after a day beside the graves of nieuport and dixmude and ypres, the first glimpse of the singing towers of bruges against the evening sky seems an unearthly vision. during four years no one had known that bruges would not perish as her sisters had perished. one must have come direct from the desolation of nieuport, to her pignons and bridges, from the skeleton of les halles of ypres to her h?tel de ville, to estimate her incomparable beauty. since ypres is dead, only bruges and turnhout remain as true lace cities of belgium; ghent, the elegant neighbor of[144] bruges, and herself once a queen in the lace world, has turned to her factories and no longer counts. except turnhout, then, with its famous schools for fine laces, no belgian city to-day challenges the leadership of bruges, and beyond belgium, she has but one great rival—venice.
lace-makers of bruges
this claim to leadership rests on a solid foundation. bruges is of ancient lineage in the lace world; she has preserved unbroken, through at least four centuries, the traditions of that world. there are those even who believe that medi?val bobbin lace had its origin in her territory, and they are at least supported by legend. a pretty story tells of a poor and infirm widow, who with her many children lived in a little street of bruges. the entire family depended only on the work of serena, the eldest, who from dawn till dark turned her wheel. she had long been loved by a [145]neighbor, arnold, the son of a great merchant, and she did not view him with disfavor. but as winter and misery settled again on the poor little hut, and serena saw that all her efforts appeared vain, she vowed to the virgin never to marry unless her family could be rescued from their suffering. then one day when near the minnewater, as she was making sad thoughts, suddenly she saw a light, and from the virgin threads descended toward her, which, skipping the branches, dropt in her lap, where they by chance designed lovely patterns. serena understood this to be the response to her prayer, and she tried at once to reproduce the arabesques in linen thread. she ended by attaching little woods to them and by aiding them with pins. and thus to the great emotion of bruges bobbin-lace was born. and all the rich seigneurs and bourgeois wished to possess it. ease came and serena married arnold, [146]and they had many daughters, all of whom she taught to make lace.
bruges and similar bobbin laces
first column: bruges
middle column: bruges, bruges, bruges, rosaline
third column: rosaline, old flanders, old flanders, duchesse
the often quoted picture in the louvre gallery, painted by hans memling (14— to 1494) and representing the virgin and the infant christ surrounded by gift-bearers, among whom is a rich brugeois wearing a gray costume trimmed with a bobbin-lace edging, certainly indicates that the industry existed in this epoch, and possibly had its center at bruges, then the principal city in flanders and the seat of the court. furthermore, records prove that already at the opening of the 16th century, lace-making was included as a necessary part of the education of women. the edicts of charles v requiring that it should be taught in all the schools and convents, greatly stimulated its development in bruges, as well as throughout the entire flanders and the provinces of hainaut, brabant and antwerp. it became so popular an occupation[147] for women that charles’s successor, philip ii, required that the magistrates of ghent and bruges restrict the number of lace-workers in their cities, in order that the rich might find some women left willing to serve them. another enlightening document shows that in 1544 bruges counted 7,696 poor among her population, and that the department of public charity required of the young women among them that they should cease to walk the streets and should learn the lace industry. there were at that time many lace schools. during the following centuries, bruges maintained her position as a lace center and was able to survive the death-blow the french revolution dealt the industry. for we find, about the middle of the 19th century, the city still counted seventy-nine schools, attended by 2,722 pupils, while in valenciennes, for example, lace-making no longer existed.
there is, then, a rich and ancient past [148]back of the clicking bobbins of the bruges of to-day. after four years of german rule it is still difficult to give accurate statistics, but generally speaking, in this city of 54,000 inhabitants, as many as 5,000 women and girls make lace of some sort. if you question the average woman, she will probably look at you in surprize and say: “how many lace-makers? why, everybody; there is hardly a house in bruges without its cushion and bobbins.” while if you put the same question to such a celebrated lace dealer as m. gillemont de cock, who counts gold and silver medals from many nations, he will be very apt to answer: “madame, before the war i knew of about thirty, now i can not say!” the lace committee at brussels considers 5,000 a fair estimate for bruges and her contributing villages, which is the number given, too, by professor maertens of the normal school.
by the bruges district is meant chiefly [149]bruges, quite the contrary of the usual situation. one hears of the alost region, for instance, and finds that while the villages of the surrounding area count thousands of workers, in the city of alost itself very few are left. however, bruges, too, counts some few outlying villages. madame ryeland, representative during the war of the brussels lace committee, told me that forty communes contributed to her committee, the most important being syssele (where valenciennes is the favorite lace), maldeghem (applications and filet), saint andre (cluny and valenciennes), oostcamp and lophem (valenciennes), saint croix (cluny and other guipures), and saint michele (an unusually beautiful duchesse de bruges).
in bruges itself there are three important convent lace schools, working largely for the shops, but which also execute private commands; the convent [150]school of the apostolines, typical of those where the children learn a little flemish, a little french, much catechism, and for the rest make the laces of the region from morning till evening; the school defoere, and the well-known school josephine. each has between 100 and 200 dentellières, who make the popular torchons and clunys and valenciennes, and also the more difficult binche, with its mesh characterized by the airy “boules de neige,” snow-balls. they make, too, old flanders, which has a particularly strong and elaborate mesh; and of course the duchesse de bruges, or bruges, for which the city is famous. in addition to the convent schools and a few other less important laique schools and some work-rooms, one finds in the hospices, or free homes for the old, another goodly company working together. in their picturesque retreats some 200 old women [151]pass their days making lace, chiefly valenciennes.
there remain the individual households; to the common statement that in each one, some member makes some kind of lace, one might add, at some time during the year. if the children from these homes do not go to the schools to learn, they are taught by their mothers and grandmothers. a favorite christmas gift to children is a cushion and set of bobbins, with which they soon learn to produce simple patterns. for example, madame roose, the daughter of the concierge of the groothuis museum, which houses the marvelous baron liedts collection of old laces, accustomed from childhood to see and hear of these laces, became herself a lace-maker and later a successful dealer and now has five daughters of her own, all of whom she has herself taught to ply their bobbins. the lace committee told me that during the [152]war the clothing committee had difficulty in finding young girls and women who could darn and sew even moderately well; since childhood they had given all their time to lace-making. conscious of the danger in this situation, the lace normal school preaches that until she has learned other necessary things, no young girl should be allowed to spend more than half a day over her cushion.
lace normal school, bruges, beginner’s class
symbolic color pattern on left-hand easel; demonstration bobbins attached to colored threads at right
by far the greater number working at home make torchon, cluny and valenciennes, tho the bruges district is celebrated, too, for rosaline and binche and old flanders, and above all for the duchesse de bruges, once so named because it was thought worthy to adorn a duchess. bruges lace has always been made entirely with bobbins, in separate flowers, or details that are united not by mesh, but by little picot-edged cords or bars. there are many varieties of this familiar lace; between the [153]coarse, much marketed modern bruges, with its well-known roses and trefoils, sometimes scarcely meriting the name of lace, and the bruges of the robe presented in 1901 to queen elizabeth, then the princess elizabeth, there is a deplorable distance. the individual trefoils and arabesques and roses of the coarser kinds are made very quickly on the round cushion, which can be readily turned, and are produced in great quantities in many of the communes of the bruges region, while fortunately in such a village as saint michel one can still see exquisite examples of the finer bruges in the making.
bed cover in duchesse, or brussel’s lace
made with bobbins; executed in flanders by 30 women in three months; design by the lace committee
rather than be introduced to the lace-making of bruges by the younger workers in the schools, or in one of the thousand homes given over to it, i preferred to go first to the place where probably more strangers, especially english and americans, have been initiated into [154]the mysteries of the cushion and its bobbins than anywhere else in the world. there have been other famous béguinages in belgium—congeries of houses maintained by private endowment, for women, who, while they object to taking the vows of the convent, yet wish to live in a kind of partial retreat from the world and under the protection of the church—but none lovelier than this one of bruges, with its sixteenth century buildings of pure flemish architecture, grouped about a wide green court shaded by elm trees. naturally the béguinage has not been a mecca for travelers and artists merely because several of the gentle old ladies in retreat there made beautiful lace; they have come in search of its quaint pignons and doorways, its inner gardens, the bridges that span the surrounding canals where the swans paddle peacefully. and they have been delighted to find included in the picture the white-capped women [155]before their lace cushions, intent (doubtless unconsciously) on perpetuating other beauties, as old as those of the buildings encircling the court, the designs of valenciennes that have been handed down by french and belgian mothers to their children through generations. these ladies of the béguinage may keep their private fortunes and pay for the privileges of the retreat. they are supposed, however, to live austerely; their charming brick houses are white inside—wall-papers (as being too gay) are forbidden—while the floors are covered with a kind of pretty, rude rush carpet. they may not go on journeys, and no man outside, except the clergy, may enter the sacred precincts of the court, the gates of which are closed at 8 o’clock. can one imagine an atmosphere more encouraging to hours spent patiently in lace-making? it is recorded that in the béguinage of ghent, in 1756, there were as many as 5,000 [156]women engaged in making the valenciennes for which that city was famous. but the day of this particular kind of retreat has passed, and even at bruges many of the houses are vacant; when the old die, there are few who wish to take their places. 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.
curiously enough, in this retreat, pervaded by the sadness that inevitably reigns where the old order changes, i found the young and enthusiastic vicaire, professor maertens, assistant director of the new lace normal school of bruges. he [157]lives with his aunt, who is the mother director of the béguinage and called “madame, la grande dame,” tho she is still mademoiselle. the béguinage may in one sense represent the despair of the lace, since what is happening there is happening throughout belgium. but in the person of professor maertens of the normal school, the béguinage represents, too, the hope of the lace. in the plain little room of his charming gothic house, he explained with admirable clarity the necessity which led to the founding of this normal school by the state in 1911, and the system which it has developed. he then arranged that i should “assist” at the réouverture of the school the following morning. there was to be a reopening because, in common with so many schools of belgium, the lace normal had been driven from its quarters by the germans, and tho after their eviction the teachers had persisted in continuing[158] their classes in a convent, where their persecutors forced them to receive two austrian pupils (from whom, however, they concealed much), they were in the true sense to begin again on january 7, 1919. that was fully four weeks after the invader had had to evacuate, for eager as they were to commence, with their best effort, they had not been able before this to prepare three school-rooms and a few smaller ones on the ground floor for use. we are accustomed to the pictures of the territories desolated by the germans, but unless one goes from house to house in the districts supposed to be left unharmed, he can have no conception of the state in which they were left. however, by thursday morning the few rooms on the ground floor had been disinfected and whitewashed, and the lace normal school of belgium re-opened its doors at 8:30 o’clock. poets have described the shining faces of children on [159]their way to school—but after pupils and teachers have been ground under the heel of an implacable oppressor for four years there is still another light in their faces as they reassemble in a free school-room. it was generous of them to allow me to share their first morning.
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. each young woman records the steps of her progress in a series of copy-books so [160]beautiful in their penmanship and their drawing as to recall at once the manuscripts of long ago.
what, then, is the instruction which they receive? since there had never been a system of teaching lace-making in belgium, the directors of the normal school were obliged to develop one, and as it exists to-day, logical, comprehensive, far-seeing, it belongs exclusively to the school of bruges. by the defective method employed before, a pupil was taught to make one kind of lace, then another, and another, but tho she might become proficient in the execution of thirty kinds, she might still be incapable of executing a new thirty-first variety if it were presented to her, because she had not been taught the underlying principles.
rosaline, which closely resembles bruges
details for bruges lace
made with bobbins on round cushion
the bruges directors found, after a long and careful analysis of the processes employed in all known laces, that they [161]depend on but between twenty and thirty major operations, and that, in the final analysis, for the bobbin laces, these reduce themselves always to the simple question, “does the thread pass from left to right, or does it pass from right to left?”
doily set in point de paris in the “animals of the allies” design, executed at turnhout
they chose specific colors, red, purple, green and others, to represent specific movements of the threads, thus establishing a symbolic color system of design which enables the pupil to read a blackboard drawing as he would a written page. and they realized that before the processes are portrayed by lines on the blackboard, they should be executed with the gigantesque bobbins and the colored wool cords.
they then outlined the two years’ work, which they made to include classes in practical lace-making, in design, in commerce and english, in the history of lace-making, and religion. because the two [162]years’ course was already over-crowded they did not attempt to teach the needle points, which, according to them, do not demand a system of instruction in the same sense that the bobbin laces require it. besides, they look upon bobbin lace as more uniquely belgian and as therefore more necessary to develop. dr. rubbens of zele, farther east, plans soon to have a needle lace normal school in operation in that town.
in the first year class, a demonstration of the use of the tools, the winding-wheel, the cushion and bobbins is followed at once by the study of the torchons, which tho they are the commonest known laces, yet in all their varieties employ all the more important lace processes. the torchons once thoroughly mastered, the student has traveled a considerable distance on the lace journey. the study of torchon is succeeded by cluny in all its varieties and cluny is in turn followed [163]by a kind of barbaric russian lace, of baroque design, which is, like the torchons and clunys, made of linen thread, and resembles them closely in other ways. the finer laces, valenciennes, duchesse, flanders, and others are taught only after these first three groups have been mastered.
along with the actual lace-making, the students follow courses in design, where they begin first with simple studies in geometry and in drawing. they then execute geometric designs and adapt them to lace-making. from these studies they proceed to drawing from nature, and to what is more difficult, the adaption of the drawings from nature to lace designs, for it is one thing to create a beautiful flower and leaf arabesque, and quite another thing to draw it so that it may be exprest in thread.
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.
i asked if these teachers could look confidently to finding positions. since only the initial class had graduated before the germans were upon belgium and since that class was composed almost entirely of women sent from the already existing convent schools, who sought to improve their methods, it is as yet impossible to answer this question. but as this is the single training-school in belgium[165] (the brussels school, so capably directed by mme. paulis, being chiefly a school of design) there seems to be every reason to hope that once the country has risen from the chaos into which it has been plunged, the bruges graduates will have no difficulty in securing places. teachers are as yet very poorly paid, but as regards salaries, too, there is reason to hope. the ideal plan for a school would seem to be that it should be in charge of a graduate of the normal school, while a specialist in design from the brussels school should come once a week with her charts and drawings to give particular instruction in that branch. 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. lovely, tranquil city guarding a beauty of long ago, it is probable that bruges will maintain her right to the title “queen of lace cities.” “yes,” m. gillemont de cock would add, seeing the patterns and quality of the valenciennes and the modern old flanders and bruges, and binche, pinned to her cushions to-day, and remembering the exquisite delicate webs of a few decades ago, “une reine, madame, c’est vrai, mais une reine bien malade”—“a queen, madame, it is true, but a very sick queen.” the lace normal and other schools can help greatly to restore her.
