in the court in front of the big brick convent building with its odd little steeple, two sisters, skirts tucked up, and pails swung over their shoulders, chinese fashion, were about to begin the saturday scrubbing. madame kefer-mali and i were on our way to liedekerke, the principal remaining lace center in brabant, and had stopt in this less important village of heckelgem for a look at the convent school opened nine years ago.
in the village itself we had found about 150 of the 2,000 inhabitants busy with [216]their needles, for this is distinctly a needle-lace commune, producing a fairly good quality of venise. which means that there are as yet no local mills, and tho an adjacent match factory has already attracted a number of heckelgem girls, most of the women are still content to spend their time making venise, which they take to the convent, to be sold there to brussels or other agents.
the convent class-rooms were warm and cheery; fern baskets hung from the ceilings and every window was gay with potted plants. practically all the village children were gathered inside, and since it was 11 o’clock when we arrived, were happily engaged in drinking their daily comité national cup of cocoa and in eating the good white biscuit that goes with it. saturday morning is mending time and on the girls’ desks i saw more of those amazing patchwork socks and stockings, the result of three or four years’ weekly attempts to hold them together.
needle-point scarf expressing gratitude of belgium to holland, presented to h.m. queen wilhelmina
executed by 30 workers in eight months
[217]
in the advanced lace class-room, thirty girls, between thirteen and sixteen, were working with cotton thread on venise insertions and on details for larger pieces. they had come at 8 o’clock that morning, a more humane beginning hour than most schools allow, and would remain as long as there was daylight—looping and weaving with a needle and single thread. i stopt beside rosalie, who was making a pretty flower detail for a cushion cover. she had begun it five days before and hoped to finish, and receive the seven francs she was allowed for it, that night.
on the table was a pile of chairbacks in venise, with figure centers and surrounding garlands of flowers all connected by the bars characterizing this lace—an order for a brussels dealer, who had recently offered fifty-two francs each [218]for them. the sisters were excited and happy over this new price, which was considerably more than anything heckelgem has hitherto been able to command, one and a half francs a day having been the average wage of the best workers.
a little farther to the south and still in brabant, tho it lies near the flanders border, is the much better known convent of liedekerke, which boasts an unbroken record of sixty years of lace-making, and which before the war received a yearly subsidy of 800 francs from the “amies de la dentelle.” as we walked beside the pretty orchard and vegetable garden, bright with purple cabbages, that form the entrance court, toward the rather impressive red-brick buildings, again with their odd miniature steeple, i saw the great arms of a dutch windmill turning lazily somewhere in the rear. and nearer the door, off at the left in a side court, a war-kitchen with tiled floor [219]and uncertain roof, where hundreds of the village poor still were coming for their daily pint of soup. of the 4,000 inhabitants as many as 2,900 were forced on to the soup-line during the occupation.
this, then, was one of the important and successful convent schools of belgium; but in january, 1919, it was in a much sadder plight than the little neighboring school at heckelgem. there was no coal, not a class was in session, not a child at work with her bobbins. at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, on monday, october 28, when there were between 800 and 900 children, among them 100 lace-workers, gathered in the various class-rooms, german officers had appeared to announce that by 7 o’clock the rooms must be cleared of both teachers and children. i had already had many demonstrations of what taking possession of school-rooms meant. it was not necessary that the sisters should lead me from [220]room to room, pointing out this or that ruined wall, or casement torn away, or vacant space where the benches or chairs burned as firewood, once stood; but i followed them about for their own sakes. there was at least a kind of comfort in being able to furnish proof of these outrages to somebody.
one small room was undisturbed, but it was a sadder room than any of the others. the primary lace-class had occupied it, and several rows of little girls were learning to make their first flowers and leaves when the enemy drove them out. the baby chairs and the cushions were just as they left them, tho thick dust dulled the blue of the linen covers and the tiny unfinished white roses and tendrils held by the rusty pins. one would have liked to bring the enemy mothers into this room with its baby chairs, and its dust-covered unfinished roses.
in the large adjoining hall sister m. [221]kindly came to work at a table, on application, one of the laces for which liedekerke has been especially distinguished. before the english invention, early in 1800, of machine-made tulle, which had an incalculable influence on the development of the lace-industry, all meshes had to be made either with the needle or with bobbins. the factory substitute for these difficult processes won instant favor, and with the general public the more swiftly made and cheaper tulle application, supplanted the exquisite point d’angleterre, which it imitated. liedekerke, for example, had begun its lace career with point d’angleterre, and in changing later to application, was merely responding to popular demand. its sixty years of lace-history reads: point d’angleterre, application, rosaline.
these things madame kefer-mali explained, as sister m. was placing her square of blue paper on the linen of the [222]table cushion, and then the bobbin-made bouquet, wrong side up on the blue square, pinning it carefully and smoothly through the paper to the cushion. over this she stretched her scarf length of tulle. i was surprized at the time and painstaking effort she gave to these simple operations, until i saw later the effect of the slightest carelessness on the finished flounce. almost any clever needlewoman can join a flower to a piece of tulle—but only an artist can produce a beautiful scarf or veil in application. once the bouquet was properly placed and pinned, sister m. began to sew, lifting the tulle lightly with each stitch, and smoothly attaching all the edges, for this bouquet was being appliquéd on the body of the scarf. had it formed the border one edge would have remained free.
liedekerke convent, to which some 200 of the villagers bring their laces and which once made little else than application[223] (many beautiful robes and flounces and scarfs have gone out from the commune and the school), now makes comparatively little of it; for during the last six years paris and other markets have asked for rosaline. it is to be hoped that this small quantity may be continued, and that the lace world may still win at least a few pieces yearly of the earlier, more exquisite point d’angleterre.
point d’angleterre, so named because of its great popularity in england, reached its height in beauty and in favor during the seventeenth century, when it occupied the talent and energy of all the lace-workers of brussels. it differs from needle point, in which both flowers and mesh are made with the needle. it is one of the loveliest of all laces, combining in rare beauty, rich bouquets and arabesques and birds of finest bobbin work, with a frail transparent needle mesh, the flowers themselves becoming [224]frequently more light and delicate through the introduction of charmingly varied needle-worked open spaces. certain workers make the flowers, and others the connecting mesh. if one can imagine the softness of a kind of sublimated or diaphanous velvet, added to the fragility of an airy and cobwebby lace, one may have some idea of the effect of good point d’angleterre. and if one would possess a collar or a flounce, one should buy it quickly, for point d’angleterre is going the way of the other difficult and exquisite points. such villages as kerxken, liedekerke, destelbergen (near ghent), and those of the alost region still make occasional pieces.
bobbin laces
(1) malines (2) application, flowers sewn on tulle
(3) duchesse, with needle-point insertions
[225]
application details to be sewed on tulle
upper flower shows open spaces left by bobbin worker for needle worker; lower flower shows both bobbin and needle work completed
the more ordinary point de flandres, or flanders, so generally produced to-day, has the same composition as point d’angleterre, since in it bobbin-work flowers are joined by a needle-mesh. and even tho coarser and less complicated than point d’angleterre, point de flandres is also difficult to make, and should be much better paid. there are innumerable differences in quality, and many ways in which this lace may be employed. the committee has used it chiefly in elegant table centers and cloths, in lamp-shades and in various articles to embellish a drawing-or dining-room. and this summer of 1919 it is being used with much success by important french houses as trimming for dainty ninon underclothing. nineteenth century point de flandres, then, is little more than a commercial name for a very coarse kind of point d’angleterre.
this point de flandres must not be confused with old flanders or antik, the ancient bobbin-lace experiencing a happy revival at present. old flanders is, like cluny, made entirely with bobbins and with uncut threads; in other words, in [226]single lengths, and not in separate or cut details.
liedekerke, then, first made point d’angleterre for which, after a certain time, it substituted application, changing again about two years before the war to rosaline, suddenly become a popular lace.
rosaline is not very different in appearance from the finer varieties of bruges; in fact, it employs much the same technique, and is made as is bruges with bobbins, in small pieces, which are later joined by special workers. a dentellière who can make fine bruges can usually make rosaline. each small piece is composed of elaborately interlacing flowers and leaves and arabesques, without a connecting mesh, but joined by brides or bars, with a picot edge. sometimes the tiny incrustations called pearls, common to burano lace, are added, to further ornament the richly covered ground.
[227]
i watched a rosaline cushion, on which the pattern of an arabesque detail was pinned, and sister a., as she began to shift in pairs the fourteen bobbins needed to execute it; one pair, the voyageurs, were continually traveling from right to left and back again as she wove the flat parts of the leaves and blossoms. the rosaline technique is particularly difficult, since the pins must be continually and rapidly changed as the worker, with a crochet-hook, lifts the thread to pass her bobbin through in the characteristic loop stitch. this delicate operation, constantly repeated, strains both eyes and nerves. the pins are placed along the outside edge of the flowers, instead of inside, as in bruges, which produces the picot or looped-edge effect of rosaline. in bruges the flower edges are even.
i turned from the arabesques just beginning to grow on the cushion, to a lovely little finished detail, about four [228]inches square, one of several in a box which was to hold them till they could be joined to make a scarf. it had taken seven days of thirteen hours each to make this four by four piece, which meant that the maximum a skilled worker could earn in executing it was about two francs a day.
the liedekerke convent school does not accept children under twelve for more than two complete afternoons a week and for more than one hour each of the other days, these hours being lengthened gradually until the girl of sixteen gives her entire time to her lace. the sisters hope that once they find coal and thread and can put their class-room in order, they may again have 100 pupils, and that the village may continue to count at least 200 good dentellières.
