Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

THE MAKING OF LACE. 239 much to stimulate the industry. County Council classes are also now held in various places—some for grown-up people and others for children, as the earlier they learn the more proficient are they likely to become. A different system prevails in Ireland. Pillows are here no longer needed ; the needle takes the place of the bobbin, and much of the work will be found to resemble embroidery. The modern development of the industry is to be traced back to the famines of fifty years ago, when the nuns of the Presentation home in the cottages as well as in the convents. We may especially note the tam- bour lace of Limerick, which is so called because the frame on which it is worked resembles a drum-head or tambourine. On this is stretched a piece of Nottingham net, and thread is drawn by a hooked, or tambour, needle through the meshes accord- ing to a design placed before the worker. Nothing comes amiss to the Irish lace-maker —Venetian point, Italian reticella work, Honiton pillow, and other specialities are all DRAUGHTSMEN AT WORK DESIGNING LACE CURTAINS. Convent at Youghal, a little to the east of Cork and Queenstown, selected girls with a taste for fine needlework, and taught them to utilise their talent in lace-making. This district produces the famous “ Irish point,” and tourists from Glengariff to Killarney are often allowed to see the girls at work in the more public rooms of the convent, their fingers busy with the needle as if for dear life. The patterns are drawn out by the nuns in their private compartments and passed on to workers, numbering some fifty or sixty, under the charge of a sister of the convent. Though seemingly so light, the lace made by them possesses very great durability, and it is almost impossible to rip open the stitches. Somewhat similar is the “ rose point ” of the convents of County Fermanagh, and many other districts of Ireland have their own particular variety, the work being done at eagerly seized by the nuns to Suggest to them new designs and ways of working. From these rural and thinly populated districts, the lovely shores of Lough Erne, the romantic combes of Devonshire, and the quaint hamlets of the home counties, we turn to the busy city of Nottingham, the birthplace and still the principal centre of machine-made lace. The process of manu- facture is one of the most intricate and complicated among Britain’s industries, and the machines used are standing witnesses to the ingenuity of man. According to Dr. Ure, one of the most competent of authorities, they probably surpass,in ingenious mechanism, those in use in any other industry. He declared a bobbin-net frame to be as much beyond the most curious chronometer as that is beyond a roasting-jack. Despite its complications, however, the lace machine is really only a development of Lee’s stocking-