VOLOGDA LACE
Vologda lace is a kind of Russian lace woven on bobbins (wooden rods) which arose in the city of Vologda, an ancient center of the lace craft.
Although lace weaving in Vologda goes back to the 16th-17th centuries, the official beginning of the handicraft is marked as only 1820, when near Vologda on the estates of the landowners peasants began to weave lace, which then was considered the most delicate and luxurious trim for dresses and undergarments.
At first the lace patterns were borrowed from those of Western Europe, but as the craft developed and the local masters increased their own skills, their own national traditions appeared.
In 1893, 4,000 masters were active in lace weaving in Vologda province, increasing to 40,000 – ten times that number – in 1912.
There are two ways of weaving lace: sowing and weaving on bobbins. The first method is more laborious, since it requires a needle. The second method is more popular, since weaving is done on special equipment and is much quicker.
All of the main images in chain Vologda lace are made using a dense, uninterrupted, uniformly thick, smoothly winding thick lace (a braid or vilyushka, “fork bend”). The main idea is that the line must be woven without interruption, forming bends, and a large number of secondary threads complete the pattern. Sometimes there are over 60 threads, each of which is wound onto a wooden rod (koklyushka, a bobbin). It might seem unwieldy to keep track of such a quantity of threads, since knitting uses only one thread and weavers only two.
Until the 1940s, tailored lace for trim on undergarments predominated, while later individual items came to the fore: strips, napkins, and decorative women’s clothing accessories (collars, ruffles, pelerines, scarves, ties, gloves and so on).
Vologda lace has kept its name to this day, which is why it maintains such a high price.
