BELGIAN LACE MESHES (Plate II)
After Pierre Verhagen in “La Dentelle Belge”
Meshes, 8 to 12, made with bobbins: 8, Binche; 9, Malines; 10, Point de Lille, made for France; 11, Point de Lille, destined for Holland; 12, Gauze Point, made with needle, used in Point d’Angleterre; 13, Brussels machine-made net; 14, Ordinary machine-made net.
After its soaking and cleansing, the linen fiber starts again on its journey, this time to the various countries where it is to be made into thread and woven into tissues. Much goes to England and to Ireland, to such firms as Beth and Cox. 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. I have been told several times, for instance, that a certain piece of lace had been made below ground, because only there was its marvelous technique possible. Whatever the degree of truth or legend in these assertions, it is known that the rarest laces require certain atmospheric conditions, and are, above all, dependent on a superior fineness and pliability of the thread.
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. By some miracle, the Ghent filteries escaped the practically universal ruin visited on mills and factories, and should be operating before peace is signed, but for the spinneries of Alost and Ninove, the future is still dark.
During two years the enemy, feeling they might one day run the mills where they stood, left them intact, tho they requisitioned their stocks of thread. Then as they saw they might not perhaps be able to continue their beneficent occupation of Belgium, even if they won the war, they began to remove the mill machinery to Germany. They were especially ruthless when the mills were known to be of English or French ownership. They stole the secrets of the factories and finally they deported the workmen. These men are scattered everywhere. Even if the machines of the factories were not completely destroyed it would be impossible under a considerable time to reassemble the skilled workmen essential to the spinning industry. The Germans will undoubtedly try to capture the trade, and to market their goods, if they must, through such neutral countries as Denmark and Switzerland.
When I arrived at Courtrai, Monsieur and his family were just moving back into the house from which they had been ejected. They apologized for the room they so hospitably offered me, in which the original bed had been replaced by an iron one they recognized as having belonged to an English family of Courtrai. The brass trimmings were gone, and the mattress had of course been removed, but Madame had been able to find one stuffed with sea-moss for me. The curtains were slashed, blocks of wood nailed to the once handsome walls, there were no lights, no metal knobs or fixtures of any kind, no service wires left. Below, the cellar had been almost filled with concrete to provide the conqueror a safe refuge during danger periods. It requires a special kind of courage to take up life again in a place like this, but these good people said: “We can not complain, we are so much better off than others, and at least we have saved our health; with that we can be sure of being able to build again what they have destroyed.”