Page 379 - J. C. Turner - History and Science of Knots

372 History and Science of Knots

by the piece, anyone whose work was below standard was dealt with by her
colleagues in the village.In 1840, when the work was at its peak of popularity,
a Flowerer could earn as much as 10/- per week. [At this point, a `very
handsome' dress allowance was considered to be 15gns p.a. (=315/-).]
Around the third decade of the century, the lace knitting of Unst in the
Shetland Isles was discovered. This was always knitted with wool from the
local sheep, which were never sheared but combed by hand ('rooed'). The fine
wool was handspun, and the best quality yarn measured `three-quarters of a
mile to half an ounce' (5km length per 50g mass). The method of knitting
coupled with the very fine yarn produces a soft, flexible mesh that may be
pulled through a wedding ring, and the best quality shawls (often measuring
2m square) were family heirlooms used for wedding veils and christenings (and
sometimes called churching shawls.) This proved so popular an item of fashion
that by 1840 shawls were being `exported' to London; but by 1850 imitations
were being produced, and the island's brief period of prosperity was over.
There are fewer than 35 stitch patterns (the first attempt to catalogue the
stitches, in the early part of the C20th listed only ten), some of which are
recent inventions. As with the Ayrshire work, the lace knitting was a cottage
industry, with an agent to handle the sales. One curiosity of the Shetland
knitters is their method of holding the left needle in a belt fastened to the
waist, so that the knitting may be produced single-handedly while stirring the
porridge or rocking the bairn's cradle.
In England, the finest lace was made in the Devonshire area, and went
by the name of Honiton. (Daniel Defoe mentions a lace known as Blandford
Point, the finest in the British Isles, in the C18th; but we have no records
of the work today.) This industry suffered great setbacks when the bobbinet
machine was invented, for the cheaply produced machine nets brought down
the price of lace. In an attempt to boost the sales of hand-made lace, Queen
Adelaide, wife to William IV, had a dress made of Honiton lace, where the
initial letters of the flower motifs spelt her name. Even so, there was a marked
decline in sales. There was a fleeting revival in the quality of design when
Queen Victoria commissioned her wedding veil: an architect and an artist
drew out the design which was then made by lacemakers in Devon. However,
all too often the designs were copied off wallpapers or chintzes, and so lacking
in balance. The trolley laces of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire continued
to sell, though lacemakers' prices were forced down; Thomas Lester, an agent,
did much to improve the designs in this region.
There was also a new form of lace begun in England at this time. A man
called Draygo, fleeing from the Napoleonic wars, settled in the Essex village
of Coggeshall, sheltering with a silk manufacturer. In return for hospitality,
Monsieur Draygo taught the skills of tambour work to the girls of the village;
this lace school had the support of M. Draygo's landlord, and within a quarter