LACE FROM INDIA

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 48, Issue 2887, 31 March 1939, Page 2

LACE FROM INDIA

A GROWING INDUSTRY GANDHI IMPROVES THREAD Gandhi’s emphasis on India’s need for village industries has thrown light upon a little-known industry amongst women villagers in Travancore who a hundred and twenty years ago were taught to make hand lace by an English woman missionary, states the Manchester Guardian. The present director of the industry has lately been in this country interesting groups of w'omen in Britain in many beautiful specimens of hand-madu lace. The original teacher came from Buckinghamshire and taught patterns she had seen worked in cottages in her own county.

The industry has grown remarkably. The six hundred women at present doing hand-made lace in Trvancore live mainly in fifty-six villages round the town of Nagercoil, and are supervised by the women’s staff of the London Mission. The women work at home, often outside their cottage doors, sitting on low stools with the lace bobbins spread over their laps.' They are visited regularly so that the pattern can be examined and to give a chance to new women in the village to start on learners’ pieces of lace.

Most of the women are quick at picking up a new pattern or in carrying out a special order to suit a dress, but there are a large number of older women who find it difficult to do anything else than straightforward yard lace for which there is not a great sale at present. The women and homes dependent on yard lace have been badly hit. But for the individual lace worker there is still plenty of work. One woman missionary who cuts garments on which lace insertions are to be made estimates that every half-hour’s work on her part means a whole month’s lace-making for a woman.

The industry is the mainstay of many villages in the Nagercoil district, especially during a bad agricultural season. In one bad season recently there were thirty families in one village which had no other income except that of the women lace-mak-ers. A worker may earn a minimum of ten shillings a month, and payment is made immediately on delivery of the completed lace in Nagercoil. Each Thursday the women bring their lace, many of them walking ten to fourteen miles. 'Some of them work separately on large and complicated patterns which have to be joined together, and all the pieces have to be inspected and carefully washed. The thread used in the lace-making has for many years come from Lancashire. The women find they can produce a smoother, more even pattern with a machine-spun yarn than with any other yarn. But under the influence of the nationalist movement '“khaddar” thread has begun to be used in order to supply articles in hand-spun yarn to those Indians who will not wear’ or use’ articles made of. other yarns. The women find that the ‘'‘khaddar” thread breaks more often, and that a piece of lace made of it takes twice as long to make, besides not looking so attractive. This was pointed out to Mahatma Gandhi, and he has helped to provide the women with a stronger, neater thread. HANDY MEASURES If your weights are out of action, remember the following simple measures: 1 cup means an average teacup; 11 cups equal 1 pint; 2S cups equal 1 pint; 9 or 10 eggs equal lib.; 21 cups butter equal 11b.; 1 heaped tablespoon butter equals 1 oz.; 1 heaped tablespoon castor sugar equals 1 oz.; 1 cup currants, raisins or sult’anas equals 60z.; 4 cups flour equal lib.; 2 heaped tablespoons flour equal 1 oz.; 2i cups castor sugar equal 11b.