Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1886-11-20
The Laceunakers,

IWh uilOllS tllS INV
lanes of some of England's loyeliest
counties, Buckinghamshire and Devon
shire IN particular, there are nesting
scores of the most wonderful little cot
tages, such as you see in pictures, with
thatch covered roofs and diamond
paned windows almost smothered in a
tangle of roses and honeysuckle and
clcmatis and ivy. If you crept up to
one OF the sweet shady porches on Il
summers afternoon, or peeped in at
the little low easement wEeH the Win
ter skies were heavy and gray, you
would find all the women and girls the
cottage contained busy over u most
mysterious and fascinating work.
On the lap OF each, or on curious
light frame of wood before her, would
be laid a strangely shaped cushion, stuck
full of minutest fine pins, sometimes
with colored sealing wax heads, aud
sometimes with only their heads of UNI
adorned W re. You would notice with
wonder that everybodys hands wero
moving over her cushion so rapidly
that your eyes could scarcely follow
them; yet by-and-by, as you watched,
you would understand that there was
an order and method III the move
ments that seemed at first so wild; and
then, looking closer, you would SEQ
that from each of those countless littlo
pins there hung thread, fine as a
spiders best web, with a funny little
wooden stick at the end, and that those
flying hands were tossing to and fro
these sticks, or bobbins, on which tho
delicate threads We're wound, and paus-
10
the threads about it, and stick it into
the cushion once more.
Then while you looked and won
dered, behold your eye would fall upon
the space where these flying threads
had been dancing the fastest, and you
would see, stretched flat and even be-
tween the rows OF sentinel pins, a pat
tern of lace so fine and so exquisite
that you would rub your eyes with all
your might before you could believe it
was not the work of Jack Frost on q
winters morning.
And then you would exclaim, per-
haps, "Oh, l see now! I know what
they are doing; they are making lace"
Yes, you have guessed it. These are
the cree maids who weave their web
with bone," the pillow-lace makers of
Eng. and, who earn their bread by
manufacturing one of the most ex-
quisite and artistic materials in the
world, and whose work is the most
fascinating kind Of play.
There are two kinds of lace-point
lace and pillow cor cushion) lace. That
is to say, of real lace, for the lace that
is made by machinery is only an imita-
tion, and though often very beautiful
in its way is far inferior to handmade
lace in loneliness, delicacy, and value.
Point lace is the name for all lace that
is worked with Il needle, and wonder
full, indeed, are some of the old laces
that have come down to us from the
busy and skillful fingers that were cold
and still centuries before we saw the
light. But most of the hand made lace
of to-day is pillow-woveu, and the two
great English laces, buckingham and
Honiton, employ hundreds and hun
dreds of women and girls in their ex-
quisite manufacture.
Long before tiny daughter of the
lace-makers has learned to read she
can wind bobbins on the curious little
bobbinwinder that looks somewhat
like spinning wheel, and when she is
just able to hold a tiny pillow on her
knee she is sent every morning to the
"lace school," where, seated on low
wooden three-legged stools, a whole
crowd of wee children learn to plat
their threads and stick their pins from
the old woman who sits in the middle
of the group, and teaches and scolds,
and sometimes makes use of the stick
which rests against the back of her
rush-bottome1 chair.
By-and-by, as the children grow old
er, they can be trusted alone, without
fear of soiling their threads or tangling
their bobbins, and then comes the glory
OF the time when they learn for them
selves to read patterns" such
reading as you are doing now. for the
patterns are not written, or even
sketched, but picked in holes on stout
brown cardboard, and the reading" is
tracing ont the proper placed for the
pins, and knowing where they must go
to form the pattern.
The two kinds of English pillow lace
are very unlike, both in appearance and
in the way of making. Buckingham
lace, which is very Ike kink of for
eign lace called Maltese, is thick and
close, made on a long pillow like roly-
poly pudd ng, with pins whose heads
are gayiy colored, and bobbins weighted
with heavy beads of oolored glass and
china. Honiton or Devonshire lace is
far finer and more exqu site, so like a
spiders web that it has never been imi-
tated by machinery; it is worked on q
fiat round cushion like dumping,
with pins as fine as hairs, and threads
that one can scarcely see. All the pill.
lows are stuffed almost as hard as
bricks, and prettily covered with linen
cloths, edged with bright-colored Dor.
ders; and sometimes the bobbins are
named ter different friends, and have
their initials burned into the soft wood.
I knew one poor Buckinghamshire
woman who called her prettiest bobbin
by the name of little child she hal
lost. "And," she said, whenever the
bobbin comes under my hand. / think
of my blessed baby safe with the
angels"
A simple and an innocent folk are
the lace-makers, with few wants and
few ambitions beyond the need of max
ing their da ~ bread, and the desire
to "read out" pattern more difficult
and elaborate than those hitherto
worked in the hamlet. 1t is not trade
atWhich people grow rich. for the work