Textiles, Lace, Decoratives, South Kensington Museum

"Lace at the South Kensington Museum"

Two separate pages with 12 images showing the special kinds of lace in the South Kensington Museum. Text by Alan Cole. Published 1895.

Page size: 25 x 19 cm ( 9.8 x 7.4 ")

Text:
419
LACE AT THE SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM.
By ALAN COLE
URING the last few years many interesting tween and about them. The lace-maker with her and valuable specimens of lace have been threads follows and reproduces the lines and shapes added to the collection at the South Kensington of patterns drawn on paper or pricked into parch- ment or card, and so produces her lace. The em- broiderer on net, the cut-linen and drawn-thread worker, on the other hand, starts with a piece of net or of linen, and ornaments or enriches it with needlework, producing something which possesses a
DURI
LACE
The Sixteenth and enteral Centuries)
Museum, as fine a public collection of laces as is to be seen anywhere. Good typical pieces of all the various hand-made ornamental laces-needle- point and pillow-are included in it; besides specimens of lace-like fabrics, such as embroideries on net, cut-linen, and drawn-thread works. The greater number of them have been purchased, but very many have been given or bequeathed to the Museum. And of these latter, by far the more important are those which were bequeathed in 1891 by the late Mrs. Bolekow,
Whilst needlepoint and pillow laces date from the sixteenth century only, eut-linen and drawn-thread works have an earlier origin. Hand-made needle- point and pillow laces are formed of threads twisted, plaited, intercrossed, and looped together into ornamental textures, the characteristic feature of which is ornaments of close thread work contrasted with open spaces be-
FIG. -BANDS FOR INSERTION OF SEEDLEPOINT LACE Early Seventeenth Century. Italian)
lace-like effect. Technically, however, such work is not real lace according to the definition of it given above. This difference is important in the classi- fication and description of lace and lace-like embroi- deries. Obvious as it is, it is too often overlooked.
Lace-like embroideries are usually found on comparatively large cloths, hangings, &c.; neces- sories to costume, like collars, cuffs, trimmings, flounces, &c., are generally made entirely of lace, that is, of course, when lace effects are wanted in
FIG. 1-VANDYKE BOUDER AND TWO BANDS FOR INSERTION
FH. A-COLLAR OF NEEDLEPOINT LACE (Early Seventeenth Century)