Chats on Household Curios

by Fred. W. Burgess

There is something very remarkable about the manufacture of pillow lace, in that it is carried on in the villages of Buckinghamshire just as it was two or more centuries ago, and the pillow and the bobbins are almost identical in form and design—indeed, the patterns of the lace have changed little, for the workers cling tenaciously to the old designs, Flemish in their characteristics, just as they do to the old bobbins.

Some of these little spools or bobbins have been handed down from mother to daughter as heirlooms, and many of them carry a romantic story, if it were but known. Just as the Welsh lovespoons and the Sunderland glass rolling-pins were given as love tokens, many of these bobbins are the result of patient labour, their decoration having often been the work of days; ivory, bone, wood, and metal being cut and shaped, gilded and stained, in order to provide the favoured one with a bobbin unlike any other and quite distinctive in design. In the making of pillow lace, pins, cleverly placed so as to form the pattern, were inserted into the cushion, and the threads on a dozen or more bobbins deftly twisted in and out and tied round the pins. The glass beads, many of the older ones of odd shapes and colours, hand-made, made the first distinction, and their weight helped to keep the light turned wood bobbins in place. It was the bobbins which were ornamental, and some of the older ones—those made in the eighteenth century—are very decorative, and now much sought after by collectors. Those illustrated in Fig. [74] have been selected from a large collection for their representative types: (A) is the oldest; the ornament is of pewter let into the wood, it has a very small spool; (B) is ivory, the incised parts stained green; (C) is bone, the incised pattern filled in with gold beaten into a thin plate; (D) is also of bone with a band of brass and coloured inlays; (E) walnut wood, turned in the deep grooves are six loose silver rings, some of the heads are of brass gilt; (F) the most modern type, such as may be seen in use in Buckinghamshire to-day, the present revival of the hand-made lace industry being due to the efforts of the North Bucks Lace Association. Of such handwork Cowper wrote:—

"Yon cottager who weaves at her own door,
Pillow and bobbins all her little store:
Content, though mean, and cheerful, if not gay,
Shuffering her threads about the livelong day."

The lace-maker, and the housewife who occupied her leisure moments in lace-making, left behind many collectable curios. The worker of samplers and those advanced in the higher arts of needlecraft had also their little work necessaries. Very clever indeed were the workers of silk-embroidered pictures, and the instruments they used were fine and delicate, different indeed from the coarser needles of the knitter and the meshes of the netter. In later years the workbox became more substantial, and less attention was given to the exterior, for the interior fittings of the workbox became beautiful, and a wealth of art was shown in the carving of the ivory accessories, and the pearl tops of the thread and silk reels and winders and the curious little wax holders. There were cleverly contrived measuring tapes, and beautiful little baskets of ivory and wood, some filled with emery, others serving the purpose of receptacles for pins and needles. From these evolved the needlebooks and the more modern companions.

FIG. 75.—OLD PIN POPPETS AND ANCIENT PINS.

In Fig. [77] are shown several beautiful oddments taken out of an old workbox; they are all made of ivory, carved and fretted in such delicate tracery that it is a wonder that they have survived for a century or more without injury. Ivory work holders, in which ladies rolled their needlework when they went out to tea, were often beautifully carved; they, too, are charming additions to ivory workbox fittings.

Cutlery.

The cutler has contributed to the curios of the workbox. The knives and scissors, bodkins, and stilettos from an old workbox look strangely out of date when compared with those bought in the shops to-day. The chief thing that is so noticeable to the critical observer is the cutting of the steel and the hand ornamentation of those days. Some of the embroidery scissors were engraved all over with fancy patterns, and there are some remarkably quaint button-hole scissors, on which the owner's name or initials were often engraved.