The Honiton Lace Book

This volume is from 1875. Full and practical instructions for acquiring the art of making this beautiful and fashionable lace. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION The kind manner in which my little treatise on the art of Lace making has been received, has encouraged me to publish it in a revised and enlarged form. I have made a few verbal alterations in the earlier patterns, as in the course of frequent working, better and quicker modes of doing them presented themselves, still the first part is substantially the same as when originally written. In the second part I have endeavoured to enlarge the area of Honiton lace, and vary the interest, by reviving some of the many different combinations of stitches in which the workers delighted in the old days when Lace-making was at its zenith, before they sunk to the weary round of turkey's tails, spread eagles, conventional roses, vulgar lilies, coarse thread, bad work, and little pay. The concluding instructions are devoted to a form of Lace which is a novelty in England, though it has been long worked in Brussels ; I mean the process of doing flowers in relief, by means of which the white threads may be formed into a veritable work of art, and afford scope alike for genius and for high mechanical skill.