Jaarboek Kostuum 2025

Table of Contents

1. Gieneke Arnolli
   Lace for ‘dummies’
   

   No summary of this article

2. Ad Timmermans
   Floral splendour in black silk
   

   The small city of Chantilly has a long tradition of bobbin lace. Especially the black silk Chantilly lace became famous. However, the rise of mechanical industry caused the lace production in Chantilly to decline gradually.

   Chantilly is a continuous thread lace. In order to make the wide strips and big lace accessories the fashion of the period 1840-1870 demanded, they were produced in narrow panels which were put together at a later stage. Chantilly has a ground of hexagonal meshes, while the flowers and other motifs are done in half stitch. The motifs are surrounded by a thicker gimp. Its decorative ground is mainly rose ground.

   Around 1830 the Chantilly lace production was taken over by Bayeux and Caen. However, the black lace made there still carried the name of the city it originated from. When by that time Chantilly became a highly fashionable lace, the design consisted of simple bouquets along the border. Gradually these became fuller and spread over the whole width of the lace. After 1840, besides bouquets there will also be floral arches, garlands and festoons, often suspended from medallions or ribbons.

   This was the beginning of a period of flourishing for Chantilly lace, influenced by the latest fashion: the crinoline. In the same period a second production centre came into being, in the Belgian cities of Geraardsbergen and Edingen.

   After 1850 the application of classical framework increased, as well as the use of other formal elements. By 1860 light and shadow will be applied in Chantilly lace: this was the birth of Chantilly ombré. From that time onwards the compositions were by far the richest of all, often even excessive. From 1870 fashion changed and the demand for Chantilly lace dropped sharply.

3. Wendy Wiertz
   War lace
   Belgian lace workers in the Netherlands during WW I (1914-1918)

   War lace is a type of lace named after its direct links with World War I (1914-1918). The lace objects show scenes of the battle field, names of persons and places, inscriptions, dates, portraits, coats of arms and national symbols of the allied forces, of the nine Belgian provinces or of the Belgian martyr cities.

   Art historians and lace experts have been writing about war lace, however concentrating on technically highly qualitative and rich, symbolical items, designed by well-known artists. They paid little attention to objects which were technically less demanding, did not have a such a rich meaning, or were drawn by anonymous lace designers. Furthermore the authors primarily studied the life and work circumstances of lace workers in Belgium under German occupation. The lace workers who had fled to the Netherlands, France or Great-Britain were hardly discussed.

   Finally the art historians and lace experts mainly relied on the book Bobbins of Belgium (1920), by the American Charlotte Kellogg, and neither carried out a serious international examination of archives, nor embedded the subject in broader themes.

   This article focuses on the life and work circumstances of Belgian lace makers in the Netherlands and on war lace in Dutch collections. Through the examination of archives and collections it identifies in particular how Belgian lace workers were able to continue their craft, what they made and whether their objects found their way into Dutch collections.

    

4. Catherine Gauthier
   Brussels lace during the Second Empire
   A selection of handkerchiefs from the collections of the Fashion & Lace Museum in Brussels

   In the nineteenth century, the Brussels producers developed new lace-making techniques, the heritage of the skills which made Brussels lace famous in the eighteenth century. With a small selection of lace handkerchiefs from the collections of the Fashion & Lace Museum, this article offers a glimpse into the diversity of techniques regarding needle and bobbin lace, which were worked in Brussels and its region in the nineteenth century, the second Golden Age of Brussels lace.

5. Katja van der Steen
   Cast aside
   Tatting and its place in fashion

   Tatting, also known as shuttlework, is a lace technique of unknown origin and a relatively modest position within the professionally made types of lace such as needle and bobbin lace. This article showcases the history, development and applications of tatting, especially in fashion.

   Although tatting has often been considered as simple or inferior, it proves to be a varied and rich technique. Its exact origin and timeline are unknown, but the technique shows similarities with various knotting techniques, possibly also with needlepoint lace. Thanks to publications with instructions and applications, tatting spread all over Europe from the nineteenth century onwards. It became popular as a domestic craft and was included in handicraft education.

   Tatting was traditionally much used in clothing and embellishment, such as collars, cuffs and edges of blouses and dresses, but also as complete accessories such as gloves and small caps. Thanks to its strong, though fine structure tatting was ideal to make small, detailed embellishments, which at the same time were sustainable. Hence the technique received a permanent position in the 19th-century world of fashion.

   After World War II tatting lost a lot if its popularity. Industrialisation, changing social roles for women and men and the gradual disappearing of handicraft from education caused the technique to slip into oblivion.

   However, in past years tatting has undergone a noteworthy revival, which mainly takes place within contemporary art and sustainable fashion designs. Makers and artists explore and renew the technique, thereby giving tatting an important role as an artisanal and creative manifestation. Tatting provides space for the preservation of heritage, for personal expression and sustainable design processes, through which it reconquers its value in modern times.

6. Carla van de Puttelaar
   Sumptuous lace in the paintings of Salomon Mesdach
   A visual essay

   No summary of this article

7. Jankees Goud
   Lace in Dutch regional dress caps
   

   Dutch regional dress caps were often, either partly or wholly, made of bobbin lace or an imitation thereof. Lace has been used in regional dress caps from the eighteenth century onwards. Although the material lace was made of was not very expensive (linen or cotton yarn), the product was costly because of the enormously labour-intensive technique of making bobbin lace. This made lace by definition a luxury product, which originally only the elite could afford.

   When later on lace was no longer fashionable enough for the elite, it became also available for the less well-off. In the countryside lace was also an outstanding status symbol. By using lace in her cap a woman could distinguish herself among her community.

   In the course of time the preference for types of lace and motifs changed. By the end of the nineteenth century different regions in the Netherlands would develop an increasingly regional or even local preference for certain motifs and types of lace. Manufacturers of lace would eagerly respond to this.

   This article incites the studying of different preferences for lace in the different Dutch regional costumes.

8. Liesbeth van Loo
   Webs of threads
   Modern lace on clothing

   Through the ages lace has been connected with clothing, either as embellishment, or in order to cover up worn spots. Lace changed together with developments in fashion: from lavish and superb to modest and fragile, but always made by crossing and twisting threads.

   Before the rise of the mechanical lace industry in the early nineteenth century, lace was made on a pillow by lace workers. They often made metres of a certain lace pattern, which they would sell for a pittance to the lace traders. These laces were mostly used on the clothing of rich members of the nobility.

   With the introduction of industrial, machine-made lace more possibilities arose, especially where size was concerned. Lace became cheaper and the craft vanished into the background.

   Then art entered the world of lace. Big fashion houses used beautiful machine-made laces in their couture clothing. But the arrival of the 3D printer also entailed changes into the manufacturing of lace. The Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen is using this technique to incorporate contemporary laces into her collections.

   Amateur art became inspired by new materials for making lace as well. Coloured and metal yarns and threads arrived and, although the techniques of crossing and twisting will always stay the same, the laces became more free in shape. Making bobbin laces is very labour-intensive and demands many hours at the pillow. With the fine types of lace, very apt to a free form of working, it may take months to make a small work of art.

   Inspiring one another by working as a group yields beautiful results and gives the participants much pleasure. Exhibitions and fashion shows make it possible to demonstrate that by an old technique, a contemporary substance may be given to lace on clothing.

9. Vanessa Jones
   Reading the fluidity of dress through lace
   The dolls’ house of Petronella Dunois

   This paper examines the sartorial objects featuring lace in the seventeenth-century dolls’ house of Petronella Dunois in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. It explores lace as a material signifier of class, fashion, and cultural exchange in early modern Europe. While scholarship often characterises clothing cultures of the period as rigidly hierarchical, the Dunois dolls’ house offers a more nuanced perspective, one in which class distinctions appear more fluid, and fashionable dress is subtly shared across social boundaries.

   Through close analysis of miniature garments, this study argues that lace, typically associated with elite status, functions in this context as a marker of aspiration, ambiguity, and mobility. This paper reveals how material culture enabled the performance and negotiation of status. It also brings renewed attention to the Dutch context of lace production, frequently overshadowed by the prominence of laces imported from neighbouring Flanders.

10. Saskia Kuus
    'Van alle kanten'
    Lace in notarial deeds from 17th-century Amsterdam

    In the Amsterdam City Archive about twenty million notarial deeds have been preserved, of notaries working in Amsterdam between 1578 and 1915. Since 2016 the deeds are in the process of being digitalised, put into an index and transcribed. This yields a wealth of information which was not easily accessible before. A number of examples of records of lace in 17th-century Amsterdam notarial deeds are highlighted in this article, in order to demonstrate what kind of information may be gleaned from these archives.

    Besides inventories, testimonies come up with data which are sometimes surprising. The examples of deeds are distributed over three categories: possession of lace, trading in lace and lace production. The records of lace are sometimes quite scanty, but there are enough descriptions giving more information about the different types of lace which were in use and their diverse applications in dress. Thus the Amsterdam merchant Johannes van Nieubergen possessed small scarves and jabots embellished with ‘tralie-kant’ (rose ground), ‘Moline-kant’ (Malines lace) and ‘poinct de la reijne’.

    Not only men traded in lace, women certainly did so too. The lace trade was often combined with trading in linen and other fabrics as well. The lace was sold in a shop or a stall. A lot of lace was imported, but it was also manufactured in Amsterdam. Lace makers have not left many traces in the archives. However, sometimes a testimony allows an unexpected glimpse into the lace makers’ lives, such as a statement from 1649 about a highly escalated argument about a ‘speldewerckkussen’ (bobbin lace pillow).

11. Jacco Hooikammer en Frederik Knegtel
    Treasured lace
    The cupboard cloths of the Olie family

    The ensemble of the Olie family, acquired by the Dutch Open Air Museum in November 1976, includes a remarkable collection of kastdoeken (cupboard cloths). The cloths are all edged with strips of lace which, upon closer inspection, prove to be examples of (re)use of lace. Although the Olie family is known to have its roots in Amsterdam and the Zaan region, unfortunately it remains unclear who made and used these cupboard cloths. For a better understanding of the application of reused lace in domestic textiles, and of the kastdoek in particular, the nineteen examples from the Olie family are of considerable value.

    A kastdoek is a cloth placed as a protective layer between the wooden shelf of a cupboard and the linen stored on it. In Dutch households, cupboard cloths usually consisted of a set of matching cloths, all finished in the same manner along the front edge. However, the examples from the Olie family ensemble are an exception. They vary in size, and both the cloths themselves and the strips of lace attached to them differ, respectively, in fabric and technique. In two instances the same type of lace appears twice; the remaining fifteen are all different.

    In order to identify the various types of lace used and thus gain a deeper understanding of the making of cupboard cloths in general, seven examples from the ensemble are examined in detail in this article.

    This study has revealed that the great majority of the strips of lace are reused fragments dating from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Moreover, there are clear differences in the types of lace applied: they range from coarse domestic lace to fine bobbin lace. Lace was costly and, as these examples demonstrate, consistently deemed worthy of preservation.

12. Els de Baan
    In the limelight: men’s fashion with lace
    

    Lace in a man’s wardrobe is usually considered daring, eccentric or typically feminine. But this decorative element is, stealthily, being included in everyday ready-to-wear fashion. This happens in different ways, for example by tagging along in the dominant focus on sustainability and recycling. Lace fragments that had fallen into disuse, are mounted on already existing vintage or deadstock. This is reminiscent of the hippie era of the 1960s and 70s, when such manifestations were worn by women as well as men. Although nowadays finery in lace is a taboo for many men, this attitude is slowly changing. Both in the past and today, by wearing lace influential male music and other artists communicate that everybody, regardless of orientation or stature, may wear lace. In past times lace was very precious and hence a luxury product, but today’s machine-made lace isn’t.

    Modern shirts, tops, coats and pants made of lace are not necessarily extravagant, as they were in the past. Big clothing companies have been producing lace shirts for a number of summers, convenient in particular for consumers with modest aspirations and purses. Such items are developing rapidly as popular articles for sunny festivals, beaches or a city terrace. But underwear, which people usually do not show off with, is also completely or partially made of (recycled) lace. Traditional borders are shifted step by step and both women and men may (again) wear lace. Advertisements for lace products appear regularly, in which the distinction between men’s and women’s wear is completely blurred. And the creative digital platform Brik.work denounces traditions with the help of AI, in order to breach borders. Why would lace only be used in a bridal dress and not in the groom’s outfit?

    In short: lace is now suitable for all sorts of dress, for all occasions and for all genders.

13. Yvonne Scheele-Kerkhof
    Withof, a Dutch lace
    The continuous fluidity of lace

    Lace has always been fluid. This article describes the rich history and development of duchesse lace in the Netherlands and Belgium. The Belgian duchesse bobbin lace may be recognised by the stylised floral motifs, connected by small braids. It owes its name to Queen Marie Henriëtte of Belgium, Duchesse de Brabant.

    The article describes how the lace has spread, focused on the role of education in lace making in the Southern Netherlands/Belgium and in the remaining part of the Netherlands.

    An important Dutch initiative was the lace making school in Sluis, established in 1854, which was successful in the fight against poverty. In 1872 the school had to be closed because of financial problems. By establishing schools in Apeldoorn (1902) and The Hague (1906), new efforts were made to create a recognisable Dutch lace, headed by Agatha Wegerif and Mien Nulle. But in 1918 the The Hague school had to be closed too, despite its success and the royal support it received.

    The text highlights the revival of the lace making school in Sluis in 1910, where lace designer Sister Judith received her training. Although this school also flourished for some time, developing a recognisable ‘duchesse of Sluis’, it had to be closed for financial reasons, just like the others.

    Later Sister Judith developed the duchesse lace of Sluis into Withof lace. This is characterised by a greater relief, flowing lines and inspiration from art nouveau. By this, lace was once more made in order to be used in fashion, as its purpose had been from the beginning.

    Finally the author describes her personal voyage through the world of bobbin lace making, including her inspiration by the Chinese art of embroidery, as well as an innovative development by combining different lace techniques and embroidery.

    Bobbin lace has been under development for five centuries now, on the one hand to provide an income for women, on the other hand purely for their pleasure.