. History of lace. make glue. The decay which threatened almost total extinction ofthe industry belongs to the last twenty years. The con-tributory causes were several, chiefly the rapid developmentof machinery, which enabled large quantities to be sold atlower rates than the hand-workers could starve on, while thequality of the manufactured goods was good enough for the NOR THAMPTONSHIRE 393 large public that required lace to last hut a short competition, the higher wages required by all, andthe many new employments opening to women took awaythe young people from the villages. In
. History of lace. make glue. The decay which threatened almost total extinction ofthe industry belongs to the last twenty years. The con-tributory causes were several, chiefly the rapid developmentof machinery, which enabled large quantities to be sold atlower rates than the hand-workers could starve on, while thequality of the manufactured goods was good enough for the NOR THAMPTONSHIRE 393 large public that required lace to last hut a short competition, the higher wages required by all, andthe many new employments opening to women took awaythe young people from the villages. In 1874 more thanthirty young lace-women left a village of four hundredinhabitants to seek work elsewhere. The old workers gaveup making good laces and supplied the popular demand withMaltese, which grew more and more inferior both in designand quality of thread, and gradually the old workers diedout and no new ones took their places. The Lace Associa-tion has been started with the object of stimulating and Fig. RAISED Plait.—Bedford. improving the local manufacture of pillow lace, of providinglace-workers with greater facilities for the sale of their workat more remunerative prices. Its aim is also to save the olddesigns of the point lace and discourage the coarse Maltese,to get new designs copied from old laces, and insist on onlythe best thread being used,^^ and good workmanship, andfinally, to bring the lace before the public, and send it directfrom worker to the purchaser, thus enabling the former toget the full value, saving the large profits which the dealers,buying for the shopkeepers, intercept for their own lace was also made to some extent in Derbyshire. ^^ Too much stress cannot be laid on thread. Many well-meant efforts arethe importance of using fine linen entirely ruined by the coarse woolly 394 HISTORY OF LACE SUFFOLK. Suffolk has produced bobbin-made laces of little artisticvalue. The patterns in most of the specimens in the Victoriaand A
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectlaceand, bookyear1902
