining-rooms for debilitated children during the four
years of war, were probably, many of them, in better physical condition
than they had been at its beginning. The women of the Brussels Lace
Committee had succeeded, too, in augmenting their food ration from time
to time. Their chief visible need was for stockings and shoes—and
I knew from the teachers later that they sadly lacked underclothes.
Mothers can patch and repatch, and add in various ways to outer
garments; but after a certain number of washings, undergarments simply
disappear.
I went first to the convent of the Abbé Berraly which, during the
war, encouraged by the advice and support of the Lace Committee, has
developed into the model school of Belgium. It is situated in a crowded
part of the town, but its own fine brick buildings cluster about a
spacious courtyard and vegetable gardens. In summer the children work
much out of doors, tho when they are inside their class-rooms it seems
still impossible for the teachers to break with the tradition of the
closed window.
I began my visit in a little room at the right of the entrance hall,
where six older girls were still at work, tho the 500 other pupils had
gone for their lunch. Dozens of rubbed carbon copies of lace patterns
were pinned to the walls along with executed samples of the lace they
represented. This was a _piqué_ class-room; the young women seated at
high, narrow tables, were carefully at work on pieces of glossy green
cardboard on which the lace design had been drawn and which they were
pricking with pins, or covering with tiny holes, that indicate the
position of the pins that must hold the thread as it is twisted or
looped or braided, by the worker. The cardboard piqué is in a sense
both the beginning and the end of the lace course; the beginning, since
no pupil can start his lace without the piqué, or interpreted pattern,
and the end, since it is the most difficult of all the processes in the
technique of the lace. The _piqueuse_ must understand the design and
its practical execution, must interpret the picture to the worker in
terms of pin-pricks marking the progress of her thread. A good piqueuse
knows immediately, on looking at a drawing, whether it is a true lace
design, or must be adapted, and also in which kind of lace it can be
best exprest. As she shifts a pin-prick less than a hair’s width to
the left or to the right she varies appreciably the resulting mesh
or flower. She has considerable liberty in deciding which particular
stitches will be most effective to fill in the jours, or open-work
spaces indicated in the pattern.
One of the great evils of the past has been the absence of
training-schools, and the consequent lack of piqueuses; in each
generation there have been but a few good ones, who have, in a sense,
held the lace industry in their hands. Before the war, Ypres had two
famous piqueuses, to whom patterns were sent from an entire region;
and in the town of Turnhout to-day, with its thousands of workers, tho
there are several less experienced piqueuses, there is but one woman
to whom the finest and most complicated drawings can be entrusted for
interpretation. She is the only person, for example, who could make
the piqué for the beautiful scarf, which I saw later being executed
in the Point de Paris room—for that she received 90 francs. It is a
common saying that one must be born a piqueuse to succeed; at least it
remains true that in addition to her capacity for an intricate and most
meticulous labor, the piqueuse should possess a high sensitiveness to
art values.
The little room in the Abbé Berraly’s school is one expression of the
Lace Committee’s conviction that the emancipation of the industry and
of the lace-maker will come only through education.
[Illustration: ABBÉ BERRALY SCHOOL, TURNHOUT
General view]
[Illustration: NINE-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN MAKING POINT DE PARIS]
In general the women of the past have sat dumbly before their cushions,
helpless to do anything but continue to execute, year after year,
the particular cardboard pattern the facteur, or lace agent, placed
before them. They had little or no conception of the rich art world
of which their flowered flounces were a part, and no feeling at all
of their power to influence that world by interpreting a design for
themselves, or by correcting or improving it, or even perhaps by
creating a new one. Not that all workers should become designers, or
even piqueuses—progress depends, as it does in other industries, on
specialization; but at least trained workers will enjoy the freedom
to choose and the feeling of independence that comes from a thorough
knowledge of their _métier_.
In this room then was a class of specialists, six smiling, intelligent
young women between 16 and 18 equipping themselves as experts in
interpretation. The designs on which they worked, many of them revivals
of classic ones long forgotten, or beautiful recent creations of
Belgian artists, had been sent up to them from the Committee’s central
room of design in Brussels. Before the war, they would have come from
the particular lace dealer to whose agent their laces were sold.
Opening from the little pattern room I found the office with its great
oak armoire, where the costly finished laces are stored until the day
they are taken to Brussels, to be combined into beautiful confections
for the salon or bedroom or dining-room, or for personal adornment.
Of course, some are always resold by the meter, but one of the chief
successes of the Lace Committee has been the employment of motifs and
yard laces in the production of cloths and spreads and innumerable
articles of a loveliness hitherto unknown.
From the office and the little room where the pricked cardboard
patterns are prepared for the cushions, I went further along the hall,
and turned to the left, where at the foot of a staircase were new
wooden benches awaiting the sabots of the returning children. These
benches were new because the Germans, who, here as elsewhere, had
driven the children from their school, had burned their benches, and
not only the benches, but all visible wood—they had torn casements
from the windows and doorways, as well as removing every knob and
fixture. This was disgusting, but more or less understandable. Their
country demanded more cannon, therefore they took brass and copper;
they were cold, so they ripped off the nearest available piece of wood.
But wood and metal failed to satisfy them; upstairs at one end of the
largest room there is a pretty stage arranged for school festivals,
with a painted forest background, and side wing-drops picturing
meadow-lands. These fathers and brothers of German children slashed
and ripped the painted canvas forest and ran their bayonets through
the foreground meadows, with no spur beyond that of the pleasure in
the act; for no inch of the canvas had been taken away—I could have
replaced the whole from the rags.
It was still only a little past one o’clock, and the children had not
yet returned. I went into the beginners’ room, where large windows
let in all the light there was on this gray day, and saw the long,
even rows of low rush-seated, high-backed chairs, with the school-room
sabots (where the children were fortunate enough to possess this second
pair) hanging from the backs. Before each chair was a round or square
work-cushion and over each cushion a white cloth carefully spread to
protect the precious thread-bearing bobbins beneath. The whole empty,
silent place seemed prepared for a ceremonial or religious rite; and
every snowy cushion a tiny altar awaiting its ministrant.
At last they were coming back, the younger children clattering in
ahead of the older girls, to deposit their muddy street sabots on the
benches. Such a rush of yellow-haired babies for their chairs—several
of them were no more than seven years old; many were between nine
and ten. Little feet slipt into the clean sabots, white cloths were
carefully lifted and folded, sisters and teachers began their rounds of
inspection and instruction, as tiny hands took their positions over the
heaps of bobbins—one at the left, one at the right—and the cadence
of the clicking wood began. It was impossible for me to follow these
incredible little fingers as they twisted and braided from pin to
pin. I had seen scales so rapidly played that the successive motions
were only a blur, but these shiftings back and forth of the bobbins
were even more bewildering. More strangely moving than the picture of
any great orchestra where gifted fingers wrung melody from a myriad of
strings, was this of the play of hundreds of baby hands over threads
and bobbins, as the flowers blossomed beneath them. It is said that to
become a good lace-maker one must begin, as he would if he expected to
become a distinguished pianist, at latest at the age of seven or eight.
The greater number of these little girls were making Point de Paris
edgings. They had their pricked patterns pinned near the top of the
square linen-covered cushions and were working the threads vertically
toward them. Since the pins which hold the threads in place must be
constantly moved along as the work proceeds, it is very important
that the cushion should be stuffed with something that the pins can
easily penetrate. These particular cushions were stuffed with wool,
some contain straw, and the linen covering was blue, tho it is often
the natural color. Besides guiding the tiny brass pins (which vary with
the delicacy of the lace) that hold the thread, each child must know
how to manipulate the long brass pins which separate the various groups
of bobbins not in actual use. She learns, too, to roll each finished
section of her lace in blue paper and tuck it carefully away in the
little drawer below the upper part of the cushion; the true lace-maker
prides herself on the snowy whiteness of her lace, which she protects
in every conceivable way.
While I was moving from one to another, a sister had gathered a group
of seven to ten year olds nearer the stove—a company of Fra Angelico
angels they looked, as I bent over them to watch their little hands.
They placed brass pins in the holes pricked in the pattern to hold the
rather coarse thread, twisted first two threads to the right, then
two to the left, then braided them to form the familiar hexagon of
the Point de Paris mesh. When they reached the pattern, a most simple
conventional one, other bobbins had to be brought into play. They held
the threads always from the top of the cushion vertically toward them,
with the seam edge of the lace to the left and the border to the right.
Even these babies had from 50 to 200 bobbins to keep in mind, rather
long beech-wood bobbins, these for Point de Paris, with the thread
tightly wound at the top, and a considerable pear-shaped bulge at the
end. Each lace is supposed to require a particular bobbin, especially
suited to the weight of thread employed, but workers often use them
indifferently. Some fortunate ones pride themselves on their fine ebony
or ivory sets. Of course, bobbins must be constantly resupplied with
thread, and in a corner of the room I saw a white-haired grandmother
with her _dévidoir_, or spindle, busily winding thread on the bobbins
for the children. She made a beautiful picture there at her wheel with
a dozen little girls with their cushions crowding near her. I asked if
the beginners were able to earn something and found they were making
about 10 and 15 cents a day.
[Illustration: POINT DE PARIS CLASS
On dark days lamps are lighted behind bottles filled with water, the
rays passing through fall in spotlights on the cushions]
[Illustration: WINDING BOBBINS FOR THE CHILDREN]