JavaScript The Definitive Guide 7th Edition

download

https://ebookgrade.com/product/javascript-the-definitive-
guide-7th-edition/

Download full version ebook from https://ebookgrade.com

More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

JavaScript The Definitive Guide 7th Edition

https://ebookgrade.com/product/javascript-the-definitive-guide-7th-
edition-2/

ebookgrade.com

JavaScript The Definitive Guide 7th Edition David Flanagan

https://ebookgrade.com/product/javascript-the-definitive-guide-7th-
edition-david-flanagan/

ebookgrade.com

Understanding ECMAScript 6 The Definitive Guide for

JavaScript Developers 1593277571

https://ebookgrade.com/product/understanding-ecmascript-6-the-
definitive-guide-for-javascript-developers-1593277571/

ebookgrade.com

JavaScript The Definitive Guid David Flanagan David

Flanagan

https://ebookgrade.com/product/javascript-the-definitive-guid-david-
flanagan-david-flanagan/

ebookgrade.com
HTTP The Definitive Guide

https://ebookgrade.com/product/http-the-definitive-guide/

ebookgrade.com

pfSense The Definitive Guide The Definitive Guide to the

pfSense Open Source Firewall and Router Distribution

https://ebookgrade.com/product/pfsense-the-definitive-guide-the-
definitive-guide-to-the-pfsense-open-source-firewall-and-router-
distribution/
ebookgrade.com

Spark The Definitive Guide Bill Chambers

https://ebookgrade.com/product/spark-the-definitive-guide-bill-
chambers/

ebookgrade.com

Crisis Communications The Definitive Guide to Managing the

Mege The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message Steven
Fink
https://ebookgrade.com/product/crisis-communications-the-definitive-
guide-to-managing-the-mege-the-definitive-guide-to-managing-the-
message-steven-fink/
ebookgrade.com
Other documents randomly have
different content
 XI
GHENT
A Lace Queen of Long Ago

O
f the cities I visited during three months’ continuous travel in
Belgium following the armistice, Ghent appeared to me to be
attacking her problems with greatest speed and vigor. Brave old
Burgher city of canals and mellow buildings and bell-towers, this
Flemish capital is at the same time an active, modern, commercial
center; which explains why Bruges has been able to win from her
the title she once proudly held of “Queen of Lace Cities.”
The lace history of Ghent begins with the lace history of Belgium,
in the sixteenth century; but her great period dates from the
seventeenth century and the introduction of the epoch-making mesh
of Valenciennes. The activity of her women and girls, following the
appearance of this new lace, surpassed anything she had hitherto
known; it was not long before the music of 1,000,000 bobbins rose
to meet the riotous pealing of her bells. In the sixteenth century
Malines had undisputed first place in lace; Ghent now out-stript her.
One wonders if part of the fascination of this city for the men the
United States sent there in 1814, to make peace with England, and
who, after six months’ lingering, had to be urged to return home, lay
in its clicking bobbins and the joyous garlands that blossomed under
them.
There is a portrait in the Hôtel de Ville, where one may see the
Empress Marie-Thérèse, wearing the marvelous Valenciennes and
the Needle Point robe presented to her by the Canton de Gand in
1743. And scarcely more than a century later, in 1853, the city made
its last gift of similar magnificence—another robe, valued at 20,000
francs, on which 80,000 bobbins were employed unceasingly during
six months, and this time offered to the Duchess of Brabant, Marie-
Henriette. There were no succeeding world-stirring gifts of lace
because Ghent had begun to think of other things, of industrial and
commercial development, and as she advanced in these, the art of
lace-making declined, until to-day it has ceased to exist.
However, in the surrounding communes (the region counts fifty)
there are still perhaps 2,000 dentellières making most of the bobbin
and needle varieties, the best among them being Valenciennes,
Flanders, Duchesse, Needle Point, Bruges and Rosaline. The
Comtesse de Bousies, chairman of the Ghent Lace Committee during
the war, did her best to encourage the work in these outlying
districts, and was able to help, in addition, many needy women in
the city itself.
In 1917, for instance, Celine appeared at the office to ask for
thread. She was twenty years old, and before the war had been one
of the 10,000 women employed in the linen spinning mills; her
mother was ill with tuberculosis, her father without work, and also
ill; there were five younger children. “I know I have not proper
fingers,” she said, as she held out her rough hands, “but if you will
only promise I may bring my lace, I believe I can learn.” The
Committee believed this, too, and because she worked with
intelligence and with almost feverish eagerness, she was soon
assured the minimum wage of three francs a week, and later the
larger sums made possible with the Committee’s success. Shortly
before the armistice, the mother died, and only last week Celine
came again to the desk to ask anxiously if the Committee could not
somehow arrange, that even after they had disbanded, she might
continue to make lace. Her father had found a little work; she
wanted to remain at home where she might at least direct the
younger children, and she could, if only she were sure of her war-
time wage. Could not the Committee promise the sale of her laces?
Often repeated question during these courage-testing days, when
emergency organizations are breaking up, and poor women do not
yet see what is to replace them.
 Among the more important communes on the Ghent committee
list, I found Oosterzele, Baelegem, and Landsanter, all three
producing a good quality of Duchesse, Flanders, Needle Point and
Venise, and counting together about 160 lace-makers; Gysenzeele
and Destelbergen, which make fine Flanders, and Duchesse,
Knesselars, with 250 Cluny workers; Asper with 60 in Venise; the
convents of Scheldewinkle and Eecke, the first occupied with Venise,
the second with Needle Point and Duchesse, which it sells to an
American house, and finally, the larger Deynze district, including
Vynck, Lootenhulle, Machelin, the Valenciennes convent school at
Ruysselede, and Bachte, with perhaps 400 lace-makers in all.
I got my orientation for this last southern district from the
Comtesse d’Alcantara, who has been indefatigable in her double rôle
of chairman of Deynze and vice-chairman of the regional committee.
Constantly throughout the war, she might have been seen starting
from the handsome château at Bachte—one of the most imposing in
Belgium—on bicycle or on foot on her way to one of the lace
villages, with thread and money for the workers, or at night
returning with the rolls of lace which she had then to get to Ghent
and from there to Brussels. The Germans never succeeded in
obstructing her work, nor that of her father and mother, for their
villagers and for the orphans of the entire region. Women came
between shells to bring laces. It was a moral help just to be able to
talk about their work.
As I crossed the moat and passed under the archway, I saw the
spot where the last Allied shell exploded, killing nineteen Germans,
while the family and the 200 villagers in the cellars, where they had
been for two weeks, escaped unharmed. In fact, in all the Deynze
country I was in the midst of the destruction accompanying the final
push of the liberating army, and was vividly reminded of what would
have happened to the rest of Belgium had the armistice been further
delayed.
But already in the partially wrecked villages many of the women
had gone back to their cushions—their reason-saving cushions, for
they furnished practically the only employment to be had, and
however small the earnings, they at least insured a few francs a
week, and best of all they proved that something of the past
persisted.
In Vynck, a poor little town of 1,700 people, I found 40
Valenciennes-makers, and heard that 100 young girls were being
taught at home by their mothers. I talked with two maiden sisters—
one 68, the other 72—whom I spied hidden behind a window-screen
of potted plants, working, with 450 bobbins each, on a kind of
Valenciennes one finds only on the cushions of the past generation.
They could not repeat often enough their gratitude to the
Committee, which had been paying them 44 francs ($8.80) a meter
for their lace, so much more than they had received before the war
from the Courtrai facteur to whom they had sold. They counted on
making about five meters during the winter ($44 worth), and they
work from dawn sometimes till nine at night.
In a neighboring house was a grandmother of eighty-one and her
granddaughter, and on the grandmother’s cushion such a covering
and re-covering of bobbins and lace, to keep them spotless. Over all
she had spread a large towel, beneath it a worn napkin, then a piece
of pink gingham, and below that two remnants of white and blue
cloth, and it seemed appropriate that the snowy treasure,
Valenciennes, too, should be revealed to me only after such a
ceremony of unveiling as this bent old woman of Vynck performed.
I passed quickly through Lootenhulle with its 125 workers, who
make, among other varieties, good Duchesse and Rosaline; and
Hansbeek, which produces a superior Valenciennes; and Ruysselede,
with its excellent school for Valenciennes; to cross from the south to
Destelbergen, which lies almost directly east of Ghent. All the plain
was white under the first deep snow of winter, but to enjoy its
loveliness one had to be able to forget the torn roofs and fireless
hearths.
At Destelbergen I went at once to the atelier of Mme. Coppens, to
whom women of both France and Belgium send their old
Applications and spider-web meshes, for restoration. Before the war
she employed seventy expert lace-makers in her school, now she
can depend on no more than twenty—tho there are some 100 less
skilful ones in the village. On this particular January day the school
was empty. As Mme. Coppens received me, she said, “I regret,
Madame, but I am without coal, and without thread; I have been
forced to close my work-room; however,” she hesitated an instant, “if
Madame does not object to coming into the kitchen, she may yet
see Stéphanie, the first lace-maker of the village, at work.”

FAN IN NEEDLE-POINT
Executed by three women in six weeks. “Shields of the Allies,” design drawn by
M. Knoff for the Lace Committee
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MARRIAGE VEIL IN NEEDLE-POINT, BELONGING TO
COMTESSE ELIZABETH D’OULTREMONT
It would take 40 workers about a half year to copy this veil

Remembering the glistening shelves and floors of other Flemish

kitchens, I did not mind; happily not, for in the end Stéphanie was
more to me than many villages. She was bending over an
immaculate cushion, seventy-eight and unmarried, and all her
person as scrupulously neat as her cushion, from her odd little
peaked black crochet cap to the felt shoes she had made herself.
She was weaving the flat surfaces of a dainty French bouquet, and
as I stept toward her chair, looked up, delighted that some one was
interested in what she was making. When I picked up a Bruges
collar on the nearby table she tried in ejaculatory Flemish to make
me understand, that even tho she had made parts of it, she
disowned the whole as unworthy the name of lace, and she brought
my eyes back to the delicate texture of the leaves and petals on her
cushion.
I wished to know what Stéphanie was getting for a day’s work on
her fine bouquets. She has been making lace for seventy years, is
intelligent and quick, and her maximum wage is two cents an hour, a
franc for a day of ten hours. I asked about the future—she has
thought of that, not without anxiety, and is providing at seventy-
eight for what she calls “old age” by trying hard to put by two cents
a week. Madame C. has been kind to her, and gives her as much
freedom and comfort as she can offer; for instance, when Stéphanie
was ill for three days last week, she did not deduct her wages. She
would gladly double her pay, or triple it, for she realizes there are
few like Stéphanie left, but the Paris firm to whom she sells pays so
little for her lace that she has never been able to offer more than a
franc a day. “If I could give two francs, I could quickly gather a
company of 1,000 contented lace-makers, I am certain,” she said.
“But when my old workers fall ill or die, I find no young girls willing
to come to me; they prefer the twenty francs a week they can make
picking wool. When Stéphanie goes, I shall have no single artist to
replace her.” “C’est un vrai cœur de dentelle” (she is a true heart of
lace), she said affectionately, as she patted her on the shoulder.
And then she went to fetch a cardboard box and I took a chair by
the table, to watch her unfold what it might contain. She spread
three beautiful widths of Application on blue paper so that I might
better see the tiny bouquets and scattered buds and leaves that
blossomed from the fine quality of machine-made tulle; all these had
come from Stéphanie’s bobbins, and she was having difficulty to
continue at her cushion because of her eagerness to explain them.
They were French designs, as their charming lines had made me
suspect. In the box with the Application were two rolls of Point
d’Angleterre, the lace one finds rarely at present. We held the first
one, a length of four meters, six inches wide, against the light, and
then Stéphanie could sit still no longer; she knew something about
this piece, for she had made its first flower in 1911, and not finished
its last until the war was half over. She pointed out the spaces where
a special needle-worker had introduced almost microscopic open
stitches into her leaves and blooms to give them even greater
airiness, and showed how almost impossible it would have been to
execute these needle-stitches with bobbins; and how difficult is the
stitch made with a special crochet-hook required for the raised veins
and outlines (brodes) of the petals and leaves, since the hook must
catch and attach the thread each time beneath the surface. Finally, a
needle-worker, again, as is always the case in Point d’Angleterre, had
spun the clear web between the flowers, uniting them all into the
finished flounce. Stéphanie pointed to a single detail. “It took me
five days to make that tiny bouquet, and the needle-worker one and
a half days more to add the open stitches.”
Since the snow-covered roads made traveling extremely
hazardous, I decided that I could not stop longer, no matter how
absorbing the Applications and Points d’Angleterre, or how endearing
the personality and contagious the enthusiasm of Stéphanie. I said
“Good-by,” explaining that I had yet that day to visit the needle-lace
school at Zele, twenty kilometers away.
 XII
ZELE
Stéphanie Visits the Trade Union Lace School

B
ut I was not to have to part with Stéphanie. When her Flemish
ears gathered from my French that I was starting for Zele and
the school founded three years ago, which had been the talk of
the region ever since, her eyes fairly spoke her eager desire.
Seventy-eight and earning twenty cents a day, and yet consumed by
a love for her art (for with her, lace-making is a true art), and a
passion to learn more about it! I asked Mme. Coppens if Stéphanie
might not come along in the car. In answer she began bustling
about, tears in her eyes, to help get her ready, and Stéphanie in her
odd little woolen cap could scarcely tie her long black-hooded cape
because she was constantly throwing up her hands, and exclaiming,
and pressing them together, as she tried to make me understand
that in all her seventy-eight years she had only twice ridden in a
wagon and never had she dreamed of being in an automobile before
she died. What would the neighbors say? We bundled her into the
corner of the car and were off, but she could not sit still, leaning
forward to exclaim over the beauty of the snow, or a windmill, or the
children skating in their sabots, or huddling down to cover her face
with her hands in swift shyness if some one had seemed to see her;
no spirit was ever so bubbling and gay and eager and timid all at
once as Stéphanie’s as we rode through the snow toward Zele.
Nor so patient as hers after we arrived; for instead of going to the
school, I had to leave her in the car while I went to the house of the
director, Dr. Armand Rubbens, unfortunately ill with rheumatism,
who is not only the founder of the school but the inspiration of all
the unusual accomplishments of the lace-workers of this town,
where his father is Burgomaster. After her long wait, Stéphanie’s
only comment as she looked a little fearfully at the gathering dusk,
was: “It is not yet too late to see the school.”
Inside, Dr. Rubbens, who since taking his university degree has
not been strong enough to follow his profession, and has devoted
himself to the 800 lace-workers of his district, explained the
organization of the Zele “Trade Union Lace School,” founded three
years ago and the only one of its kind in Belgium. I felt, as he
talked, that he was reproducing in miniature a Henry Ford plant, and
when I told him this, he smiled. “I begin to think I should see one of
Mr. Ford’s factories, for in reading an account of his system in the
Paris Matin last week, I was astonished at the number of his ideas I
had incorporated.”
The fifty advanced workers in the atelier (there are 140
apprentices) share the profit of the lace sales in proportion to their
wages, and own part of the stock of the union. The best workers of
this group make twenty-five centimes an hour, or two and a half
francs (fifty cents) a day of eight hours, the highest pay I know of,
so far, gained by a lace-maker. The girls may go four hours each
week to a school of domestic science, without losing pay; there are
illness and pension funds, and other provisions for the health and
protection of the members of the school. Dr. Rubbens has seemed to
accept every opportunity as a privilege.
 AT WORK ON DETAILS OF A NEEDLE-POINT SCARF TO BE PRESENTED TO
QUEEN ELIZABETH

NEEDLE LACE CLASS-ROOM IN THE TRADE UNION LACE SCHOOL AT ZELE

I looked over the files and photographs and records, for even tho
Zele is a remote town of but 6,000 inhabitants, this wide-awake
director has made it provide for him a better set of records and
announcement and advertising cards (some of them in English) than
I have seen anywhere else in Belgium. While I was inspecting the
books, he opened a chest and spread on the table a finished model
from his school—a Needle Point scarf or veil, sown with marguerites
and varied by a bewildering succession of open-work stitches, each
seemingly more exquisite than the preceding and some of them
invented for this particular veil. The needle-workers who had made it
had given about 9,000 hours to its flowers and gauze, and it would
bring 3,000 francs to the Trade Union treasury.

NEEDLE-POINT ILLUSTRATION FOR THE FABLE OF THE FOX AND THE GRAPES
 IN THE ZELE LACE SCHOOL; JOINING DETAILS OF THE NEEDLE-POINT SCARF
PRESENTED TO QUEEN ELIZABETH

I felt that I must fetch Stéphanie to see this, but Dr. Rubbens
advised hurrying now to the school, where there was something still
more beautiful to be seen—the scarf just completed that will be
presented to Queen Elizabeth, and so far the chef-d’œuvre of the
Zele lace-makers. I told Stéphanie about it on our way through the
village.
 Once arrived, we went directly to the most advanced class, where
Stéphanie might find most to interest her. The young women were at
work on Needle Point collars and medallions, a series of tableaux
from the legend of the Fox and the Grapes, and she was all eyes and
ears as she went eagerly from chair to chair, trying to see what
these girls had been taught that she had missed learning, and to
add to her lore, if she could. I believe it is only in such a modern
school as this that an outsider would have been allowed to examine,
as Stéphanie did, the stitches and patterns, for the tradition of the
locked door and the carefully guarded secret still prevails in the lace
word.
I was impatient to see the school’s masterpiece, the royal scarf,
and it was now brought from the safe and held before us by three
young women, as the directress led us from point to point in the airy
mesh spun between its rose garlands and medallions. On either side
of the center medallion, the arms of Belgium, were two others, in
which human figures symbolized cities the war has made immortal.
For Nieuport a fisher-maiden stood on the shore with her basket,
and about her the net took up a cockleshell motif; Poperinghe had
the graceful hop-vine as its device; for Furnes there was a dairy-
maid with her churn in the midst of blossoming butter flowers; while
Ypres was represented by a beautiful Flamande sitting before a lace
cushion heaped with bobbins—countless stitches, occupying 12,000
hours, and the entire weight 125 grammes! And yet, at the end,
Stéphanie tilted her dear old head and said: “Nevertheless, Madame,
for the Queen, I should have made the mesh yet finer.”
This Trade Union is in a sense a professional school, since it
teaches design, but there is the weak spot in an otherwise
remarkable achievement. The designs executed by Dr. Rubbens and
the school are often the kind that have led foreign lace-buyers to
order through Paris, which could furnish the drawings, rather than
direct from Belgium. They lack the lightness and grace that lace
designs should unfailingly possess, just the qualities which the
Friends of Lace have done so much to encourage and cultivate. If Dr.
Rubbens can see his way to follow their suggestions, or to
employing a French teacher, there seems no limit to what he may
accomplish.
He is now attempting to establish a true needle-lace Normal
School, which will offer courses in commerce, English, history, and
all the branches necessary to a complete lace education. This will
supplement the instruction of the Bruges bobbin-lace Normal,
already well under way. He holds that the teaching of the fine needle
points is more tedious and difficult than the teaching of the bobbin
points, and that it takes more years to become expert in needle
laces than in others.
On the way home, Stéphanie asked what she might do for me.
“You may pray for me, if you wish, Stéphanie.” She was silent a
moment. “But, Madame, should I not make a pilgrimage to Lourdes
for you? On one of my trips in the wagon, I saw the sea, and for
three years after that the sea was every day just before my eyes.
And to-day will remain until I die just in front of my eyes. Madame,
should I not go to Lourdes for you?”
 APPENDIX

Map showing important lace areas in 1919, especially prepared for this volume
by the Brussels Lace Committee.
The size of the circles indicates the approximate geographical extent of lace-
making activity, and has no reference to the quality produced.
The finest varieties are made in the areas indicated by circles 3 (noted for
Valenciennes, Bruges, Cluny), 4 (Bruges, Valenciennes, Cluny), 11 (Duchesse,
Application, Rosaline), 15 (Maline, Pt. de Paris, Pt. de Lille, Binche).
Second quality, circles 5 (Val., Cluny), 6 (Val., Bruges, Cluny), 7 (Duchesse,
Needle Point, Val., Cluny), 9 (Point d’Hollande, Val., Venise, Needle Point, Cluny).
Third quality, circles 8 (Duchesse, Needle Point), 12 (Venise Needle Point,
Duchesse, Chantilly), 10 (Bruges, Duchesse, Val., Cluny), 14 (Needle Point,
Application), 13 (Cluny, Torchon), 16 (Cluny).
The least important laces are found in regions 17 (Venise, filet), 18 (filet,
Torchon), 19 (Point de Paris, Chantilly).
 a. (Top) Pattern
b. (Bottom) Worker’s piqure made from pattern
 APPENDIX
With Drawings by the Directrice of the Brussels School of Design,
Mme. Lucie Paulis

F
rom the point of view of technique, all laces are divided into two
groups; laces made with the needle, and laces made with
bobbins.

I.—Laces Made with the Needle

All needle lace is executed in the same manner. First, the design of
the whole is divided into details sufficiently small to allow of their
being easily held and turned by the worker. The design of each of
these details is reproduced on a special kind of black paper by
means of tiny pricked holes that follow all its lines.
The lace worker sews this pattern (or piqure) to a piece of double
white cloth, which gives it solidity. She is then ready to begin the
tracé or outlining process. A strand of two or three threads is
appliquéd along all the contours of the pattern by means of a very
fine needle and very fine thread, which catches the cloth below the
black paper, passing and repassing through each of the holes of the
pattern, thus holding the outlining strand in a sort of embrace. When
all the contours of the drawing have been traced, the second part of
the work begins, the execution of the points that are to fill in the
spaces.

c. The outlining or tracing cord

 All the points or stitches of needle lace are loops, simple or
twisted, formed by a needle carrying a single thread. (The worker
holds the needle with the base instead of the point, forward.) The
first row of loops is attached to the threads of the outlining strand.
Arriving at the extremity of the space she is working, the lace-maker
begins a second row of loops running in the opposite direction,
attaching each loop to the corresponding loop of the first row. At the
end of this row she fastens it to the outlining strand by one or two
stitches and starts on the third row, repeating this operation until
her space is completely covered.
The points or stitches most frequently employed are:
1. The plat (sketch d), or stitch which forms the
flat woven parts, which can be more or less tightly
drawn, and serves for all the opaque parts of the
lace. It is made by simple loops, each row being
consolidated by means of a stretched thread as
illustrated in the sketch.
d. (Top) Stitch for the plat or surface
e. (Bottom )Stitch one
 f. Mirror stitch

2. The jours or open-work stitches. Among the

fantasy stitches employed in the jours are:
a. The point one, or stitch one, (sketch e.)
There exists also a stitch two, and stitch three,
which differ in the number of loops forming the
group.
b. The mirror stitch (sketch f.) and a kind of ball
stitch (sketch g.), and lastly the famous extremely
transparent point de gaze, or gauze stitch (sketch
h.), which constitutes the mesh of the popular
Brussels lace.
 g. Ball stitch

All the surfaces having been covered, the lace is further

embellished by the confection of brodes, or firm outlining cords
around the filled-in spaces, which produce a more or less striking
effect of relief in needle laces. This brode (sketch i), is made of a
strand of fine or heavier threads, appliquéd as was the original
strand outlining the pattern spaces, and then beautifully covered by
the buttonhole stitch. When the brode is well made, the buttonhole
stitches follow closely, touching side by side.
 h. Gauze mesh stitch

Many differing little details which help to give to needle lace its
richness and brilliancy (balls, rings, etc.), are also varieties of
brodes, and are made for the most part in the buttonhole stitch. The
bars forming the base of Venise lace are made in this way.
The execution of the brodes is the final work in needle lace. After
they are finished, the lace detail is detached from the underlying
pattern by cutting the thread between the black paper and
supporting cloth, the fine thread which in the beginning attached the
outlining strand. There remains only to join the separate details of
the pattern by a very fine stitch called the point invisible.