Charlotte Kellogg

“ I can not describe my emotion on going about in those little shattered villages just behind the lines, where the women have insisted on remaining, and where day by day, and year after year, they have sat calmly before their cushions making lace, while the shells burst before and behind them. ”

“ The cities remain the logical centers for the normal and training-schools, for assembling, and display, and sale; but the age-old patience of the lace-maker is born of a certain ignorance and isolation. This does not mean that the industry may not persist still on the fringes of some of the [51] larger cities, or flourish in nearby villages—it does; and in three conspicuous instances, until the war, it remained the dominating activity of a city. Bruges, Ypres, and Turnhout, could truly be called “lace cities.” Now there are but two; for Ypres, the pearl of Flanders, is gone. ”

“ Certain workers make the flowers, and others the connecting mesh. If one can imagine the softness of a kind of sublimated or diaphanous velvet, added to the fragility of an airy and cobwebby lace, one may have some idea of the effect of good Point d’Angleterre. And if one would possess a collar or a flounce, one should buy it quickly, for Point d’Angleterre is going the way of the other difficult and exquisite points. Such villages as Kerxken, Liedekerke, Destelbergen (near Ghent) , and those of the Alost region still make occasional pieces. ”

“ They had little or no conception of the rich art world of which their flowered flounces were a part, and no feeling at all of their power to influence that world by interpreting a design for themselves, or by correcting or improving it, or even perhaps by creating a new one. Not that all workers should become designers, or even piqueuses—progress depends, as it does in other industries, on specialization; but at least trained workers will enjoy the freedom to choose and the feeling of independence that comes from a thorough knowledge of their métier. ”

“ And it is only because those few who remain preserve the best traditions of the lace that they count in the lace-world of to-day; the quantity produced is negligible. Nevertheless, I was delighted that my first knowledge of Bruges lace should come through the few wide Valenciennes flounces of exquisite flower and vine pattern and firm and even workmanship that I found still pinned to the cushions of the Béguinage. ”

“ From Venice, the secrets of the art traveled easily in several directions, and probably about the close of the 15th century by way of the thriving port of Antwerp, to the industrious and beauty-loving Flanders, where the seed fell on most fertile soil. Flanders possest a multitude of workers already skilled in an allied art, that of weaving, and the necessary lace material in her valley of the Lys, the finest flax region of the world. Valenciennes, Lille, Malines, Ghent, Bruges, turned to lace-making with a veritable passion ”

“ The lace industry can not be captured and subjected to cold analysis and tabulation. It must be studied differently from other industries that can be localized. As in learning to know the garden flowers of a country, one must go from doorstep to doorstep, so if one wishes to understand lace, one should become familiar with its milieu, the family and community life from which it springs. In a sense, then, these little journeys to lace districts which are the subjects of my chapters, may suggest more about what lace really is than a more technical and formidable volume. ”

“ As I crossed the moat and passed under the archway, I saw the spot where the last Allied shell exploded, killing nineteen Germans, while the family and the 200 villagers in the cellars, where they had been for two weeks, escaped unharmed. In fact, in all the Deynze country I was in the midst of the destruction accompanying the final push of the liberating army, and was vividly reminded of what would have happened to the rest of Belgium had the armistice been further delayed. ”

“ The teachers’ course covers two years. In order to insure careful individual training the directors prefer to have no more than eight or ten earnest students in each year’s class; they prefer, too, that these shall not have been lace-makers before entering, and that they be between sixteen and thirty years of age. There are, then, two class-rooms, light and airy, and equipped with blackboards and charts, and the all-important large demonstration cushion with its gigantesque bobbins attached to heavy colored wool threads to aid the eye and brain. ”

“ During the long and solitary winters, when work in the fields is impossible, thousands of women and girls and little children turn to their lace cushions, and dreary rooms are enlivened by the music of the flying bobbins. If the lace is Needle Point, and lacks the accompanying click-clack of the shifting fuseaux, it nevertheless gives purpose and value to the otherwise almost [50] unsupportable winter days. ”

“ The important classes in commerce and English and those in history and religion [164] run parallel with the studies in lace-making and design.
Of great value to these future teachers of Belgium is the model practise school across the court from the main rooms, where at four o’clock each day the poorer children of the neighborhood come to be taught. Each has her cushion and bobbins and pins and thread furnished by the Normal, and enjoys all the advantages offered by its excellent system; while the coming teachers find here the opportunity to perfect their methods. ”

“ While the girls were pulling their chairs closer to the bottles I talked with the teachers about the place of Point de Paris in the lace world. There is no fine lace, they told me, which is so much in demand to-day as Point de Paris, for no lace so successfully combines durability and beauty. It is more used for dainty lingerie than any other variety. Paris buyers seem never to be able to secure [70] sufficient Point de Paris, which tho it was christened by that city and was largely produced there during the 17th century, must now be supplied by Belgium. ”

“ The English and Irish spinneries lead the world; they produce most of its lace thread. One of them; the Coates firm of Paisley, has established in Belgium branches in which Belgian capital is interested,—at Gent are the filteries, which prepare thread for weaving, and at Alost and Ninove are the filatures or spinneries which turn out the finished sewing and embroidery thread. The cottons and linens of these mills are too coarse for the delicate laces; however, during a single war year, the Brussels Committee was happy to be able to buy from Alost as much as 600,000 francs worth of thread. ”

“ However, one can always reply truthfully, that the women of the “Friends of the Lace” will work unceasingly not only to hold wages where they are, but to advance them.
I turned from this delicate lace to the granddaughter’s cushion—she was making guipure de Cluny, of coarse linen thread. Marie’s pattern happened to be a good one and she was working swiftly and evenly, sure of a fair day’s wage. ”

“ One of the great evils of the past has been the absence of training-schools, and the consequent lack of piqueuses; in each generation there have been but a few good ones, who have, in a sense, held the lace industry in their hands. Before the war, Ypres had two famous pique [56] uses, to whom patterns were sent from an entire region; and in the town of Turnhout to-day, with its thousands of workers, tho there are several less experienced piqueuses, there is but one woman to whom the finest and most complicated drawings can be entrusted for interpretation. ”

“ The soul of Belgium received a grievous wound, but the women of Belgium are staunching the flow, sustaining and leading this stricken nation to greater strength and greater life. We of the Relief have been proud of the privilege to place the tools in the hands of these women and have watched their skilful use and their improvement in method with hourly admiration.... ”

“ It seems, indeed, at times that lace was invented to defeat the statistician, for he no sooner reaches a conclusion than it proves inexact; a factory rises near a certain river and the lace women desert their cushions to accept its better wages; in a village [44] long devoted to Needle Point, young girls discover that the bobbin-made Clunys pay better, or they marry and make no lace at all until their children are partly grown; poor crops and resulting misery may send others who have not for some time been listed as workers back to their cushions. ”

“ Since lace had been the particular pride of the aristocrat, the Revolution made it a crime to appear in it. In such one-time famous centers as Valenciennes and Lille, the bobbins ceased, tho the industry of that region sought refuge farther west, in Bailleul,—in Bailleul, dust and ashes to-day! Fortunately in Belgium, lace-making generally survived the crisis of the Revolution, tho it has suffered from succeeding disastrous influences. ”

“ The women of the Lace Committee [76] believe there is no future work more important than that of improving the 200 and more lace schools of their country. In the lace normal school at Bruges, in the national school of design at Brussels, the excellent Needle Point school at Zele, and in such schools as this one at Turnhout, they see the hope of the lace art; they urge that the Government increase its subsidies to these and other deserving institutions. Education and ever better education of the lace-woman is their watchword. ”

“ For, since despite the many schools and work-rooms, the great majority of women still work at home, lace-making is peculiarly sensitive to every change in family and community life. We may say, however, that despite constantly shifting conditions, Western Flanders forms a great bobbin-lace area, unquestionably the most important in the world to-day, while Eastern Flanders has been for centuries and still is, famous for its needle points. ”

“ At first only Sœur Robertine’s twinkling, keen gray eyes answered, as she slowly threw off her long black cape and from beneath other garments began unwinding meter upon meter of lovely white lace, till the billowy lengths covered all the table. [176] “It was very simple—I had to come. For weeks our thread has been exhausted; the women are suffering for need of their earnings. I found a way, and I’ll find a way back, never fear; we’ll all return safely to Kerxken—the thread and the money and I—even tho we may have to slip in under the very nose of the Boche!” ”

“ We need, above all, a school which will offer along with its courses in practical lace-making, training in design. During the war we had many beautiful designs from the Committee, but each time we were cut off from them we realized our helplessness. In one of the villages the patterns are drawn by a furniture-maker. One reason for the wretched condition of the workers before the war was their entire dependence on the particular lace dealer who furnished them their patterns and their thread, and who, of course, protected his models by copyright. ”

“ The vital decision as to the part lace-making should have in the curriculum of the communal or free public schools is still in abeyance.
Since factories have killed the lace industry in every other city in Belgium except Bruges and Turnhout, people often [166] ask if it can persist much longer in Bruges. There seems to be good ground to believe it will. Under the Germans the port of Zeebrugge acquired a momentary prominence, but with Antwerp so near, there seems little chance that it will ever become important, or that Bruges herself may look forward to any large industrial development. ”

“ From there it returns to Belgium in the form of linen thread for fine laces, quite a different variety, of course, from that employed in sewing. Lace thread, both cotton and linen, may be used for sewing, but never sewing-thread for good lace. An outsider can scarcely estimate the importance of the quality of the thread to the lace-maker. Of two skeins bearing the same number, one may be supple and easily led, while the other is brittle and wayward. We hear many stories of how women used to spend their lives in damp cellars, in order to keep their thread moist and soft. ”

“ The Queen’s Cloth Erembodeghem is a commune of about 6,000 inhabitants, tho the pretty winding street by which we entered, with the picturesque, red-tiled houses clustered irregularly along both sides of it, suggests a smaller village. Nearly all the women in this town, as in Kerxken, make lace, and again it is chiefly Needle Point and Venise. The convent, which furnishes the customary directing and stimulating center, has no superior in the country for its particular laces, unless one grants preference to its own mother house at Opbrakel. ”

“ In the second group of guipures are those made in separate small bits, or details, which are afterward joined to make the flounce or piece, the most common of these varieties being Flanders and Duchesse. In the schools of Thielt and Wynghene all the kinds are taught. Because they are made of coarser thread and therefore more quickly than such laces as Valenciennes or Needle Point, [100] are less taxing to the eyes, and pay better, these guipures have gained ground in almost every lace center in Belgium, and often threaten the very existence of the finer laces. ”

“ Belgian Home of Chantilly The Committee was discouraging about Grammont. When I told Madame de Beughem of my plan to go there to see Chantilly lace in the making, she answered, “But that will be a futile journey; the women have had practically no black or white silk thread since the war, and the few who were still working in 1914 will have stopt; that one-time important branch of the industry has almost ceased to exist.” ”

“ But despite all obstacles and perils, the women persisted, and continually the precious skeins of thread, with their message of “Carry On” were flung out from Brussels to the farthermost corners of the land, binding all together in a firm and beautiful web of hope and confidence. For the enemy was right in suspecting the Committee of a purpose deeper than that of merely trying to save women from the soup-line ”

“ Then came the war—and the devastation of entire lace regions, like that of Bailleul in France, and of Ypres in Belgium. It is true that many of the refugee lace-women have been employed and encouraged during the four years, by certain committees in France and free Belgium. And in occupied Belgium, the unceasing efforts of the Brussels Lace Committee have borne rich fruit. Whether the higher [37] standards of lace design and technique, and the improved condition of the lace workers—better education, shorter hours, higher pay—will be maintained under post-war conditions is yet to be proved. ”

“ But there is much more beautiful lace than either Point de Paris or Point de Lille taught in the Turnhout school. The girls pass from the Lille room to Malines, known in the city of its birth as the “spider-web of Malines.” Nothing could be more airy and exquisite than its delicate hexagonal mesh, much more difficult to make than either of the preceding varieties [74] because it must be worked without the aid of pins, with only the eye to guide in securing the requisite uniformity and exactness. No lace demands greater skill or greater patience ”

“ Naturally, the learner can not yet make what is called good lace, and unfortunately her parents are often only too content to have her bring home 10 cents a day. The older, more experienced girls, were earning from one to two francs a day, or from 20 to 40 cents, that is, on a summer’s day or full day.
Monsieur told me later that in his region [113] if the wage of the good worker can be raised to 50 cents per day, she will be able to live, and will be content to remain at home before her lace cushion rather than to go to the shoe and cotton factories of Thielt. ”

“ Finally, a needle-worker, again, as is always the case in Point d’Angleterre, had spun the clear web between the flowers, uniting them all into the finished flounce. Stéphanie pointed to a single detail. “It took me five days to make that tiny bouquet, and the needle-worker one and a half days more to add the open stitches.” ”

“ The piqueuse must understand the design and its practical execution, must interpret the picture to the worker in terms of pin-pricks marking the progress of her thread. A good piqueuse knows immediately, on looking at a drawing, whether it is a true lace design, or must be adapted, and also in which kind of lace it can be best exprest. As she shifts a pin-prick less than a hair’s width to the left or to the right she varies appreciably the resulting mesh or flower. ”