Mid seventeenth century lace: cost versus income

This has been written because someone said in a Facebook group, I want to use lace, but I want it to be relevant to my station. This was something that worried people at the time. Samuel Pepys at one point in 1669 wrote he did not wear a particular suit “because it was too fine with the gold lace at the hands, that I was afeard to be seen in it.” When he did get around to wearing it he wrote “Povy told me of my gold-lace sleeves in the Park yesterday, which vexed me also, so as to resolve never to appear in Court with them, but presently to have them taken off, as it is fit I should, and so to my wife at Unthanke’s, and coach, and so called at my tailor’s to that purpose.” (1)

Below are images from a letter from Elizabeth Isham (1609-1654) to her father, with samples of ten penny, seven penny, six penny and tuppenny lace. (2) These are simple cheap laces, the type that caused Margaret Spufford to write that “lace represented perhaps, the most straightforward index of cheap luxury.” (3 p. 99) They are compared to the values set for a day’s work by the Suffolk Sessions in 1630, these rates were found – that is the employer provided food and drink during the day. (4 pp. 307-11)

Tuppenny lace – This maybe the type of lace that poor children were set to making when they were learning to make lace so that “no child be suffered to beg,” but that they should learn “as soon as ever they be capable of instruction.” (5 p. 89) The rate set in 1630 for “women and such impotent persons that weed corn,” was 2d a day.

Sixpenny lace - There are two laces at this rate. In 1630 6d was the day rate for a tailor, a hedger or a dawber. A dawber is a man who covers the walls of a building with daub, as in wattle and daub. This type of lace is also bought by the gentry, the Shuttleworth accounts have twelve yards of six pence a yard lace being bought “for my Mris” in 1613. (6 p. 206)

Sevenpenny and ten penny laces – You are now into the wages paid to skilled men. A master joiner or master carpenter, or a thatcher might be paid 8d a day. This is also the rate for mowers and reapers of corn, who are paid more than mowers of hay.

As can be seen the above are all very simple laces, and all white linen. Black lace was usually made of silk, and purchased for mourning. In 1626 the Howards of Naworth Castle purchased “13 yeards of black bone lace for my Lady 13s.” (7 p. 239)

How much were more expensive, deeper, more complex linen bone [bobbin] laces in the Civil War period? The chapman William Mackerell in 1642 had bone laces in his stock ranging from 5d to 3s 8d a yard. (3 pp. 186-90) The most expensive laces where those purchased by the aristocracy. In 1641 the Marquis of Hertford’s accounts have “paid by my Hon Ladie for 4 yards of bone lace at 15s a yard, 2 yards of bone lace at 10s per yard, for making 4 laced round handkerchers.” (8 p. 19)

What about metal laces? They were valued by the ounce because of the value of the metal. When Elizabeth le Strange got married in 1635 she bought for two gowns for her wedding, silver bone lace (22.25 ounces equaling 28 yards) for six shillings a yard. (8 p. 126)

References

1. Pepys, Samuel. Diary. [Online] https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary.

2. Levey, Santina. Lace: a history. London : Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983.

3. Spufford, Margaret. The great reclothing of rural England: petty chapman and their wares in the seventeenth century. London : Hambledon Press, 1984.

4. Archbold, W.A.J. An Assessment of wages for 1630. English Historical Review. 1897, Vol. 12.

5. Slack, Paul. Poverty in Early Stuart Salibury. Devizes : Wiltshire Record Society, 1975.

6. Harland, John (ed.). The House and Farm Accounts of the Shuttleworths ...1582-1621, Part 1. Lancaster : Chetham Society, 1856.

7. Ornsby, G. ed. Selections from the Household Books of the Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle. Publications of the Surtees Society. 1878, Vol. 68.

8. Morgan, F. C. Private Purse Accounts of the Marquis of Hertford, Michaelmas 1641-2. Antiquaries Journal. 1945, Vols. 25, 12-42, pp. 12-42.

9. Whittle, Jane and Griffiths, Elizabeth. Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth Century Household. Oxford : OUP, 2012.

Bobbin Lacemakers in the Early Modern: images and tools

Figure 1

Bobbin lace is thought to have originated in the first half of the sixteenth century, the first published book giving patterns is thought to have been Le Pompe, published in Venice in 1559 (Anon., 1983). Two years later, when the Nüw Modelbuch was published in Zurich the title page depicted two women working bobbin lace with unshaped bobbins on a plump rectangular pillow placed on a stand. (M., 1561) (Fig 1 right)

The next few depictions of bobbin lacemakers are drawings or prints. 

c.1580-1600, Johannes Stradanus (1523-1605) Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, with female companions engaged in needlework.  This a drawing, a more defined reversed image is the engraving produced by Theodoor Galle (1571-1633), where the woman behind the lady with the slate frame has a large domed lace pillow. On the table by them is a stand with an oil lamp suspended from it, giving them light from above.

c. 1580-85, Maerten de Vos (c. 1534-1603), in a series of etchings called The Seven Planets and Ages of Man, Mercury is shown with a lacemaker sitting in the bottom right hand corner. She has a rectangular lace pillow on her lap, and six bulb ended lace bobbins are visible.

1597, Johann Sibmacher (1561-1611), Schön Neues Modelbuch. The title page of the book shows the lady on the right with the spectacles has a sewing bolster of the type used for sewing, needle lace and bobbin lace, but no bobbins.  

Figure 2

1600 – 1620, The lacemaker, a drawing in the Rijksmuseum collection. Object number RP-T-1886-A-597. A rectangular lace pillow sits on a stand, while the lace maker sits in a chair. The bobbins are more numerous, and whilst shaped are less bulbous at the end than those in the Maertin de Vos etching. (Figure 2 left)

Circa 1620,  Gervasius Fabricius (1603-1637), Ladies in a garden in his Album Amicorum.  f.50 - BL Add MS 17025. The lady at the bottom left, sitting on a chair, has bolster pillow on a stand. Her bobbins for some reason hang from the middle of the lace, which is a pointed edging style, and they are of the bulbous end style. The parchment upon which the lace is being worked is red. Although there is no pin cushion, several pins can be seen stuck in the bolster, though not in the lace. It maybe that the painter did not understand how the lace was being worked. 

1640 Cornelis de Vos (1584-1651), The charity of Saint Nicholas, at Ons' Lieve Heer op Solder, Amsterdam. Here one lady is sewing on a sewing bolster, while two others make bobbin lace. The lace pillows are supported on a lap stand with a slanted top. The bobbins are shaped like those in the 1600-1620 Lacemaker drawing.

In the 1650s and 1660s a whole raft of paintings of lacemakers were produced by Dutch and Flemish genre painters.

1650s Gabrielle Metsu (1629–1667), The Lacemaker - The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg – This lacemaker is not working her lace, there is no pillow, but she is holding two bobbins, and the thread running between them can be seen.

1654-1655, Nicolaes Maes (1634 – 1693),  A young woman making lace – drawing of the figure that appears in the National Gallery of Canada painting. In this drawing, the painting that comes from it and the 1656 Maes lacemaker, the squared off, domed pillow appears to have a drawer in the in end, possibly for holding bobbins, pins, etc. 

1655, Nicolaes Maes (1634 – 1693), The lacemaker, National Gallery of Canada. The painting from the drawing.

Figure 3

1656, Nicolaes Maes (1634 – 1693), The Lacemaker, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York. Here we have again the square cut off, domed pillow with a drawer in the end. The bulbous bottomed bobbins and, as well as the pins appearing in the lace she has worked, her scissors can be seen hanging against her apron, a detail from the painting is shown in  Figure 3 left.

1662, Caspar Netscher (1639?-1684),  The Lace Maker, Wallace Collection, London. Again the lace pillow is supported on a lap stand with a slightly slanted top, and again The parchment upon which the lace is being worked is red. The can see the white of the worked lace and the red of the parchment carrying the pattern, she is in the act of placing a pin. The bobbins are again those with a bulbous bottom. 

1665, Bernhard Keil (1624-1687), The Lacemaker. Metropolitan Museum of Art New York. Keil was a Danish painter who studied at Rembrandt’s studio, he painted this when settled in Italy. Here we have a true round bolster pillow, abandoned on a chair. The worked lace is covered with a cloth, something most lace makers do today, the stop the worked lace getting dirty or being damaged. A small forest of pins appears in the area she is working, and the bobbins are of the bulbous bottomed variety. 

Figure 4

1665, Nicolaes Maes (1634 – 1693), The Old Lacemaker, Mauritshuis, The Hague. Apart from this being a much older lacemaker wearing spectacles, the pillow, bobbins and scissors hanging down are the same as in his 1656 painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, see detail in Figure 4 Right. 

1669–1670, Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), The Lacemaker, The Louvre, Paris. A much flatter pillow apparently on an adjustable floor stand, you can see the holes for adjusting the height. Again the maker is in the act of placing a pin. 

Circa 1670, Pieter Cornelisz van Slingelandt (1641-1691) The Lace Maker,  The Royal Collection, London, RCIN 405302. Another truncated domed pillow on a slanted lap stand. 

1672-3  Pieter Cornelisz van Slingelandt (1641-1691),  A Young Lacemaker  Interruptedby a Bird Seller, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden. Again a truncated domed pillow, but the lap stand seems to be integral.

early 18^th century, Jan Josef I Horemans (1682–1759),  Workshop with shoemaker, butcher,   lacemaker. A really weird painting, sold at auction by Hamel Auctions, Munich.

1720s Giacomo Ceruti (1698-1767). Lacemakers. Private Collection. Five women work of round bolster pillows place directly in their laps. Ceruti was an Italian artist and the bobbins here are far less bulbous than those in the paintings from the Low Countries. 

References

 

Anon., 1983. Le pompe, 1559 : patterns for Venetian bobbin lace / facsimile with introduction by Santina M. Levey ; technical section by Patricia C. Payne. Bedford: R. Bean.

M., R., 1561. Nüw Modelbuch allerley gattungen Däntelschnür so diser zyt in hoch Tütschlanden geng und brüchig sind...erstmals in truck verfergket durch R. M.. Zurich: Christoph Froschauer.