Lace of the Month: Bucks – January 2011

A striking floral Buckinghamshire design, 5″ wide. How does one tell Bucks point ground lace from all the other CTTT laces? Here are a few clues mentioned in literature, although drawing generalities too broadly can be dangerous. Local variations are often found.
1.  Mesh angle – The mesh in Bucks is generally worked within a range of angles from 50 to 72 degrees, compared to 45 degrees for many other point ground laces.  Good luck in trying to measure the angle – but it does give the mesh a slightly flattened appearance. It also makes the production of square corners difficult.
2.  The gimp clue – Bucks is typically worked with the footside to the right. Position the lace with the footside on the right and look at the gimps where they are cut after working. Any remaining very short tails of the gimps should be positioned around the bottoms of the motifs, and should lie on top of the lace surface plane (assuming they extend far enough to overlap with some downstream work).
3.  Use of the catch pin – How the weaver pair leaves a motif, connects with the mesh, and re-enters the motif, or how they form the outer footside edge varies a lot among different point ground laces. In Bucks the worker pair works through the passives/gimp, then twists 3 times, and makes a whole stitch with the adjacent pair. The returning weaver pair makes 3 twists before going back through the gimp/passives. The pin is placed to the side of the whole stitch – it does not split pairs.
4. But there is an even better way – find an original, documented pricking. My thanks to Diana Smith for thinking back many years to a visit that she and a friend made to the Aylesbury Museum to see their extensive pattern collection. She actually remembered this pattern! Here it is, from the Buckinghamshire County Museum collections. It was part of the large collection of Miss M. E. Burrowes of Maids Morton, first secretary to the North Bucks Lace Association, acquired by the Museum in 1936.

Obviously my example does not have the free space at the top, but otherwise it is a very close copy. Perhaps someone can come up with a name for this pattern. A similar pricking was apparently sold on Ebay a while ago.

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1 Response to Lace of the Month: Bucks – January 2011

  1. lacenews's avatar lacenews says:

    Diana Smith wrote a note today saying that the name of this pattern might be ‘The Garland’.

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