I was lucky enough to find this recently in the lace estate of a lacemaker that was being sold off to raise money for charity.
I was at a laceday and was passed a carrier bag and told to go through and make an offer to the group for any of the patterns I might fancy.
I opened up the bag and in it was a treasure of antique prickings from around 1890, all on parchment.
The lady who had collected these bought them when you could go to a department store in Bedford and buy what were antique prickings at that time. Many of the parchment prickings have cotton material sewn on either end of the pricking to allow you to pin them to the pilllow - this is because the parchment is so hard it would be difficult to pin through without damaging it.
This pricking is over a hundred years old. Pricked onto parchment, it has survived all that time.
It's well used, but the holes where the pins go in are clean and still usable.
Think of all the people who have used this over the years, the hands that have lovingly made lace using this pattern.
It's a little piece of history and is my inspiration.
Comments