‘The Lacemakers’, etching by Victor Louis Focillon after a painting by Claude Joseph Bail (1903), courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery.

A new article, connected to our ‘Lace in Context’ project, has just been published by the journal French History. It explores French pillow-lacemakers’ relations to the tools of their trade, which they decorated, celebrated and paraded, but which they also sometimes beat and burnt.  The article is published under an Open Access licence so should be freely available to all at the journal’s website.  However, if you have difficulty with the website and would like a copy, simply email David Hopkin at david.hopkin@hertford.ox.ac.uk (and the same applies to other articles mentioned on this site about lace legends, lace and the Flemish cultural revival, Flemish lace tells, and Normandy lacemakers’ songs.