Page 370 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

A History of Lace 363

were required to make any one piece, each person taking a different task:
tracing the design on the parchment, laying the foundation cordonnet, making
the different fillings, outlining the fillings, joining the motifs into strips of
ground (each strip less than 2.5 cm width) and fine-linking the strips into
a whole. Apprentices would learn each process, then work on that stage of
each piece of lace until they were proficient, before learning the next stage.
Supervisors, who had acquired skill in every stage, examined each stage of
every piece and maintained high standards. Workers were required to conform
to stringent standards of cleanliness, and soap and water for washing the hands
were provided on the workshop premises.
The Low Countries (Flanders, Belgium and the Netherlands) were pro-
ducing fine bobbin lace, for the damp atmosphere was particularly suited to
the needs of linen thread. Valenciennes (in Flanders, but ceded to France) and
Brussels laces were worked in damp and darkened rooms so as to prevent the
thread from snapping or turning colour-it was said that a piece begun in the
town and taken out to be completed by the same worker using the same thread
would show a change of colour simply from the change in atmosphere. It was
also said that Valenciennes lace (which was tougher than other laces thanks
to its reseau of four-thread plaits) gained its life by draining vitality from its
workers, whose long hours in cold damp rooms must have shortened their lifes-
pans. A pair of Valenciennes lace ruffles for a gentleman's coat could cost as
much as 4000 livres (80,000 sols) and would have been considered as an invest-
ment. The near-invisible thread that was required for the very best quality
bobbin laces could only be achieved if the flax used in the spinning never dried
out from its first moment of retting, when the casing was destroyed leaving
only the linen fibres. Consequently, the spinsters producing this thread were
standing in water for long hours each day; but where the lacemakers were
allowed to sit above the byre, warming themselves in the breath and body
heat of the cattle below, the spinsters could not have even this concession to
physical needs, and pneumonia must have wreaked havoc amongst them each
winter.
About this time, the import duties on English and Dutch goods were
raised from 25% to 50% of the trade value: by way of retaliation, William
of Orange declared a complete boycott of all French goods. This resulted in
much smuggling of lace through the frontiers of the Low Countries using a va-
riety of methods, the two most common of which were the coffin and the dog.
In the former, a coffin was packed with lace and escorted across the border
accompanied by `bereaved relatives' some of whom may even have worn new
and expensive laces. Once the authorities became aware of the deception, the
smugglers attempted a new trick: a puppy was fattened and pampered on one
side of the border, then taken across to its new owner who would starve the
beast, wrap a consignment of lace round its body, and sew a skin over the lot