Design
It is a great time to be researching period lace. I remember back when I first became aware of lace at all, I found Satina Levey's book "Lace - a History" in our college Library and I checked it out back-to-back, over-and-over for over a year. It only had a couple small chapters in the front for our time period, but even just that much was like finding gold. I was so heartbroken that I had to turn it back in when I graduated that my new husband gave me my treasured book for a wedding present.
Now 25 years later, that book pales by comparison to what is available online for free.
Museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, the Victoria & Albert in London, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian's design museum ...along with many others... have put vast amounts of their collections online. They have hundreds of extant pieces. And some of the photos are so clear you can see every stitch!
There are also Pattern books from our time period, also available online. We can see the extant work alongside the patterns used to create them. Was anyone able to get to see the "Fashion and Virtue" exhibition they had at the Met a year ago? Brilliant!!! I wish their online page for this exhibit did it more justice. They don't show all the awesome comparison displays where they mounted the pattern and pieces next to each other.
Perusing the collections over and over, in conjunction with with paintings from the era showing lace being worn... Eventually it sinks in, percolates, and you can start seeing trends in order to design your own But at first it is probably best to get a few "rote copies" under your belt until you start understanding why they did what they did. By downloading these photos of extant lace or period patterns and tracing them, we can make our own patterns.
A brief word about scale. I had just started the second sleeve for a cutwork trimmed smock when we went to the Met to see the "Fashion and Virtue exhibit." And I swiftly crashed into the realization that my lace was way too big. About half again the size of the original pieces. The images I had seen just did not give me a proper idea of the scale of the actual work. I did force myself to finish the smock, and I'm happy that I did. Still, over the last year I have been trying to get my work smaller. Which can be problematic because the smallest weight linen thread you can get now (100/2) is bigger than much of the thread they were using. But we can only do what we can do with what we have!
I am not saying that you should start with 100/2 thread. It breaks. Alot. And then you have to figure out how to secure the broken end. Also starting with a larger thread is good at first so you can really see what you are doing and get your technique down. But it is something to work toward.
Get your feet under you with something simple. Many simpler edgings were done. You can see them in the portraiture of the time. If you cant find simple enough motifs that interest you, You can take pieces from the larger patterns to extrapolate smaller more manageable pieces.
The sheet below is an example of where I have taken a larger motif and pulled parts out.
(printable if you click on it)
