Another old-time craft is perchance on the wane, but not yet quite to extinction, for pillow lace-making sporadically survives, though mainly amongst those of ripened years. It is a survival of the Bucks, Beds, and East Northants noted lace industry, and some of the designs are daintily beautiful. A design in soft colours, very charming, was being worked by a lady of over four score years of age, in this Rushden parish, when the writer recently called upon her, so that the art lives, and it is to be hoped that it will continue to be handed down, even yet, to generations yet unborn. But the water flasks that concentrated the candle light upon the lace, at the working spot, sometimes to the number of four set round one candle, in a frame, for the lighting of four workers’ lace pillows, are now a thing of the past. As a collector's hobby, bobbins are sought after, especially those with mottos or names, or perchance bearing some cryptic device that needs ingenuity to decipher. The wooden bobbins are usually of later date than the much-sought-after bone varieties. The possible gem in a bobbin-hobbyist's collection will be that bobbin which has a smaller bobbin carved inside the larger one. Such bobbins as those here spoken of are now becoming scarce on lace-making pillows as they have been so much sought after and secured by the persistent collector. There need be no immediate fear, though, that pillow-lace making will soon become a lost art in Rushden, for a school exists to teach it, though the scholars are not numerous. Here young students delight in learning to excel in making the daintiest designs on their bobbin-hung pillows—a fabric of threads, which is lace. |
