The Arizona sentinel., 1886-05-01
Some name is attached to almost ey-

l lu6 I1dIII mOuuIdlnS, SUduuS d IHOuu-
 ment of sandstone, and upon it this in-
 scription: "Here rests Barbara Utt-
 mann, died 14th of January, 1875.
 She it was that in the year 1861,
 through her invention of point lace, be-
 came the benefactor of the Hartz
 mountains" This inscription is so
 far incorrect in that the art of lace
 making was already practiced in the
 Netherlands, consequently was not in-
 vented but introduced. Yet should
 Barbara Uttmann be known as the
 benefactor of her home and is truly even
 until this day, for it was she who
 brought the bobbin into the Hartz
 mountains.
 It was the same in the Wild Ecke,
 as the rough and wooded environs of
 the Pohlbergs, toward the end of the
 year 1900, was called. The 27th of
 October, 1492, through Kaspar Drechs- Ter, from Frohman, the first lode of sil-
 yer ore in Schreckenberg was discov-
 cred. Quickly from there the news ex- tended and cuttings were made in many
 other places, and even to Prozel the
 rich vein of silver ore was uncovered.
 The whole region was raised and
 wakenedup. The hamlet which sprang
 up around the first mine, called Anna
 berg, had already grown to be town. been superintendent of the mines.
 He was descended from a patrician family, was born in Nuremberg in 1485
 and died in Etterlein in 1882.
 To him in 1514 was born a daughter
 who was called Barbara, and was pre- destined to give work and livelihood to the women of the Hartz mountains.
 At an early age she showed great skill
 and dexterity in all woman's work and
 especially in lace-making, with which
 only the wives and daughters of people
 of the highest rank then occupied them selves. This lace was used chiefly for
 the decoration of the altar, the com munion cloth and the priests robes,
 andrequired much time and great labox. Barbara sought for that reason an easier
 and less time-consuming method of making point lace, and in collar which she gave to her betrothed, Christopher Uttmann, on the morning of their we'd ding day has furnished proofs that her efforts and search were not in vain. The collar was the first bobbin work that was seen in the Hartz mountains. Christopher Uttman came from Lowen- berg, in Schlesien, to Annaberg and grew to be a rich land-holder, to the surprise of those who had previously known him. Recently this invention of lace work has been called in ques- ton, and it is now generally accepted flnA s% from Netherlander. This is high ly probable and also easily un- derstood since the settlement of Netherland silk-weavers at Buchholz, near Annaberg, took place in 1861, and lace-work of white and yellow thread may have been made, as it was by no means unlikely that among the many which the lode star of the mines drew toward Annaberg some should have been lace-makers.
 Certain it is that Barbara Uttmann, who herself drove profitable trade in point lace, both taught and extended this useful art in Annaberg. How quickly the same became national one sees when in 1868 there broke out in the Hartz mountains pestilence which in Annaberg alone swept away eight hun dred lace-makers, the manufacture hay ing only begun in 1561.
 From Annaberg, also this pleasant and lucrative employment spread to all the neighboring mountain towns, where it also became speciality. Villagers who wished to engage in it must, ac- cording to an ordinance of 1909, pay tax for that privilege,
 In the year 1900 the number of steady lace-makers rose to ten thousand, and ere twenty years it reached fifty thou sand, while about twenty thousand ad- ditional makers came in the winter sea- son. In later times in the summer there were between thirty-five and forty thousand at work. The profit sank with the increase of workers. Whilst iN the early part of the century skillful worker could earn ten groschen day, afterward not even if she gave herselfno moment S rest from morning till evening could she earn more than six groschen, and in bad years even less. So little, indeed, that even hard, honest work could not hinder poverty from entering the frugal little dwellings. The woven lace which in 1909 began to be made in England drove out the hand made. As is everywhere the case where ma chinery contends with hand work, it lowered the price of the latter to much below its value, and the people of the Hartz mountains were obliged to en- gage in the unequal struggle with the new power which gives this century its individuality. Alas! they did it not in the right manner, they sought not by perfection, but by cheapness, to vie with the Nottingham lace. That this is not the right way to contend against the | machine work" said Beethold Sigis- l mond in his entertaining book on the | Hartz mountains, lis plain. The hand | workers can raise its value by invent | ing variety and perfection of patterns, | instead of the well-known though cheap | curtain and cotton lace, and can, in a | manner not possible to the machine, make Valenciennes and Brussels point. | Hand work must become an art where | it is opposed to machine work. Through | the discovery of photography many in ferior artists lost their means of earn ing living, but the fine portrait paint CT will never be supplanted. So it is with the point lace. The poorer work CTS must give way to the machine, the more skillful remain"
 The people of the Hartz mountains must carry on the contest with the low prices by the weapons of higher art, since they love the work oflace-making. It is among them tradition which is handed down from generation to gen. eratlOn The two WOmanlV industries of the Hartz mountains, the lace-mak- ing, which in the sixteenth century, to- gether with the veil-making, came from