lynxlace.com   Two Structural Classes of Bobbin Lace   Distinctions of Style   © Lorelei Halley 2009

    Site map    Bobbin Lace History Overview    Lace Terminology     Bobbin Lace Introduction  

Bobbinlace has roughly a dozen distinct regional/period styles which are different in working methods and technique as well as different in shapes and kinds of designs.  A bobbin lace maker who knows one working method won't necessarily be able to make other kinds unless she has specifically studied those other kinds.  When we refer to a style, such as Flanders or Duchesse, we are referring to the collection of working methods and structures which are typical of that style.  But a museum curator is thinking of something different.  Museums are interested in "provenance", which means the geographical origin, artistic and stylistic traditions which contributed to it, and date. Museums often identify their collections by the city or geographical region of origin, and any one city may have seen stylistic and technical differences  and changes in its laces over a long period of time.  A classic example of this is Valenciennes bobbin lace.  When you say "Valenciennes" to a lace maker she will understand this as a straight lace using a mesh ground with 4 threads in each leg of the ground, and 2 pairs entering the clothwork at each pin.  But the town also produced a part lace (relatively uncommon) which was similar to straight lace Valenciennes in style but completely different in structure and working methods.  Museums call them both "Valenciennes", but to a lacemaker they are completely distinct. I can recall a conversation in the early 1980s with a textile curator at the Art Institute of Chicago about this particular lace.  We went round in circles and true communication never happened.  Only years later did I realize why we weren't communicating.   When a lacemaker refers to "Flanders Lace"  she may not be thinking of the same thing as a museum curator who only thinks of point of origin and date, not structure.  When a lacemaker refers to a lace as "Flanders" or "Valenciennes" she is thinking of structure and working methods typical of that type, regardless of whether it was actually made in Flanders or Valenciennes, or in London, Vancouver or Chicago.  At first glance one might think that the ground determines the regional/period style.  But this is not the case.   In actual fact, how the cloth parts are woven is the important factor, specifically the paths taken by threads entering and leaving the clothwork.  There is more about this below and in the historical sections.  So, a museum curator and a lacemaker may use the same word, but they mean something different by it.

The most important distinction is between two broad classes of structure.  One, called straight lace or continuous lace, starts with a lot of bobbins and makes the whole lace, ground and motifs, with these same bobbins.  So what the lacemaker has to know is how to take threads out of the design motifs and move them into the ground, and then move them back again.   Different regional/period styles do this differently.   (See Lace Terminology for an explanation of these terms.)  Complex laces of this kind may therefore use a lot of bobbins, sometimes hundreds.  Some have a mesh ground where all the lines of the ground are made by two threads.  Some, called guipure laces, have grounds made of thicker bars, usually made of four or more threads.  In this latter type the spaces between the lines in the ground will be larger than one would find in a mesh ground.  In a straight lace it should be possible to follow each thread along its path from the ground into the motifs and out again (providing you have sufficient magnification and light.)

The second broad structural class is called part lace, free lace (meaning freeform lace), or sectional lace.  This group may have a narrow tape meandering through the design or may have several discrete motifs which widen and narrow, requiring new threads to be hung in and later removed.  These discrete motifs or the meandering tape are attached to other completed parts of the lace by using a crochet hook or similar tool.  So the student needs to learn  how to start and end motifs of different shapes (pointy ends, round ends, flat ends),  how to make the tape curve, how to add and remove threads from the discrete motifs as they change shape, and the various ways of making the hooked attachments which hold everything together.  To identify an antique part lace, look for knotty lumps in several places on the wrong side.  These lumps will be the endings of individual motifs.

      These all have a cloth trail or tape, but are made differently.

Straight Laces:                                                                               *

 Torchon, point ground laces, Flanders, Paris lace, Binche, Valenciennes, Cluny, Bedfordshire, and Genoese are all examples of straight laces.  Some of these have the lines of the ground made of 2 threads twisted together, and some have thicker bars made of 4 or more threads plaited/braided together. 

Here are some of the mesh grounds used in these laces:                                                                                     *

All LH

This table contains mesh grounded straight laces * of different ages.  The first row have only one pair entering the motifs or clothwork at each pin.   Torchon and point ground laces (in the first row) have one pair of threads entering the clothwork at each pin.  The second row is Mechlin.
LH	LH			LH
Wide straight laces may require large numbers of bobbins on the pillow at the same time, but narrow ones are easier to manage.	LH	R2 This is a simple torchon edging, using relatively few bobbins.	Torchon bobbin laces, both from my TORCHON BOBBIN LACE LESSONS.  Follow the colors of the ground threads.  You can see them entering as the cloth stitch motif widens, and leaving as it narrows.  In any straight lace you can see the threads moving from foot, through the ground, into the clothwork, out of the cloth and into the ground, perpetually.  Follow the colors and you will see where every pair came from and where it goes.	LH	LH
LH	Bucks point bobbin lace, with point ground.  Here also, you can follow the threads from the ground into the clothwork.	LH	Bucks point worked on an enlarged scale.  It is easy to follow the threads from the foot, through the ground, and into the cloth.
LH	LH	A Bucks point bobbin lace from Geraldine Stott's workshop.  You can clearly follow the threads from the ground into the clothwork.
LH	LH	LH
A torchon straight lace, of my design.    I made it in 5 strips, 3 wide, 2 narrow.	This photo shows one of the wide strips in process.	Large straight lace designs were often made in strips because of the difficulty in managing hundreds of bobbins.	The same from the front.  The strip is about 5 inches wide, but needs a very large number of bobbins.		The central motif appears half finished in the 2nd photo.
LH	LH	This torchon piece of my design has the solid border worked first and then filled it with the ground and the tree.

                                   * 

Flanders, Paris, Valenciennes and Binche lace have 2 pairs entering the clothwork motifs at each pin.  This results in a more complex weave in the cloth stitch motifs.  These are also mesh grounded laces.
	LH
					LH
Flanders Bobbin Lace
	LH	Flanders, worked on a greatly enlarged scale.  Blue rings show 2 pairs entering at each pin.  Yellow rings show 2 pairs departing at the pin.		L386 These are both Flanders,  unusually narrow laces of this type.  The working set-up is the same as for torchon. LH	Flanders bobbin lace  green leaving, orange entering.
Paris Bobbin Lace
LH	Paris lace.  White ring - 2 pairs entering.  Pink ring - 2 pairs leaving.		Paris bobbin lace
Valenciennes Bobbin Lace
	Valenciennes bobbin lace:  Orange rings - 2 pairs departing.  Green rings - 2 pairs entering.  Although the lines in the ground have 4 threads in Valenciennes, it is still considered mesh lace because of other structural factors.

Guipure or braid based (plait based) straight laces.  *   In guipure laces (braided/plaited)  the ground is made of thicker bars made of 4 or more threads.
LH

Cluny Bobbin Lace
	A simple Cluny bobbin lace made entirely of braids.  Each line of the lace requires 4 threads.  From the DMC Encyclopedia.  I designed the corner.	LH		Cluny type, an Italian design.
		Cluny bobbin lace, from Annelie van Olffen.  You can see that some bobbins are making the two footsides, and some are making braids.  You can see all the loose threads across the top, where the bobbins were hung in.	LH
Bedfordshire Bobbin Lace
LH		Bedfordshire bobbin lace, much enlarged scale, from Pam Nottingham.   You can see that some bobbins are coming from the cloth trail, some from the little leaf shape, some from the footside and some from the braids.
There are distinctions of technique between Cluny and Bedfordshire laces.  In general terms the way pairs of threads enter and leave the meandering cloth stitch trails differ.  (Jean Leader, a modern Bedfordshire expert, tells me that the old museum laces often show both the Beds and Cluny working methods in the same piece.  So the distinction must be taken as "general practice" not a universal rule.)
LH	LH			LH
A simple Bedfordshire learning pattern from Margaret Hamer.  The orange ovals show 4 threads from the braid entering the cloth trail as passive threads (vertical threads) and staying on the near edge of that trail.  The green circles show those same threads departing the trail lower down and making a braid.	Bedfordshire, enlarged scale, from Margaret Hamer.  See if you can tell where each pair came from and where it went.  This is a learning sample; I didn't worry about the colors.	The circled area shows threads moving from the braids on the left of the trail and moving into the cloth trail, becoming weaver threads.  In some cases those threads depart the trail immediately on the right side and make the headside braid.  In some cases those threads stay in the trail as weaver threads.	The blue lines are the weaver leaving the trail and entering the braid on the right.  The orange line are threads which left the braid on the left, briefly became trail weavers, and immediately exited into a braid on the right.  The green line shows a braid pair which entered the trail and stayed in it as weaver.	This is a Cluny lace.

Part Laces (Sectional Lace):                                                    *

Part laces can be made in sections, with each leaf or flower completed as a separate unit.  Or it can be made as a snaky tape, which meanders all over the design.   

Tape Laces                                                                                                  *
LH	LH
These are tape lace motifs extracted from a large design by DMC.  The design is a single tape which uses a constant number of bobbins, but narrows and widens by changing the stitch used.	Every time the color changes, I changed to a different stitch: in the bottom one to half stitch, in the top one I added twists between the cloth stitches.
Bobbin tape lace    LH			LH
This row is all tape lace.  Tape laces usually don't require a lot of bobbins. Lace 434 from DMC.  I added the picots on the edge; the original design had a "sewing edge".	This shows lace 434 soon after starting.  Compare the number of bobbins to the Cluny lace above on the blue pricking.  The edging was made in 3 strips: a plain one on the inside, and a plain one on the outside, with the snaky one in the middle.	Here I have nearly finished the primary tape.  When the gap between the two sections of green lace is closed, that tape will be finished.  I never had more than 10 bobbins on the pillow at once.	Lace 211 From DMC.	I started in the middle of one side, and am working the corner.
Part Laces          (Sometimes called "free laces", meaning freeform laces.)                      *
			CH	DS
LH
This is the back of one of my own designs.  You can see the lumpy spots where I ended a section.  It is a part lace.	This was made in 3 sections:  The central flower first, then each set of leaves on the left and right.	A lace of the Milanese type.  It looks like a normal Milanese tape lace, but it is actually made in sections.  This is a "discrete units" kind of tape lace.	Each color distinguishes a separate motif made as a unit.  In terms of structure, this is more like a part lace rather than a tape lace.  But it looks like a tape lace.  Many antique Milanese and Flemish tape laces that I saw at the Art Institute of Chicago were of this type.	This is also a Milanese tape lace.  The flower and leaf shapes can only be made by adding a removing threads constantly.  So it also is a tape lace which uses techniques involving separate units.
LH
Honiton bobbin lace with raised work, a leaf sampler.  The design is from Perryman and Voysey. Lace 597	The colored rings surround discrete sections which were made as units.		This is the reverse side, while the lace was still in process.  The long threads are the ending tails, left when their specific unit was finished and attached to the basic tape.  A few sections are still not started.	This shows the reverse side when completed.  The colored rings show the knotted lumps left when the long threads were cut off.  The green arrow points to the basic tape.  This was made first and all the sub-motifs were attached to it as they were completed.
LH
Bobbin lace # NL2.  This is my own design, Neck Lace #2.  I used 70/2 linen.	Work in process.  The central ring and scalloped ring are finished.  Here I am making the petals that lie around the scalloped ring.

Another part lace piece in process:  http://picasaweb.google.com/anaiencajes/TutorialTrabajoEnComun?feat=content_notification#

Several simple part lace motifs in process, showing the work in stages.  https://picasaweb.google.com/cepakovav/Navody?feat=content_notification#

Here is another series of photos showing how part lace can be made on a simple drawing, from Bistra Pisancheva:                                                              http://picasaweb.google.com/bistri4ka/fvkmVF#5324884687383607058

Summary 

     Straight Lace (Continuous Lace)  

         Mesh Grounded 

One pair enters at each pin 

Torchon 

Point ground laces (Bucks, Tonder, Bayeux, Chantilly, Blonde) 

Two pairs enter at each pin     

Flanders 

Binche 

Valenciennes 

Paris 

Guipure (Braid/plait based) laces 

Genoese (antique 16th century laces)

Cluny 

Maltese 

LePuy guipure  (Spanish guipures are similar, but some have both guipure and mesh grounds in the same lace.)

Bedfordshire 

     Part/Sectional Laces 

Tape laces 

Russian 

Idrija 

Schneeberger 

Hinojosa

Milanese tape  (some)

Flemish tape  (some)

Discrete units 

Some Milanese and Flemish tape are actually this type, but look like tape laces

Some Idrija laces contain discrete units as well as tapes

Cantu has tape-like designs but flower heads and some movements have part lace elements

Bruges Bloomwork

Brussels

Brabant

Duchesse

Withof

Rosaline

Honiton

    Abbreviations     Compare     Lace Terminology

    Bobbin Lace Introduction      Learning Bobbin Lace    Bobbin Lace History Overview    

    1559-1700        Pottenkant/Milanese        18th century        Napoleonic era

    19th century straight bar lace           19th century straight mesh lace          19th century part lace 

    Revival Era Part Lace        Revival Era Straight Lace        New Revival Era Laces    

Contact me at     lhalley@bytemeusa.com                  Revised February 11, 2011