There are several examples of Devon Lace in the Collection. The lace edging pictured above, Object No.H3684-2 is one of several in the Collection, maker unknown and dating from 1780, country of origin: England.
Mrs Roger’s Lace School, Early 1800’s, Devon, England
Once upon a time, in the early 19th century, young boys and girls in East Devon would go off to Mrs Roger’s Lace School in Sidmouth, acquiring skills and knowledge to help sustain themselves throughout their lives.
Lace Schools were established up and down the country, often by well-meaning aristocratic women to assist with the financial and moral well-being of working-class families. A distant male relative of mine ended up, in the last years of his life, at a poorhouse in East London, where residents were put to work either spinning wool or making lace, so menial physical work was seen as instrumental in keeping undesirables off the streets.
Girls as young as three years of age might be introduced to the lace pillow. When able to hold bobbins, she might go off to lace school where she might stay until she either went into service or got married.
Boys and girls went to Lace School together. They would learn to make lace there, to supplement their families’ meagre incomes and perhaps also to learn how to count, perhaps even to learn the letters of the alphabet. They would probably only stay for the mornings, since they might have farm duties in the afternoon. In rural areas, away from heavily industrialised towns where child labour began to be outlawed from 1803, the dividing line between “school” and “work” was vague. Below, you can see an example of my efforts to recreate the sort of lace, children would have made at this time.
Fashion in clothes changed in 1820, but sadly some traditional lacemakers of this era did not have the resources to adjust. The style of lace in the photo above, was made till 1835, with almost all lace makers recorded as being destitute by 1840.
Every boy, until he attained the age of fifteen and was competent to work in the fields, attended the lace schools daily. Children in Scottish Lace Schools started young and were turfed out at the age of fourteen.
The Devon girls would learn complicated lace techniques associated with the Point Ground lace style from Continental Europe, which is, said to have been introduced to England, by Flemish refugees seeking asylum two centuries earlier. Devonshire records back this up, and what’s more – reveal that Flemish lacemakers were often the wives of knowledgeable weavers. The weavers and lace makers at this time, are well known to have improved the standard of English textiles enormously! Other lacemakers born outside Devon but very likely influencing the lace of the area, include a later wave of economic refugees from Normandy. These craftswomen had fled to England at the time of the French Revolution, and married the local seafaring men of East Devon.
I’ve learned from re-creating the popular Blow Brain pattern that it is ideally suited to beginner lace makers, that is, those at the lowest level of technical competency.
“Blow brain” refers to “below brain”, an edging commonly used to trim the bonnets or caps of babies. Missing from this pattern are all the tricky bits associated with Point Ground – no catchpins, no reinforced headside, no tricky decorative stitches, no picots on the outer edge. I feel sure this lace would have been made by young boys – because it is so technically easy, and so quick to make. Boys, after all, were eventually destined to go to sea, working on fishing boats, and so they didn’t stick around at Lace School.
Blow Brain would realise the equivalent 6 Euro cents per yard in today’s money. It seemed to have been in greater demand, perhaps because it was popular for baby’s attire, even compared to more complicated lace designs.
Although to us today, the tender age at which these children began to work may seem rather harsh; these children, by learning to make this lace so young, would have started to develop fine motor skills through rhythmic bilateral movements, and to perfect thread tension and therefore balance in all its aspects. Indeed, working with thread might also introduce boys to skills they would later use at a larger scale, working with sails and ropes at sea, or in ship and boat building. It was left to their older sisters to make more money per yard of lace by making more complicated lace.
The men, especially the sailor returned from sea, would again resume the employment of boyhood, in their hours of leisure, and the labourer, seated at his pillow on a summer’s evening would add to his weekly gains. These old lace makers became the sources of local lace history when the first English lace historians came enquiring, around 1865 in the case of Mrs Bury Palliser and later around 1900 in the case of Miss Penderel Moody. Mrs Palliser was informed that “…in her younger days, she saw some twenty-four men lacemakers in her native village of Woodbury, two of whom, named Palmer, were still surviving in 1869, and one of these worked at his pillow as a lad as late as 1820”.
Main Source of Reference: Carol McFadzean, “Devon Trolly Lace: The lost lace of the East Devon Coast”. (Woodbury, Devon, Carol McFadzean, 2004)
Rod Byatt, Feb 2022.