W2B-003 Embroidery-0.txt
SHAWLS, FLOUNCES, BODICES

The Whitework Tradition of embroidery and needlework

LINDA M. BALLARD

To define any kind of needlework as 'traditional' is to imply that it was made by a worker for her own use, according to an established pattern and by a specific technique, both of which were handed on from generation to generation. This definition is perfectly acceptable, but there is a danger in describing any needlework as 'traditional' if it is then assumed that such a description automatically applies. Irish embroidery and lacemaking have recently been authoritatively placed in the context of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which would seem to preclude the possibility of their being defined as 'traditional', at least in the sense outlined above. Yet this term has persistently been applied to many types of local embroidery, and with it has come the inference that the above definition is applicable. To accept this unthinkingly is to do little more than lend spurious authority to a spirit of conservatism, sometimes with absurd results.

'Whitework' is a useful blanket term, which may be used to cover any type of decorative needlework, it might be thought in any colour, as long as it is white. In fact, some whitework turns out to be black on a white ground, or vice versa, if black materials are used to interpret techniques more usually worked in white. Some types of whitework are associated with a particular location, so we have Carrickmacross lace, Limerick lace, Clones lace, and Mountmellick work, among others. The unwary will find pitfalls here, and these may be illustrated by reference to Maltese lace. As the name implies, this lace was made in Malta, where, according to various authorities, a certain type of bobbin lace was indigenously made prior to the 1850s. At about this time, the work took a new direction, and the lace patterns began to incorporate the Maltese cross as a design motif. It is this characteristic which is usually taken to identify a certain type of silk, bobbin made lace as Maltese. However, in the 1850s, Maltese lace began to be made in Bedfordshire where the cross was dropped from the design repertoire associated with the lace. Early in the present century, some 'Maltese' lace was being produced here in Ireland. In general, if a style of needlework is referred to by location, this implies that it is made by using a particular technique, perhaps with specific design elements. The technique may or may not have first been used in the locality named.

'the unwary will find pitfalls here'

The fact that Irish lace and embroidery were associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement illuminates a very important point about their production. At least from the early nineteenth century, this in large part was commercially driven. It is an acceptable generalisation, the exceptions to which will later be explored, to say that whitework was produced by women not for their own use, but for the market place, and consequently the aesthetics governing its production were those of contemporary fashion. Trained designers drew patterns which were reproduced and circulated among commercial workers. The Art School in Belfast was greatly concerned to reflect and to train designers to fulfil the needs of local industry. Many Belfast linen manufactures employed trainee designers who while working were given the opportunity to study at the Art School in order to perfect their skills. This concept runs counter to the idea that local embroidery skills were passed unaltered from one generation to the next. To be successful, designs had to keep pace with changes in fashion, and if this process was allowed to lose direction designs were perceived not as traditional but as debased. The resulting product had limited viability.

'not as traditional but debased'

Traditional processes did have a part to play in the transmission of skills. Children, usually daughters, often learned to embroider by observing and being taught by their mothers.

Gradually, beginning with simple stitches and pattern components, they would be allowed to contribute to their mother's work. Girls of school age often did their bit to help. Little boys were sometimes involved, especially in helping to prepare fabric for drawnthread embroidery. In some areas, lace and embroidery schools were established. These were places were girls could learn or improve their skills, but schools also had a commercial role. Designs were acquired or even drawn by co-ordinators, work was marketed and workers paid through the schools. Some schools were based in convents, others were organised by able, middle class women for whom entering paid employment was not an option. Many of these women gave their time and energies in a purely charitable capacity, the profits from the work being paid entirely to the workers. These women could also supervise and maintain the standard of the work produced.

Some of the workers employed through the embroidery schools went there on a daily basis, at least until proficient in their work, but many women worked at home, even if their products were marketed through the school, fitting the embroidery into their domestic schedules as time allowed. Throughout the north of Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many women worked through agents, representatives of the large firms, who visited an area on a regular basis. They distributed fabric which had been prepared as necessary, and collected and paid for completed work. The agent could be expected in a specified location at a particular time, and women walked there from their homes carrying fabric to and fro. It is worth remembering that linen can be heavy and bulky if large pieces need to be worked. Sometimes several women would work together to complete a large item, perhaps an intricately decorated bedcover which might be required in a hurry. Stories are even told of women receiving work quickly needed from an agent in morning, and co-operating to have it finished that same day. It seems that some women who possessed very specialised skills occasionally worked on the finest embroideries, so a piece of material might pass from one to another, each contributing her own expertise, so that as many as seven people could be involved in embellishing a cambric handkerchief.

While many agencies operated in this way, others followed a slightly different pattern, being based in a local shop. In these circumstances, payment was often in goods, rather than cash, despite the dubious legality of such a system. With increasing industrialisation, women began to migrate from the country to Belfast and other centres, where work for embroideresses was available in factory warerooms.

The fact that designs were predetermined and standards closely monitored often left little creative control to an embroideress. Any satisfaction she could hope to derive from her work came from seeing it completed properly and on time, and perhaps from receiving her pay. Money earned from embroidery was often an important part in family income. Reactions to the work varied. Some women hated it and did it solely as a means of gaining a living. Others derived great pleasure and satisfaction from its beauty. Some were at least occasionally given a measure of creative control, being told the amount they could expect to earn from a given job, but being left to select a suitable pattern to be worked.

Surviving examples of nineteenth and early twentieth century needlework show a talent and capacity for beautiful work by many local women. A wide range of different types and styles were produced, some changing with time, some being regionalised. As has been discussed, some varieties took their name from an association with a particular area, although they may have been worked in other regions too. Some skills, while not being so named, were particularly if by no means exclusively associated with certain parts of the country. Drawnthread work was very widespread throughout the Mournes, while 'flowering' or'sprigging' was common in the Ards peninsula and in parts of Co. Donegal. There are technical differences, sometimes substantial, between various types of whitework. Sprigging or flowering usually refers to white embroidery on white linen. As the name implies, the pattern is often floral, or drawn from nature. Typical stitches are raised satin stitch, couching or buttonholing. These terms may also cover other types of design, for example initials worked in this way on handkerchiefs or other items. Some finished pieces may carry several different styles of needlework in combination.

Early in the nineteenth century, 'Ayrshire work' was produced in many Ulster homes. This type of embroidery was developed in the west of Scotland, and was probably French inspired. It quite quickly spread throughout Ulster, having been introduced, apparently, via the port of Donaghadee. It was characteristically worked not on linen, but on fine muslin. It was most frequently intended for garments for women and infants, and the results it produced are often stunning. Toward the middle of the century it became unfashionable, in part because it began to be possible to produce quite similar work by machine.

At around the same time another form of white embroidery on cotton was developed in the substantially Quaker town of Mountellick. This was a bold and dramatic type of work, greatly favoured for household textiles. It was stitched on a distinctive, heavy satinised ground known as jean. Religious communities including convents often helped to foster and develop needlework. During the eighteenth century, Moravian women settled in Co. Antrim at Gracehill also found needlework to be a useful means of earning a living.

The strength of linen fabric made it especially suitable as a ground for drawnthread work, a style of embroidery which involves the removal of bands of thread, either warp or weft, from the ground material. In order to create decorative designs, the remaining threads are worked into and held in place by stitching. Linen was also most suitable for the production of cutwork, superb examples of which were made in the early part of this century by girls at the sewing school organised at the Convent of Mercy in Newry. In work of this sort, the detail and edging of decorative motifs were worked in embroidery and the motifs themselves were then cut out of the linen ground. The pieces were arranged and joined by needlepoint bars or 'brides' of buttonhole stitch. Thus a new decorative textile was effectively created.

'an entrepeneur from Nottingham came to Limerick'

Techniques such as drawnthread work and cut work might with some justification be defined as 'lace', for this is a descriptive rather than a technical word, meaning simply an 'open' fabric. Many types of Irish whitework have been known as lace, and some of these are closely linked to specific regions, often of origin. Two of the best known, Carrickmacross and Limerick laces, owe their existence to the invention of a machine for making net. By the early nineteenth century, this fabric was available as a ground for lace, and an entrepreneur from Nottingham in England came to Limerick, bringing with him a group of women capable of teaching local embroideresses the techniques required to decorate it. Embroidered nets were also being worked in England at this time, but Limerick lace acquired great cachet, so that it is said that sometimes English work might be sold as the product of Limerick.

Carrickmacross shares certain characteristics with Limerick, but it combines embroidered decoration with applied motifs of fine cambric, or in more recent examples, of organdie. One woman who has designed and made Carrickmacross lace throughout her life recalled that nurses'falls had been prized as a suitable appliqu&/e fabric when materials became scarce during the Second World War.

Like Limerick lace, Carrickmacross work was usually made for sale, but while Limerick lacemaking was begun by a businessman, no doubt with an eye to profit, the skills associated with Carrickmacross lace were introduced by the wife of a clergyman, and her motives were charitable. Other local laces have been produced to take advantage of the availability of machine net, but these two are the best known and the most enduring. While they usually feature white threads and fabrics worked over a white net ground, white is sometimes worked on black, or black on white. This combination can sometimes produce a particularly dramatic effect. Black lace was also made, in keeping with nineteenth century fashionable tastes, and more recently some workers have experimented with coloured laces.
