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| Cover, The Laces of Ipswich, with costumed interpreter. |
I recently read a fascinating book on a aspect of New England textile history new to me. In the mid-18th century women in Ipswich, a town on the north shore of Boston, Massachusetts, established a very successful cottage industry in lace-making. At the height of production, 600 lace makers created pillow lace, making edgings for bonnets and shawls. This wasn't a recreational hobby but rather provided much needed additional income for the lace maker's household. We are lucky in researcher and author Marta Cotterell Raffel, who dug deep and is an engaging writer too.
In 1791 Ipswich resident Reverend Joseph Dana prepared a report for businessman and senator George Cabot on the lace industry in Ipswich. The report, with thirty-six small samples of lace, was ultimately submitted to Alexander Hamilton, eager to assess industries in the new country as imports from Britain were curtailed or halted altogether. Eventually the samples became part of the Library of Congress collections, where they have been expertly conserved to this day. The image below is from the Library of Congress website.
The book has a valuable glossary, images of lace samples, portraits of New England women wearing the lace, and a bibliography. Modern day lace makers have reproduced some of the historic patterns. An appendix shows several of these recreated samples with their corresponding pattern, called a "pricking". Below is a detail of an Ipswich lace with its associated "pricking". The lace maker inserted her pins into the holes of the pricking, and wove around the pins, using linen or silk thread wound onto her bobbins.
It's important to note the lace produced is not the highly refined lace produced by women in Irish convents or trained by lace schools in Europe. Such imported lace was a luxury item and embellished the clothing and accessories of women of highest social status. The lace makers of Ipswich, who learned from each other, were producing lace edgings affordable by middle-class women - the wives of merchants and other businessmen, for example.
With the advent of machine-made lace this once-valued textile lost some of its exclusivity and allure, and the making of Ipswich lace ceased about 1840, although a few practitioners continue until the end of the century. There was a bit of a revival in the 1920's as part of the general Colonial Revival movement, when antiquarians such as Wallace Nutting recreated a rather romantic vision of colonial life through staged photography. One major contribution of this revival was the preservation of colonial artifacts and renewed appreciation of the skills demonstrated.
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| Recreation of Ipswich lace edging, with "pricking" pattern. |
The Laces of Ipswich: The Art and Economics of an Early American Industry, 1750-1840.
ISBN 1-58465-163-6