Join me as I explore tatting history. I may trace the development of the craft, translate old patterns into modern notation, or play detective tracking down the earliest appearance of a technique, design, or term.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

A Pattern from 1837--Sort of


From The Female's Friend and General Domestic Advisor, by Robert Huish, 1837, we have, well, not a tatting pattern, but a sewing pattern with tatting on it.

Click here for a link to the whole book.

On Page 213, he says, "Pattern 3. This pattern will look well with tatting, or a narrow edging of lace round it, and a sprig worked in each of the front corners."

I think this does refer to tatting as we know it. As we heard in a previous post, sometimes the word "tatting" referred to any narrow lace, but here, the author makes a distinction between tatting and other edgings. Also, a popular tatted edging in the 1800's was made of half rings pulled into the shape of scallops just like those shown in the engraving. I'll be talking about that edging pattern again soon.

Meanwhile, in France... A few friends are working on a translation of the page shown in the previous post, but anyone is welcome to join in. I later realized that the word "frivolite" appeared earlier in the book (p 53), which may refer to another form of needlework also called by that name. What might be the relation between them? I've gone back and added a link to the book on that post.

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