Necessity has taught these simple people not only to live sparingly and to exercise self-denial, but it has given them a wonderful cleverness and readiness in taking up any new industry.
Just as in great towns the fashions are continually changing, so the demands of the markets of the world create new trades, and give a variety to the occupations of even these remote dwellers of the mountains. In the very poor huts, with shingle roofs scattered about in out-of-the-way corners of this mountain district, you would scarcely expect to see the inhabitants working a thousand various and tasteful patterns of glistening, sparkling pearl articles, which, when finished, go forth out of those poor huts to adorn the dresses of grand ladies in Berlin, Paris, and London; yet this is the fact.
In like manner and in like houses you may see the inhabitants busy with the beautiful art-industry of pillow lace-making, which brings us to the interesting fact recorded in the chronicles of Annaberg—interesting to us because it refers to woman and woman’s work.
The middle of the sixteenth century was a hard time for the people of the Erz Mountains. Yearly the population increased, and yearly the means of support grew less; for the productiveness of the mines, which up to that time had been great, fell off to such an extent that even the new tin industry failed to make up the loss.
It was just when the need was greatest that the good Frau Barbara Uttman, a rich patrician lady of Annaberg, came to the rescue of the inhabitants by teaching the poor women and girls[4] an entirely new industry—one that had never been known in Germany. It was the rare art of making exquisitely soft and costly texture with the hand by means of dexterously intertwining and knotting single threads of silk or cotton; in fact, to make what is known as bobbin or pillow lace.
