Bobbin Lace

bobbin lace, handmade lace important in fashion from the 16th to the early 20th century. Bobbin laces are made by using a “pricking,” a pattern drawn on parchment or card that is attached to a padded support, the pillow or cushion. An even number of threads (from 8 to more than 1,000) are looped over pins arranged at the top of the pattern. Each thread is wound at its lower end around the neck of an elongated spool, or bobbin. Bobbins serve several purposes: their weight provides a tension that makes manipulation of the threads easier; they act as thread reserves; and they help to keep the thread clean by providing a surface other than the thread that can be touched frequently. In the creation of bobbin lace, each hand holds one of a pair of bobbins. The threads are crossed over or twisted around each other to produce solid areas of either linen-stitch (which resembles woven fabric) or half-stitch (a more open stitch), areas of decorative filling stitches, and a background (ground) of net or bars linking the motifs together.

The technique may have developed from straight-sided braids converted to openwork or from the plaiting or knotting of the warp-ends of woven fabrics. The first written mention of bobbin laces dates from 1536 (in the introduction to the Zürich pattern book, printed in 1561) and places their origin in Venice. Their first use in fashion dates from the end of the 16th century, when they imitated and began to compete with the needle lace reticella, already in use for ruffs and other accessories.

Two main techniques linked to different geographical areas can be distinguished: non-continuous-thread, in which the design motifs are made first and then joined together by attaching threads around them to work the ground (mainly Brussels, Honiton, and Milanese laces), and continuous-thread, where the same threads work across the lace moving from ground to motif to ground in continuity. Both techniques appear in pattern books of the late 16th century.

The very first bobbins are likely to have been animal limb bones—for example, the legs of rabbits or chickens—but they cannot have been satisfactory, since good work of even tension requires the bobbins to be of equal weight. Specially made bone bobbins followed, and then wooden ones. Some bobbins, perhaps more for novelty than function, were made of substances such as glass or metal and ornamented with beads and other attachments. They have become popular with collectors of needlework tools.