TORCHON LACE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 290, 1 September 1908, Page 5

TORCHON LACE.

"Can you understand how the women in. Belgium, who work in tho fields all summer, make that laco during tho winter months?" asked a man, who is an authority on laces, as he showed "Dominica" a book of samples of. very finely worked torchoii .lacc. Then ho went on to tell how .at present only a very few .of .these real torchon edgings can bo accurately imitated by. machinery; when the secret of copying all of them has been discovered; the trado in hand-mado torchon will die'out, but that 'may not be for somo years. Practically ail the real .torchon wo see is made by tho; peasant women of Belgium in tho winter time,' and thoso same fingers, which have "during tho summer months been accustomed to tho roughest outdoor work, during the. long winter weavo over tho pillow the, delicate tracery in tho one pattern that they know. ; ■ . Ono thinks of hand-wrought laco as being always more artistic than anything' that can be made on a machine, .remembering that tho heart of tho individual 'is apt to bo put into what is entirely her own:creation, but that is not the case with these laces. There is no room for artistic feeling here, and tho manufacture of these pretty. ; edgings . mu§t bo only a variation of the drudgery that falls to tho lot of the women. Each of them has been taught how to mako laco of one design,; and at that she has worked all. her life/ She never invents a- new design, or varies the old, and when tho agent goes to her ho ; Dimply asks hor to mako this year so many hundred-yards of the special design ho has been accustomed to get from her. Thoro aro no manufactories for this sort of laco; everything is dono in tho cottage homo of the workers. Tho agent and the' wholosalo dealers are simply tho collectors of the work of many homos. They supply tho thread , that is used, and scud for tho finished laco. - In Nottingham, on tho other hand, where the laco is mado by machinery, there is much more soopo for artistic improvement. Thero they have their own designors, who; ,veaT by year turn out patterns that, while following on . tho old linos and keeping strictly to the 'torchon style, ;ito yet fi'felier and moro beautiful than tho designs of termor years.