among other varieties, good Duchesse and Rosaline; and Hansbeek, which
produces a superior Valenciennes; and Ruysselede, with its excellent
school for Valenciennes; to cross from the south to Destelbergen, which
lies almost directly east of Ghent. All the plain was white under the
first deep snow of winter, but to enjoy its loveliness one had to be
able to forget the torn roofs and fireless hearths.
At Destelbergen I went at once to the atelier of Mme. Coppens, to
whom women of both France and Belgium send their old Applications and
spider-web meshes, for restoration. Before the war she employed seventy
expert lace-makers in her school, now she can depend on no more than
twenty—tho there are some 100 less skilful ones in the village. On
this particular January day the school was empty. As Mme. Coppens
received me, she said, “I regret, Madame, but I am without coal, and
without thread; I have been forced to close my work-room; however,”
she hesitated an instant, “if Madame does not object to coming into
the kitchen, she may yet see Stéphanie, the first lace-maker of the
village, at work.”
[Illustration: FAN IN NEEDLE-POINT
Executed by three women in six weeks. “Shields of the Allies,” design
drawn by M. Knoff for the Lace Committee]
[Illustration: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MARRIAGE VEIL IN NEEDLE-POINT,
BELONGING TO COMTESSE ELIZABETH D’OULTREMONT
It would take 40 workers about a half year to copy this veil]
Remembering the glistening shelves and floors of other Flemish
kitchens, I did not mind; happily not, for in the end Stéphanie was
more to me than many villages. She was bending over an immaculate
cushion, seventy-eight and unmarried, and all her person as
scrupulously neat as her cushion, from her odd little peaked black
crochet cap to the felt shoes she had made herself. She was weaving
the flat surfaces of a dainty French bouquet, and as I stept toward
her chair, looked up, delighted that some one was interested in what
she was making. When I picked up a Bruges collar on the nearby table
she tried in ejaculatory Flemish to make me understand, that even tho
she had made parts of it, she disowned the whole as unworthy the name
of lace, and she brought my eyes back to the delicate texture of the
leaves and petals on her cushion.
I wished to know what Stéphanie was getting for a day’s work on
her fine bouquets. She has been making lace for seventy years, is
intelligent and quick, and her maximum wage is two cents an hour, a
franc for a day of ten hours. I asked about the future—she has thought
of that, not without anxiety, and is providing at seventy-eight for
what she calls “old age” by trying hard to put by two cents a week.
Madame C. has been kind to her, and gives her as much freedom and
comfort as she can offer; for instance, when Stéphanie was ill for
three days last week, she did not deduct her wages. She would gladly
double her pay, or triple it, for she realizes there are few like
Stéphanie left, but the Paris firm to whom she sells pays so little
for her lace that she has never been able to offer more than a franc a
day. “If I could give two francs, I could quickly gather a company of
1,000 contented lace-makers, I am certain,” she said. “But when my old
workers fall ill or die, I find no young girls willing to come to me;
they prefer the twenty francs a week they can make picking wool. When
Stéphanie goes, I shall have no single artist to replace her.” “_C’est
un vrai cœur de dentelle_” (she is a true heart of lace), she said
affectionately, as she patted her on the shoulder.
And then she went to fetch a cardboard box and I took a chair by the
table, to watch her unfold what it might contain. She spread three
beautiful widths of Application on blue paper so that I might better
see the tiny bouquets and scattered buds and leaves that blossomed
from the fine quality of machine-made tulle; all these had come from
Stéphanie’s bobbins, and she was having difficulty to continue at her
cushion because of her eagerness to explain them. They were French
designs, as their charming lines had made me suspect. In the box
with the Application were two rolls of Point d’Angleterre, the lace
one finds rarely at present. We held the first one, a length of four
meters, six inches wide, against the light, and then Stéphanie could
sit still no longer; she knew something about this piece, for she
had made its first flower in 1911, and not finished its last until
the war was half over. She pointed out the spaces where a special
needle-worker had introduced almost microscopic open stitches into her
leaves and blooms to give them even greater airiness, and showed how
almost impossible it would have been to execute these needle-stitches
with bobbins; and how difficult is the stitch made with a special
crochet-hook required for the raised veins and outlines (brodes) of
the petals and leaves, since the hook must catch and attach the thread
each time beneath the surface. Finally, a needle-worker, again, as is
always the case in Point d’Angleterre, had spun the clear web between
the flowers, uniting them all into the finished flounce. Stéphanie
pointed to a single detail. “It took me five days to make that tiny
bouquet, and the needle-worker one and a half days more to add the open
stitches.”
Since the snow-covered roads made traveling extremely hazardous, I
decided that I could not stop longer, no matter how absorbing the
Applications and Points d’Angleterre, or how endearing the personality
and contagious the enthusiasm of Stéphanie. I said “Good-by,”
explaining that I had yet that day to visit the needle-lace school at
Zele, twenty kilometers away.
XII
ZELE
_Stéphanie Visits the Trade Union Lace School_
But I was not to have to part with Stéphanie. When her Flemish ears
gathered from my French that I was starting for Zele and the school
founded three years ago, which had been the talk of the region ever
since, her eyes fairly spoke her eager desire. Seventy-eight and
earning twenty cents a day, and yet consumed by a love for her art (for
with her, lace-making is a true art), and a passion to learn more about
it! I asked Mme. Coppens if Stéphanie might not come along in the car.
In answer she began bustling about, tears in her eyes, to help get her
ready, and Stéphanie in her odd little woolen cap could scarcely tie
her long black-hooded cape because she was constantly throwing up her
hands, and exclaiming, and pressing them together, as she tried to make
me understand that in all her seventy-eight years she had only twice
ridden in a wagon and never had she dreamed of being in an automobile
before she died. What would the neighbors say? We bundled her into the
corner of the car and were off, but she could not sit still, leaning
forward to exclaim over the beauty of the snow, or a windmill, or the
children skating in their sabots, or huddling down to cover her face
with her hands in swift shyness if some one had seemed to see her; no
spirit was ever so bubbling and gay and eager and timid all at once as
Stéphanie’s as we rode through the snow toward Zele.
Nor so patient as hers after we arrived; for instead of going to the
school, I had to leave her in the car while I went to the house of the
director, Dr. Armand Rubbens, unfortunately ill with rheumatism, who
is not only the founder of the school but the inspiration of all the
unusual accomplishments of the lace-workers of this town, where his
father is Burgomaster. After her long wait, Stéphanie’s only comment as
she looked a little fearfully at the gathering dusk, was: “It is not
yet too late to see the school.”
Inside, Dr. Rubbens, who since taking his university degree has not
been strong enough to follow his profession, and has devoted himself
to the 800 lace-workers of his district, explained the organization of
the Zele “Trade Union Lace School,” founded three years ago and the
only one of its kind in Belgium. I felt, as he talked, that he was
reproducing in miniature a Henry Ford plant, and when I told him this,
he smiled. “I begin to think I should see one of Mr. Ford’s factories,
for in reading an account of his system in the Paris _Matin_ last week,
I was astonished at the number of his ideas I had incorporated.”
The fifty advanced workers in the atelier (there are 140 apprentices)
share the profit of the lace sales in proportion to their wages, and
own part of the stock of the union. The best workers of this group
make twenty-five centimes an hour, or two and a half francs (fifty
cents) a day of eight hours, the highest pay I know of, so far,
gained by a lace-maker. The girls may go four hours each week to a
school of domestic science, without losing pay; there are illness and
pension funds, and other provisions for the health and protection of
the members of the school. Dr. Rubbens has seemed to accept every
opportunity as a privilege.
[Illustration: AT WORK ON DETAILS OF A NEEDLE-POINT SCARF TO BE
PRESENTED TO QUEEN ELIZABETH]
[Illustration: NEEDLE LACE CLASS-ROOM IN THE TRADE UNION LACE SCHOOL AT
ZELE]
I looked over the files and photographs and records, for even tho Zele
is a remote town of but 6,000 inhabitants, this wide-awake director has
made it provide for him a better set of records and announcement and
advertising cards (some of them in English) than I have seen anywhere
else in Belgium. While I was inspecting the books, he opened a chest
and spread on the table a finished model from his school—a Needle
Point scarf or veil, sown with marguerites and varied by a bewildering
succession of open-work stitches, each seemingly more exquisite than
the preceding and some of them invented for this particular veil. The
needle-workers who had made it had given about 9,000 hours to its
flowers and gauze, and it would bring 3,000 francs to the Trade Union
treasury.
[Illustration: NEEDLE-POINT ILLUSTRATION FOR THE FABLE OF THE FOX AND
THE GRAPES]
[Illustration: IN THE ZELE LACE SCHOOL; JOINING DETAILS OF THE
NEEDLE-POINT SCARF PRESENTED TO QUEEN ELIZABETH]
I felt that I must fetch Stéphanie to see this, but Dr. Rubbens advised
hurrying now to the school, where there was something still more
beautiful to be seen—the scarf just completed that will be presented
to Queen Elizabeth, and so far the _chef-d’œuvre_ of the Zele
lace-makers. I told Stéphanie about it on our way through the village.
Once arrived, we went directly to the most advanced class, where
Stéphanie might find most to interest her. The young women were at work
on Needle Point collars and medallions, a series of tableaux from the
legend of the Fox and the Grapes, and she was all eyes and ears as she
went eagerly from chair to chair, trying to see what these girls had
been taught that she had missed learning, and to add to her lore, if
she could. I believe it is only in such a modern school as this that
an outsider would have been allowed to examine, as Stéphanie did, the
stitches and patterns, for the tradition of the locked door and the
carefully guarded secret still prevails in the lace word.
I was impatient to see the school’s masterpiece, the royal scarf, and
it was now brought from the safe and held before us by three young
women, as the directress led us from point to point in the airy mesh
spun between its rose garlands and medallions. On either side of the
center medallion, the arms of Belgium, were two others, in which human
figures symbolized cities the war has made immortal. For Nieuport a
fisher-maiden stood on the shore with her basket, and about her the
net took up a cockleshell motif; Poperinghe had the graceful hop-vine
as its device; for Furnes there was a dairy-maid with her churn in
the midst of blossoming butter flowers; while Ypres was represented
by a beautiful Flamande sitting before a lace cushion heaped with
bobbins—countless stitches, occupying 12,000 hours, and the entire
weight 125 grammes! And yet, at the end, Stéphanie tilted her dear old
head and said: “Nevertheless, Madame, for the Queen, I should have
made the mesh yet finer.”
This Trade Union is in a sense a professional school, since it
teaches design, but there is the weak spot in an otherwise remarkable
achievement. The designs executed by Dr. Rubbens and the school are
often the kind that have led foreign lace-buyers to order through
Paris, which could furnish the drawings, rather than direct from
Belgium. They lack the lightness and grace that lace designs should
unfailingly possess, just the qualities which the Friends of Lace have
done so much to encourage and cultivate. If Dr. Rubbens can see his way
to follow their suggestions, or to employing a French teacher, there
seems no limit to what he may accomplish.
He is now attempting to establish a true needle-lace Normal School,
which will offer courses in commerce, English, history, and all the
branches necessary to a complete lace education. This will supplement
the instruction of the Bruges bobbin-lace Normal, already well under
way. He holds that the teaching of the fine needle points is more
tedious and difficult than the teaching of the bobbin points, and that
it takes more years to become expert in needle laces than in others.
On the way home, Stéphanie asked what she might do for me. “You may
pray for me, if you wish, Stéphanie.” She was silent a moment. “But,
Madame, should I not make a pilgrimage to Lourdes for you? On one of my
trips in the wagon, I saw the sea, and for three years after that the
sea was every day just before my eyes. And to-day will remain until I
die just in front of my eyes. Madame, should I not go to Lourdes for
you?”
APPENDIX
[Illustration: Map showing important lace areas in 1919, especially
prepared for this volume by the Brussels Lace Committee.
The size of the circles indicates the approximate geographical extent
of lace-making activity, and has no reference to the quality produced.
The finest varieties are made in the areas indicated by circles 3
(noted for Valenciennes, Bruges, Cluny), 4 (Bruges, Valenciennes,
Cluny), 11 (Duchesse, Application, Rosaline), 15 (Maline, Pt. de Paris,
Pt. de Lille, Binche).
Second quality, circles 5 (Val., Cluny), 6 (Val., Bruges, Cluny), 7
(Duchesse, Needle Point, Val., Cluny), 9 (Point d’Hollande, Val.,
Venise, Needle Point, Cluny).
Third quality, circles 8 (Duchesse, Needle Point), 12 (Venise Needle
Point, Duchesse, Chantilly), 10 (Bruges, Duchesse, Val., Cluny), 14
(Needle Point, Application), 13 (Cluny, Torchon), 16 (Cluny).
The least important laces are found in regions 17 (Venise, filet), 18
(filet, Torchon), 19 (Point de Paris, Chantilly).]
[Illustration: _a._ Pattern]
[Illustration: _b._ Worker’s piqure made from pattern]
APPENDIX
_With Drawings by the Directrice of the Brussels School of Design, Mme.
Lucie Paulis_
From the point of view of technique, all laces are divided into two
groups; laces made with the needle, and laces made with bobbins.
_I.—Laces Made with the Needle_
All needle lace is executed in the same manner. First, the design of
the whole is divided into details sufficiently small to allow of their
being easily held and turned by the worker. The design of each of these
details is reproduced on a special kind of black paper by means of tiny
pricked holes that follow all its lines.
The lace worker sews this pattern (or _piqure_) to a piece of double
white cloth, which gives it solidity. She is then ready to begin the
_tracé_ or outlining process. A strand of two or three threads is
appliquéd along all the contours of the pattern by means of a very fine
needle and very fine thread, which catches the cloth below the black
paper, passing and repassing through each of the holes of the pattern,
thus holding the outlining strand in a sort of embrace. When all the
contours of the drawing have been traced, the second part of the work
begins, the execution of the points that are to fill in the spaces.
[Illustration: _c._ The outlining or tracing cord]
All the points or stitches of needle lace are loops, simple or twisted,
formed by a needle carrying a single thread. (The worker holds the
needle with the base instead of the point, forward.) The first row of
loops is attached to the threads of the outlining strand. Arriving at
the extremity of the space she is working, the lace-maker begins a
second row of loops running in the opposite direction, attaching each
loop to the corresponding loop of the first row. At the end of this
row she fastens it to the outlining strand by one or two stitches and
starts on the third row, repeating this operation until her space is
completely covered.
The _points_ or stitches most frequently employed are:
1. The plat (sketch d), or stitch which forms the flat woven parts,
which can be more or less tightly drawn, and serves for all the
opaque parts of the lace. It is made by simple loops, each row being
consolidated by means of a stretched thread as illustrated in the
sketch.
[Illustration: _d._ Stitch for the _plat_ or surface]
[Illustration: _e._ Stitch one]
2. The _jours_ or open-work stitches. Among the fantasy stitches
employed in the jours are:
[Illustration: _f._ Mirror stitch]
_a._ The _point one_, or stitch one, (sketch e.)
There exists also a stitch _two_, and stitch _three_, which differ in
the number of loops forming the group.
_b._ The _mirror_ stitch (sketch f.) and a kind of _ball_ stitch
(sketch g.), and lastly the famous extremely transparent _point de
gaze_, or gauze stitch (sketch h.), which constitutes the mesh of the
popular Brussels lace.
[Illustration: _g._ Ball stitch]
All the surfaces having been covered, the lace is further embellished
by the confection of _brodes_, or firm outlining cords around the
filled-in spaces, which produce a more or less striking effect of
relief in needle laces. This _brode_ (sketch i), is made of a strand of
fine or heavier threads, appliquéd as was the original strand outlining
the pattern spaces, and then beautifully covered by the buttonhole
stitch. When the brode is well made, the buttonhole stitches follow
closely, touching side by side.
[Illustration: _h._ Gauze mesh stitch]
Many differing little details which help to give to needle lace its
richness and brilliancy (balls, rings, etc.), are also varieties of
brodes, and are made for the most part in the buttonhole stitch. The
bars forming the base of Venise lace are made in this way.
The execution of the brodes is the final work in needle lace. After
they are finished, the lace detail is detached from the underlying
pattern by cutting the thread between the black paper and supporting
cloth, the fine thread which in the beginning attached the outlining
strand. There remains only to join the separate details of the pattern
by a very fine stitch called the _point invisible_.
[Illustration: _i._ Brode, buttonhole stitch]
The varieties of needle laces are:
_a._ Venise (_fond_ or base composed of _brides_ or bars).
_b._ Reticella (Venise lace of geometric design and made without
brodes or outlining relief cords).
_c._ Rose Point (Venise with a design of fine branches and tendrils).
_d._ Brussels Point or Needle Point (very fine lace in which a gauze
mesh replaces the bars employed in Venise).
_II.—Bobbin Lace_
Bobbin laces fall under two groups: (1) Those made with cut threads,
and (2) those made with continuous threads.
1. Laces made with cut threads, or of repeated details, are executed
on a round cushion, which can be easily turned and they require but a
limited number of bobbins (generally not more than two dozen). They
may be said to be composed essentially of a braid which grows wider
or narrower as it follows all the variations of the pattern, and is
interrupted as often as is necessary.
The parts in process of operation are attached to those already
finished by veritable running knots made with the aid of a little
crochet needle, a tool absolutely indispensable to the making of this
kind of lace. The design of the whole is divided into portions so small
that they cover only the middle of the cushion. It is necessary to have
all around the detail, space for the bobbins, each of which carries a
thread about four inches long.
[Illustration: _j._ Bobbins used in making Belgian laces
_1_, _2_ and _3_ Valenciennes
_4_ and _5_ Malines]
[Illustration: _j._ Bobbins used in making Belgian laces
_6_ Malines
_7_ Point de Paris
_8_ Application
_9_ Torchon
_10_ Duchesse]
[Illustration: _k._ A pattern for bobbin lace, with l, m, n, the braids
in which it must be executed]
Each fragment is traced on a dark blue paper or _patron_ on which
the place for the pins is not indicated (sketch k.). The lace-maker
pins this blue paper to the middle of her cushion, covering the whole
with a piece of dark blue linen which has a hole in the middle large
enough to leave free the part of the pattern actually being worked. The
lace already finished is thus protected. She then places a pin on
the spot where she decides to begin, attaching the necessary number of
bobbins and starts to weave as a weaver does, first from right to left,
then from left to right, carrying the two bobbins holding the threads
forming the woof (_trame_) successively above and below the threads
forming the warp (_chaine_). Each time all of the threads of the warp
have been crossed by the threads of the woof, she places a pin, and
now the two woof threads caught by this pin lead back to the opposite
side. She turns her cushion according to the direction of the braid
she is executing, so that the threads forming the warp always fall
vertically.
[Illustration: _l._ A braid which forms the _toile_]
[Illustration: _m._ A _grillé_ braid]
[Illustration: _n._ A braid of 4 threads]
The fundamental stitch in these laces and that which forms the greatest
part of the braids is the _point de toile_, or _toile_ (sketch 1.).
Certain open stitches are also employed, the most common being the
_grillé_ or half-stitch (sketch m.).
The different varieties of bobbin laces made with cut threads, or in
repeated pieces are:
_a._ Bruges, the flowers are united by brides or bars that are braided
with four threads (sketch n.).
_b._ Duchesse (made only with fine thread, loosely worked and
producing a not particularly pleasing result).
_c._ Rosaline (an imitation with bobbins of Rose Point. Brodes, or
raised outlines made with the needle, give it relief).
_d._ Flanders (in this lace the base of brides or bars is replaced by
a net mesh base executed with a needle).
_e._ Application (the flowers, executed like those of Bruges are sewed
upon tulle).
2. Lace made with uncut or continuous threads. Laces of this group are
executed on a stationary cushion. The design, before it can be used by
the worker, must pass through the hands of a _piqueuse_, or interpreter,
who prepares what is called the patron or pattern (sketch o), that
is to say, determines in advance the places where the pins destined
to hold the threads, must be placed (sketch of a piqure, p.). This
work of the piqueuse demands great skill and infinite patience. Upon
her interpretation will depend the aspect of the lace, for the worker
follows her indications rigidly. This pattern is pricked on a supple
and resistant cardboard (in olden times it was made on parchment) and
is pinned to the cushion with the selvage of the lace at the left. The
worker then attaches to a row of pins placed all across the top of the
pattern, the threads which she will need, often many hundreds.
[Illustration: _o._ Pattern from which piqure is made]
[Illustration: _p._ Piqure]
Now she commences her work, braiding, twisting, intercrossing the
threads in diverse ways, and placing a pin each time the threads must
be held in a position which they can not retain without the aid of a
fixt support. When she arrives at the bottom of her pattern, with great
care she takes out all the pins, and lifts her work to the top of the
pattern, replacing the pins so that the lace will be kept absolutely
regular. She then recommences her work of braiding or weaving,
repeating the same operation till the length of lace she must make is
finished. The patterns are usually about a foot long.
[Illustration: _q._ Valenciennes mesh]
The bobbin laces made with continuous thread comprise:
_a._ Cluny and
_b._ Laces with a mesh base:
1. Valenciennes,
2. Binche,
3. Malines,
4. Point de Paris,
5. Point de Lille,
6. Chantilly.