Trip to the V&A Archives - Part Two - Victorian Lace

Credit here at the V&A.

The second item I chose to look at was inspired by a detail seen in the marvellous book, Victorian Lace, by Patricia Wardle. I may well refer to it in this post, so just to make sure I get the page numbers right, my copy is from the first edition in 1968. Seen above, in the first picture of this post, is the V&A reference picture for the item I viewed, though as you can see, there are a few pieces which have been photographed together. The piece I'm talking about today is second from the top. The second picture on their collection page is an excellent detail, showing to better advantage the magnificent design used to create the illusion of a sheen on a three-dimensional object. In my book, a mid-shot is used (plate 14, page 76). The study table was very large, and the lace laid out this way, so without rotating all of my photos, and possibly losing my bearings in the process, the details I took are seen this way up:

As I say, this book has been very useful in showing me the various sorts of Victorian lace available, the stand-out exhibition pieces, and the scale of the industry. At the risk of sliding back into the purely speculatory maths of my last post, there is an interesting figure at the start of the book. On page 18, she quotes from a source near-contemporary with this lace - and I'm going to quote her, quoting them: "P. L. Simonds wrote in the Art Journal of 1872 (p. 295): 'Besides the enormous consumption of our cheaper Nottingham lace and the pillow-lace of Honiton, we import foreign lace to the value of £750,000 sterling.' ". One assumes this is an annual figure. He goes on to list the different components that make up this figure, stating that they are 'declared imports', and seeing as he is nearer them than I am, I will give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he is unlikely to wish to embellish those figures, and even though his tone seems to imply he is unhappy at the volume of these imports, to believe that he has used a reliable source(s) for his information. So again, I will use the calculators at the fantastic Measuring Worth and adjust £750k for 1872 prices. This time, as it's a nationwide import, I'll use the calculator for a share of GDP. This comes out at £973,700,000. Adjusting that to US dollars (just over 1.52bn), and checking up on a list of UK Imports for 2012, available in list form from the Observatory of Economic Complexity, we can see that that is pleasingly approximate to what the UK spent on "Artificial Textile Machinery" in that year. So it's less than 0.01% of imports, supposedly. But £750,000 was surely more than a fortune in Victorian times - I would have thought it played more of a role in the economic life of the 19th century. But that's a question for another time.

According to my book, and backed up by the museum entry, the piece I'm talking about today is of Alençon lace, made for the Paris International Exhibition (or exposition, though both are used) of 1867, and was designed by a man by the name of Alcide Roussel. I can't find out much about him, which is disappointing. The only other piece I can see that is attributed to him is also mentioned in my book, though where the item itself is now, I don't know.
It's this parasol cover, apparently designed for the same event -

Edit note: I have since found this piece actually pictured in the original journal from 1867. It can be found in digitised form here. Edit note 2: I have now found in this same exhibition catalogue the actual piece of work that is the subject of this post. It is viewable on page 103.

On a side-note, two other illustrations in the catalogue were also familiar to me. One piece, seen here on page 167 of the catalogue, is actually viewable in the Met - I'd seen it in the Met collection quite a while ago, just browsing, and had been greatly impressed with the naturalism of the piece, which helped me to remember where it was - I thought it looked familiar! The actual record photo for the piece puts it on a red background, which makes it look quite crude and results in a very harsh photograph, so here is the link to the piece on the museum's timeline of art history. It is also featured in a small plate in my book, no. 39 on page 142.

The second piece I recognised as a different plate in my book (again, I'm still talking about Victorian Lace, the book I mentioned at the top of the post), number 28, on page 119. It's a much better image than in my print book, though! The two shawls featured can be seen here. They were included in the book, not just for their significance and expense, but because they were such excellent examples of the design trends seen at the height of the lace revival. The design in the piece I got see could also be favourably judged by these standards, so let's look at that design.

Quite apart from Roussel's insistence on using the best lacemakers in the business (as this piece is true Alençon lace, albeit, according to my book, made by a company based in Paris and Bayeux; Auguste Lefébure & Fils (more about them later). and making the lace as light and, again, as fine as possible (see some of my photos lower in this post with the scale shown), his designs were going to be a hit with the mid-Victorians who flocked to see them because they were so quintessentially of that time. As my Victorian Lace book says (on pages 30/31), the major decorative elements used in lace were taken from architecture (in the book, the two shawls that I linked to in the last paragraph were given as the best examples of architectural motifs), featured past lace motifs categorised by era 'Gothic', 'Rococo', for example, stylised monograms, crests, and various intertwining borders, such as ribbons, bows, and other such imitations of textiles. But by far, the biggest decorative theme was the natural world, especially bouquets or 'sprays' of different flowers.

In the catalogue entry from the 1867 journal, the engraving is surrounded by the words, "we engrave also on this page a FLOUNCE of Alençon point, after the design of Mr. ALCIDE ROUSSEL, of perfect workmanship. The system of shading is happily introduced, so as to give to the border that surrounds the foliage the very remarkable effect of being fluted." [sic]. I hope that Roussel familiarised himself with what was possible by watching (or perhaps even participating in) the manufacture. Looking at that fluted effect myself, I was astounded by the effect, and how delicately it was introduced over several layers of denser and denser stitches. Now, without further ado, a small gallery of the piece in close-ups.

A dragonfly (the sections of whose wings are each filled with a different stitch, some like picot'd portholes, and some beautifully fine twisting fronds, woven into the mesh background.

The speckled fillings of the leaves.

Scale of the border. The black pencil tip, without lead extended, is about 18mm.

More scale, and the corner of a section.

The remarkable fluting effect.

Some 'windows' in the scroll-work.

Finally, a close-up showing how the smallest parts of the design are attached to the mesh.

I've been unable to find out more about Alcide Roussel apart from his name mentioned once in an old French art journal, towards the top of page 196. I have been unable to ascertain, due to the very sparse mentionings of lace (or dentelle) in the following pages, why his name appears.

The Lefébure family are less obscure. In fact, the Auguste who ran the manufactory at the time Roussel was designing for them was something of an author, with a fairly long (300+ pages) book to his name; Dentelles et Guipures [Lace and Guipure]. His son Ernest, who ran the business after him, also wrote a book, a history of French lace, at a more modest length of around 70 pages; Les Points de France [Needlepoint Lace of France]. Both of these books are readable online, thanks to the University of Arizona. They are available, about 2/3rds of the way down the page, here.