By Rafe Calder
Net first. The story of Nottingham lace starts with a net that machines learned to make, and then with the patterns that came later.
From the stocking frame
A 1908 history of the Nottingham lace machine, reproduced on a Nottinghamshire history site, says lace was first made by machine through modifications of the stocking frame. It says that between 1760 and 1770 a group of makers in London and in Nottingham experimented with making lace net on stocking frames, and that the warp machine was invented around 1775, with five people claiming credit though it is believed to belong to Crane. A genealogy magazine article says William Lee of Nottingham invented the stocking frame in the sixteenth century.
Bobbinet
The 1908 history says John Heathcoat, born in 1783 at Duffield, patented traversed bobbinet in 1808. Wikipedia’s entry on the lace machine also gives 1808 for Heathcoat’s patent, and says his improved Old Loughborough machine of 1809 was 18 inches wide and designed for cotton. The genealogy magazine says that in 1808 Heathcoat built a machine that produced bobbinet, an imitation of handmade pillow lace.
The attack
The sources differ on what drove Heathcoat to Devon. The genealogy magazine says that in 1816 Luddites attacked his Loughborough factory, destroying 55 lace frames, after which he moved his business to Devon. The 1908 history says that after machine-breaking he refused a county compensation payment that came with conditions, and moved his works to Tiverton. The two accounts agree on the move and the machine-breaking, and disagree on the detail. We name no sum.
The Leavers machine
Wikipedia’s entry on the Leavers machine says John Levers, a framesmith from Sutton-in-Ashfield, invented it, and that sources give 1813 or 1814 for the date. It says the machine was made in Nottingham, on Derby Road, and adapted from Heathcoat’s Old Loughborough machine. The 1908 history says Leavers, often misspelled Levers, made major improvements in 1813, worked in a garret off Derby Road, and died in 1848 near Rouen, aged 62. The lace machine entry says Levers modified Heathcoat’s machine in a Nottingham workshop in 1813.
How it works
Wikipedia’s Leavers entry says two warp beams supply threads, and that the warp threads interact with brass bobbin threads to form the net or openwork ground. It says reverse warp threads, introduced in 1830, lock the front warp threads against the bobbin threads. It says the bobbin carriage was driven at intervals from 1828, which left time for shogging the guide bars. These are technical descriptions from one entry, and we have not tested them against a second.
Patterns
Wikipedia says the Jacquard apparatus was adapted to the Leavers machine, and that from 1841 it could make patterned lace. It says Jacquard cards store the pattern code and the guide bars are controlled by the Jacquards. The lace machine entry gives the same 1841 date and calls the Jacquard a French invention of about 1800.
Curtains and other machines
The lace machine entry says John Livesey, in Nottingham, adapted Heathcoat’s machine in 1846 into the lace curtain machine, which produced large quantities of curtaining. It also names the Raschel machines of 1855 and 1859 and the Barmen machine from Germany in the 1890s, which copied torchon and simpler handmade laces. The 1908 history names William Cope as a leading maker of lace curtains.
The Lace Market
The genealogy magazine says an 1832 directory lists a lace manufacturer at 9 Stoney Street, in the area later known as the Lace Market. It gives census figures for one manufacturing family: in 1861, 71 men, 180 women, 35 boys and 31 girls, and in 1881, 104 men, 74 women, 38 young men, 15 young women and 20 boys. It adds that child employment was common and that lacemaking was exempt from the 1833 Factory Act. It says a Nottingham public meeting on 14 January 1860 called for lace factories to come under the Factory Acts, that a petition with about 10,000 signatures went to Parliament in March 1860 and that the change was enacted in 1861.
Peak and decline
The lace machine entry says machine lace production peaked in the 1860s and declined around 1870 to 1880, that by 1870 machines could copy nearly every type of handmade lace, and that most English handmade lace work had disappeared by 1900. The genealogy magazine says one lace firm went into voluntary liquidation on 17 April 1895 and does not describe an industry-wide decline.
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia is a collaboratively edited reference work. The 1908 history is a century-old book, and its figures belong to its time. The genealogy magazine article follows one manufacturing family and is not a history of the trade. None is a lace-maker’s own account, and we name no living maker.
What the sources do not say
None explains how a pattern is turned into cards, how long a machine takes to set up, or how many Leavers machines run in Nottingham today. We have not filled those gaps. We left out all sums of money and any museum or shop.
What it means for a buyer
Our view is that “Nottingham lace” is a machine-made lace, in the sources’ account, and that its history is a history of inventions. Ask whether a piece was made on a Leavers machine, a curtain machine or by hand, and how the seller knows. The sources say machines could copy almost every handmade type by 1870, so a pattern alone will not tell you.
Where sources differ, we show each: the date of the Leavers machine and the reason Heathcoat moved. We list them in the check file.
Roam first. Shop later.