Historical information

This is quite a fine and dainty trim which appears to have been made with a fine linen thread or cotton combined with another fibre, possibly silk or rayon. It has been made by machine in the Valenciennes style as one can see from the diamond shaped ground. Handmade Valenciennes bobbin lace was very costly and time consuming to produce. One pair of ruffles costing £160 would take a lace maker ten months of fifteen hour days to create.

Valenciennes was a lace making town on the French- Flemish border and in 1780 had 4000 lace makers but due to the revolution of 1789 the number was reduced to 250. It was initially Flemish but was claimed by the French however the centre for Valenciennes lace eventually diverted back to Ghent and Ypres in Belgium.

Valenciennes lace was simpler to produce than Mechlin lace, and was never used for expensive garments. Instead it was applied to bed linen, lingerie, and the fichu (a woman's scarf wrapped over the shoulders and fastened in front).This lace was favoured by Queen Victoria, the Empress Eugenie and others as a trim on undergarments. The basic undergarments were stays, shift (smock, chemise or shirt), petticoat and drawers although drawers were not in general use until the mid-19th century when the tendency of the crinoline to become airborne or to tilt itself at embarrassing angles made a covering garment for the nether regions essential. Drawers were just two cylinders for the legs, joined at the waist with the lower ends frilled or trimmed with lace. Due to its lightness and neatness Valenciennes was favoured although very expensive. Centres in both France and Belgium were soon producing a neat copy. This specimen is one of the wide variety of machine imitations which were made, some so exact as to be almost undetectable. The best was the Barmen form which used linen thread. Only one width could be made at a time so it was much more expensive than that made on the large Leavers machine.

Significance

Churchill Island has a large lace collection, which was added to by three successive generations of the Amess family - Jane, Janet, and Unity. The Amess family owned Churchill Island from 1872 to 1929. Jane was wife of Samuel Amess, who was the first Samuel Amess to own Churchill Island. The examples of lace are notable for their variety, and provide representative examples of techniques from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

Physical description

Length of lace trim of Valenciennes lace with diamond shape ground.