Historical information

This trim is a delicate example of tatting which is a form of knotted lace. The lace is made by hand using a small shuttle which could be made of bone, tortoiseshell, steel or more recently, plastic. The shuttle is double sided with shell like sides which point towards each other at the ends to ease passing through loops of the larks head knot which is the main stitch used in tatting. The centre of the shuttle has a shaft with the thread wound onto it.

Knotted laces have been made for several centuries but tatting is believed to have originated in the 18th century by the knotting of embroidery threads in preparation for couched work. This was done by ladies to relieve the monotony of long coach journeys sometimes using a shuttle for ease of manipulation. This knotted thread could be formed into circles and stitched together using a needle and thread. In the 1870s there were two major developments, first the introduction of picots which added daintiness to the work and secondly the use of a second shuttle with a separate thread to join the loops into a pattern of circles, squares, triangles and diamonds.

Needle Tatting is another form of this craft where the work is done using a needle which the same width all along including the eye. This results in a different structure and slightly thicker end result than shuttle tatting as the needle must pass through the work. There is also a version called Cro-Tatting where the craft is created using a needle with a crochet hook on the end but again the hook must be the same diameter as the needle

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 tatted lace.