“Trials” like tests or experiments, not trials like trials & tribulations. This process is actually going well. Tricia and Mark have an appointment to see some original artifacts with spangles tomorrow. I’ll let you know as they evaluate what they discover.

 

Tricia writes tonight:

At our last session, Carolyn came up and we had the chance to sit together and look at the examples she had made of the bobbin lace from the Laton jacket. Two laces had been made – one of the pattern at 1 1/4" width as reported in Janet Arnold’s book using linen threads and the second using #371 and #380 gold and silver wire made by Benton and Johnson. As I will write in gory detail in a few weeks, these threads are very good copies of the threads made in the 17th century. The main difference is that they are membrane threads, using a clear polymer that has been coated with metal to make the wraps. It looks and works quite well, but isn’t as authentic as we are intending for the project. The lace made with this thread ended up at 2" in width. We showed pictures of these pieces a few weeks ago on the blog.

Well, Carolyn and I examined a wide range of metal threads made by two companies: Golden Threads and Benton and Johnson. (Jill here. I thought I took a photo of Tricia and Carolyn happily surrounded by spools of metal threads, but apparently the gremlins got it; I can’t find it. It was quite a pile, though, and they were thoroughly enjoying the whole process.) We were looking for as authentic a thread as we could find in both weight (denier), construction, and metal content. We ended up with two prime candidates, No. 5 Gilt Passing Thread made by Golden Threads and 9 dram Tambour by Benton and Johnson. One is thick (#5 passing) and ‘looks’ like the close-ups in the photos of the Laton Jacket and our educated guesses from other measurements we have. The second is built for Tambour work and is thin. In tambour work, you want your thread to have any extra twist to be taken out so it doesn’t knot up on you when you work. Also a good thing for lace making. We agreed that Carolyn would make short pieces of lace – not necessarily the Laton pattern – to test how well each thread worked. This would help us figure out some of the parameters which would make a good real metal lace thread.

Shown here are the two samples Carolyn made. As you can see, when you twist the pairs the resulting visual weight is thicker. When I handed her the threads to try, I was certain we would find that the #5 passing would be close to what we wanted. In fact, I was wrong and the tambour thread worked much better visually and in handling. Our next step will be to replicate the Laton lace with it and see how it looks.

Tricia