Ebook The Honiton Lace Book

As the taste for lace, the most graceful and beautiful of all feminine adornments, has increased so much lately, so also the pretty art of making it has become widely spread among ladies; but numbers have hitherto been deterred from attempting pillow-lace from the want of instructions, and also from the difficulty (out of the lace districts) of procuring pillows and bobbins. As I have been a lace-worker for many years, I thought it lay within my power to obviate the first difficulty by bringing out a series of instructions for Honiton lace-making; and the second lessens naturally as the ardour for learning increases, since supply will always follow demand. The Devonshire, or as it is commonly called, the Honiton, lace, is the most beautiful and valuable Of the English laces; and it is at the same time the most interesting to make, and the easiest for an amateur to bring to perfection, for whereas the edging laces require a distinct learning for each pattern, and continue in one dull routine, the lace maker, who has once mastered the six stitches of which Honiton is composed, can work out the most abstruse design with perfect ease, and vary it to suit her own fancy. The old Honiton was copied from the Flemish, and they are so much alike that even an expert finds it now difficult to pronounce decisively which is which; but Honiton has long acquired a distinctive character of its own, and it has the rare merit of not being imitable by machinery, at all events at present so that even the grosser male intelligence, which is apt to look upon all laces whether hand or machine made as very much the cannot possibly take Honiton for anything but real. The qualities requisite for learning this lace are delicacy of touch, fairly good eyesight, patience and perseverance, which two last qualities are essential to success in every pursuit whatever.