Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem team
[Nottingham history]
Nottingham lace
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Nottingham Lace Museum |
There is evidence that the Egyptians furnished their tombs with net and lace, and specimens dating from 2500 BC have been found. Italy was the cradle of lace-making in the 16th century. The craft came to England in the following century, when Flemish refugees brought bobbin lace-making to Devon.
There were basically two types of handmade lace: needlepoint created with a needle, using a variety of buttonhole stitches; and bobbin lace made by plaiting and twisting threads, weighted with bobbins, over a parchment pattern on a pillow. Needlepoint laces were owned and worn only by the very rich - for instance, Queen Victoria's collection was valued at her death at £76,000. The most magnificent single lace dress ever produced was given by Napoleon III to Empress Eugenie: it cost 200,000 francs (then about £12,000) and took 36 women working fulltime for 18 months to make it.
machine-made lace
The Rev. William Lee, a curate at Calverton, Nottinghamshire,
invented the stocking frame - the first knitting machine - in
1586, but at the time, it did not get the encouragement it deserved.
However, by the 1730s at least 50 such machines were in operation
in Nottingham, making plain stockings. Then it was discovered
that, by introducing an arrangement called a 'tickler', it was
possible to miss some of the thread loops to produce a series
of holes in the knitted fabric. This was elaborated later so that
the holes conformed to a pre-arranged pattern to create a primitive
form of design. By the 1770s, the method had been improved and
developed until fine mesh backgrounds with reasonably elaborate
designs could be achieved.
Thomas Hammond is usually credited with creating the first piece of machine-made lace in 1768. But he sold only enough to keep himself and his wife in drink, and no examples of it survive. The first warp lace machines produced a knitted lace without any patterning, but eventually designs were introduced.
In 1809, John Heathcoat, the son of a Derbyshire farmer, invented the bobbin net machine. Instead of using needles, this machine had pairs of bobbins in carriages that traversed from side to side, passing through warp (vertical) threads - in effect, imitating the movements of the hand lace-maker. Heathcoat's later machines produced wider nets, an advantage over the traditional laceworker who could make nets to a maximum width of only 12.5 cm (5 in).
The Nottingham lace curtain machine was invented in 1846 by John Livesey. Modern developments have enabled it to produce a great variety of fabrics, including bedspreads, table covers, shawls and stoles, as well as curtains and furnishings.
However, most of the manufacturers in and around Nottingham have made their loveliest trimmings and dress laces on giant Leavers machines, named after John Leavers, a Nottinghamshire framesmith who in 1813 invented the first prototype. Today a Leavers machine weighs about 15 tons, measures approximately 12.2 m (40 ft) in length and has more than 40,000 moving parts, which twist thousands of individual threads to make lace that is very similar in construction to that created by the pillow lace-makers of the past.
At the turn of the century, lace-making reached its peak in Nottingham. There were 130 factories, 90% of them steam powered, and the trade employed 22,000 people, two thirds of them women. Then the industry declined. World War I disrupted exports, and in the 1920s, the financial depression, changes in fashion and foreign competition all took their toll. However, post-war innovations in the textile industry created a new generation of machines capable of producing lace by the knitting process. The Raschel machine, in particular, is able to make a wide range of delicate dress laces, furnishing lace and curtaining in large quantities at high speed.
the Lace Market
The area now known as Nottingham's Lace Market was the site of the first Anglo-Saxon settlement, and for centuries,
it was the centre of the town, with elegant houses being built
there from Elizabethan times to the 18th century. In about 1850,
it was transformed by the erection of great factories and warehouses
for the lace industry. Two of the most impressive buildings can
still be seen: the Adams Warehouse in Stoney Street and the Birkin
Building in Broadway.
This article is adapted from The Story of Nottingham Lace, published by The Lace Centre, Nottingham.
