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Molly-Claire Gillett, "Irish Lacemaking: Art, Industry and Cultural Practice" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
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Welcome to the New Books.
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C
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Molly Clare Gillette about her book titled Irish Lace Art Industry and Cultural Practice, published by Bloomsbury in 2025 and actually notably the first book in a new series from Bloomsbury on critical craft studies, which sounds like a very cool area of investigation. And this book takes us right into it because we're going to be talking about a WHO network of designers, makers, organisations, institutions involved in the Irish lace industry of the sort of late 19th, early 20th century time period. Because it turns out there was a lot going on. We're going to be talking about some kind of long term institutions and also new things that were happening. Because as much as LACE is something that maybe we don't think that much about the production of today, that was not true back then. Lace was very technical to make. Well, it still is. We might talk about that and a huge part of the economy as well. So lots to discuss here. Molly Clare, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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B
I'm happy to be here. Thank you.
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C
Could you start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
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B
Yeah, absolutely. So my name's Molly Claire Gillette. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow funded by a grant from the Canadian government, working between two universities, University of Galway in Galway, Galway in Ireland, and Trent University in Peterborough in Canada, which is a little bit closer to where I'm from. So currently working on a project about the Irish Country Women's association and the Women's Institutes in Ireland and Canada and kind of continuing to trace some of these threads of craft through those two institutions, threads that I started to draw out in the Irish Lace Making Project. So right now traveling a lot between Ireland and Canada for this postdoctoral research. But the book that we'll be talking about today emerged from my doctoral research, which was conducted at Concordia University in Montreal in Canada, in the Faculty of Fine Arts, but also in the School of Irish Studies there. And so this book emerged from that research on Irish lace making in the late 19th and early 20th century, really a historical study, but also increasingly throughout the project, a kind of material study where I started using lace making, learning lace making as a way to help me understand the designs and the processes of production and to give me sort of a more material and embodied engagement with the historical material that I was working with.
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C
Very helpful to have background to the project. Thank you for that introduction. But it does make me realize that as much as I mentioned your name and my name at the beginning as kind of two of the key people in this conversation, I did leave someone out because the book very much focuses on a woman named Emily Anderson. So can we make sure to cover her in our introductions? Who was she and why is she so central to the book?
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B
Yes, thank you. That is an important name. I should have introduced her alongside myself. So Emily Anderson was. Well, actually, maybe I'll tell you how I met Emily Anderson. I when I first started this work, I was really interested in lace making in Ireland, a mentor of mine in My earlier graduate work, Janice Helland, a Canadian craft scholar, had done some work on Irish lace making. And I had been really interested in her work and inspired by her work and, and wanted to investigate that topic further. And so at the very beginning of my PhD, one of my first stops was the National Museum of Ireland's Textile and Costume collection. Of course, as you might imagine, that would be where you would. And when I went to go look at some of the sort of the better known pieces of lace in the collection, I was chatting with the textile and costume curator, Alex Ward, and she mentioned that several years ago somebody had sent her some, an email about materials they had in their family collection related to a lace designer. And at the time, she had been quite busy. And you know, the museum gets so many requests for, you know, so many people offering to donate materials related to their family members. Most museums do, and so they can't necessarily respond to all of those requests. And she thought, well, I'll dig up that email and see because you might be interested in this material from, from this person who was a lace designer. And I actually recognized the name that this family member had cited, Emily Anderson, because I had seen mention of a lace designer called E.M. anderson in some competition records in newspapers. She was one of the only lace designers from the 19th century from Ireland that I could think of by name, just from my preliminary reading. And so it turned out that the person who had sent this email actually lived in Canada, in British Columbia. And in fact, I was visiting her two days ago to kind of report on what happened with the book. So maybe I'll even send this podcast episode to her. Anyway, so this family member had these materials related to this designer called Emily Anderson. And I called her and got in touch and she started to tell me more of the story of this person. And so it was really through that connection with that great niece, that family member, that I was able to piece together a little bit more of Emily Anderson's story. And the sort of breadcrumbs that this family member gave me helped me to start understanding that Emily Anderson, her career kind of mapped the Irish lace industry in the late 19th and early 20th century. She was involved in lots of different organizations. She worked for several different stakeholders in the lace industry. And by following her career, even though she herself is not very well documented, she didn't really leave diaries, she didn't leave detailed reports. By following her career through the lace industry, I was able to make connections between a lot of stakeholders that hadn't previously really been considered too much in relation to each other. There has been lots of research done on Irish lace making at a really local level. But by following Emily, I was able to start understanding how many of these stakeholders actually work together and were sort of working. Working in tandem with each other and connected to each other and sometimes in conflict with each other as well. So Emily Anderson was a lace making or a lace design student, and then she was a lace design teacher and then eventually became a lace inspector. And she was born in 1856 and lived until 1948. So she had a very long career which was concerned with lace for its entirety.
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C
Wow, that is such a cool kind of interaction to have in the present day, as well as such a useful sort of historical, analytical lens to piece all of these things together, as you said. Right. To understand the connections, positive or negative, that kind of map out this whole industry for us. So thank you for introducing Emily Anderson. If we're thinking then about the industry in which she had that long career, we're going to be focusing mainly, as I said, sort of towards the end of the 1900s, but obviously there is a history of lace making in Ireland before that. Sorry, the end of the 1800s into the 20th century, but there is a history of lace making before that. So can you give us a maybe brief sketch of lace making in the country before and during the famine?
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B
Yeah, absolutely. So there's a really long history of textiles in Ireland, of excellence in textiles. I mean, you know, people who look at textiles in Ireland look back to prehistory, look to mythology. I mean, in the Ulster Cycle, which is a collection of early medieval Irish epics, there are instances of heroines demonstrating their, you know, virtue and their intelligence and their sort of good womanliness through their skills with a needle and thread. So this is a long. There's a long history of excellence in textiles and in really fine needlework in Ireland. But we really see lace making in particular, at least in a documented way, emerging in the 18th century when we see a demand for really elite textiles among the kind of Anglo Irish elite in Ireland. So the Royal Dublin Society, which still exists, also known as the. The RDS, was founded in the mid 18th century. And that organization, originally known as the Dublin Society, was really founded to promote Irish agriculture and industry. And lace was considered an industry. So they would support very, very, very small lace making enterprises with grants. And so actually, through this grant system, of course, people always take very good care to document where their money goes. So through these grants, we do know that in the 18th century there were lace making Industries in Ireland, small ones and kind of scattered. So there was a woman called Arabella Denny, for example, who was an honorary member of the rds, who organized a bobbin lace industry which was in connection with the Dublin Foundling Hospital. So there's this connection between lace and philanthropy in that early of lace making as a way to supplement the income or provide employment for working class people, or even for foundlings, for example. So children either without families or taken from their families. But then we also have lots of other small, scattered lace industries in different techniques as well. Sometimes just a single person working in their household, receiving a grant from the RDS. So we do know that in the 18th century there was lace making in Ireland. But it's really in the early 19th century that we see the roots of the industry start to be put in place. So there were two lace making industries started in the early 19th century that are still very well known today, and that's the Kerik Macross lace industry and the Limerick lace industry. So the Carrick Macross lace industry was started as a philanthropic endeavor near Carrick Macross, as you might imagine. And that's a kind of applique lace. And then the Limerick lace industry, again founded in Limerick, as you might imagine, was kind of unique in the fact that it was. It was started really as a business by an English businessman, he was called Charles Walker. And he came over to Limerick really looking to benefit from the large population of young women who are willing to work for not very much money to make embroidered net lace, which is what Limerick lace is. You take a piece of machine made net and you use a needle and a thread or what's called a timber hook, to embroider a pattern on that machine made net. So that was in sort of the 1820s. We have these two early lace industries developing. And then of course, lace as a philanthropic intervention. During the famine in Ireland, the Great Famine, or Angor to Mar in Irish, which was from about 1845 to 1852, the potato blight wipes out the food supply. There's a lot of illness. I mean, the story of the famine is well known. During this time. There are lots of different philanthropic endeavors, but one of them is the implementation of lace industries, often by the wives of clergymen or the wives of landowners, often in rural areas, although as well in urban areas such as Cork, for example, we see lace come in as a. As a philanthropic endeavor. So that's when Irish crochet also explodes as a type of lace. So of course, crochet, using a single Thread and a hook were probably, probably used to like a granny square blanket, this kind of larger scale, thicker thread crochet. But Irish crochet lace is made with a very, very, very thin thread and a hook that's very small. In fact, sometimes these hooks would be made of a sewing needle with the eye broken, stuck in a piece of cork to use as a hook. So you can imagine how tiny that hook was and how thin the thread must have been. So this is really fine crochet. And this was introduced during the famine and was a really ideal production type, a really ideal way to produce lace because it could be made by lots and lots of different people. So it could be made quite quickly and it could involve people with different skill levels in the process. So you would have individual people making different motifs. So for example, little flowers, and then you would have one person that would join them together by using a chain stitch to kind of create a network between the motifs. So as you might imagine, some motifs are easier to make than others, some are more complicated. So you could even have a whole family working on crochet with the children making the easy motifs, maybe the older sister and the mom making the more difficult motifs and then sending them to somebody else to join them up together. So it was a really kind of efficient and effective way of making lace and involving lots of different people in the production process. 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Like I've, I've made some of the motifs that would have been produced like at this Time. And it's true, like, some of them are very complicated. Some of them, once you get the hang of it, you can just kind of watch a TV show and make them without thinking about them. So you can see how, you know, a really young child might have the opportunity to contribute to the family finances by making a really simple motif, while that child's older sister might be working on the more complicated motifs. So in a time when, you know, families are really suffering and really needing to supplement their income, it kind of brings everybody into the process. I mean, for better or worse, obviously, is it a good thing that very little children had to be working? No, it's not. But this production process did bring a lot more people into. Into the fold, so to speak. Yeah. So we see a boom in lace making in the years just after the famine because all of these philanthropic industries are kind of put in place. But then there's a real. There's a real lag, actually, once we get kind of a decade past the famine. So there's this sense that all of this philanthropic energy went into implementing or sort of founding these lace industries, but then that philanthropic energy kind of waned and there wasn't a lot of energy put into skill development and development of new patterns and training for. For lace makers or even really much thought given to the process of lace design, except for in some particular areas and particular industries. So, for example, the y' all lace industry in County Cork, and if anybody's interested in the yall lace industry, it's not spelled Y apostrophe a L l, it's Y o u G H a l In Cork, that was a needle lace industry. So using a single needle and thread to create very, very fine buttonhole and other stitches to make lace. So really time consuming, really fine. And that lace industry, even though it was a philanthropic endeavor organized by the nuns at the convent, care and energy really did go into design. And it was organized on what some lace industry pundits would. Would later say was really sort of sound business sense. So that industry did continue to take along and produce really high quality lace after the famine. But some of these other more kind of ramshackle philanthropic endeavors didn't really have the infrastructure to be sustainable. So the industry in most cases did lag in the couple decades after the famine, only to really be revived and sort of re. Energized in the early 1880s. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was a. The. The idea of the philanthropic invention or intervention during the famine was something that was really, really associated with, with the lace industry. And there was a. Where did this lace go? You know, this. This lace wasn't really being consumed in these communities, in these, you know, rural communities, even in places like Cork, much of it to Britain. And so there was this understanding on the part of British consumers that by purchasing Irish lace, they were supporting Irish lace makers. They were showing sort of benevolence to the Irish. This is during Union, when Ireland is actually part of the United Kingdom. After a long history of interaction, various iterations of colonial occupation in 1804 until Irish independence, Ireland is actually part of the UK. And so we have this sense that Ireland is kind of part of the family, but still other, still different. There's a lot of political tension, of course, during this time. And for consumers in Britain who were looking for kind of an uncomplicated way to. To be philanthropic and be benevolent and feel like they were doing something good for the Irish people without maybe having to engage with some of these political concerns or these bigger questions of justice and bigger questions of, you know, why exactly was the famine so bad and how did our government play a role in that? A really easy way to intervene and to feel benevolent and feel philanthropic was to purchase Irish lace. So there was this sense really from early days that by purchasing this particular Irish craft, you could show benevolence to the Irish people and kind of signal your support of Ireland, again in this kind of uncomplicated way that maybe doesn't engage with some of these deeper concerns, but certainly in a kind of performative way, which. Which I'm sure for many people also felt really, you know, felt genuine. They did want to help. There was this philanthropic urge. So we see that, for example, in aristocratic elites wearing Irish lace at special occasions and at balls and at court as a way to show their sort of benevolence. That's not just Ireland. You see lots of philanthropic elites wearing craft from all over the empire wearing, you know, textiles, particular designs. We even see this in, you know, Kate Middleton's wedding dress. I mean, she wore Carrick Macross inspired lace on her sleeves. And that was something that was really noticed. So wearing textiles from throughout the empire or from different countries or associated with particular philanthropic causes was quite, quite common in court at the time and indeed still is today. Yeah, 1883 is a really important year. And it's. It's the year that there are two exhibitions of Irish lace, one in London and one in Ireland. So in London we have the Mansion House exhibition of Irish lace. And this is really, I mean, you Spoke or you asked earlier about the connection between the Famine and Irish lace making, philanthropy and Irish lace making. And the Mansion House exhibition is a really great example of that. It was an example of displaying Irish lace in this kind of elite context to drum up a consumer base, but also to kind of draw attention to the relationship between philanthropy and lace making. And in fact, the organizers of this exhibition explicitly said in material related to the exhibition that they hoped that the philanthropy that would be encouraged by, you know, the. The development of the industry would teach the peasantry to see in their rulers their friends. So this, this philanthropic thrust is really, really out there. It's right in front of your face. There's definitely this sense that the lace industry and the way that it intersects with these kind of political issues and issues of benevolence and philanthropy is something that is front of mind for everybody. It's not behind the scenes. So it also highlights that the consumer base for Irish lace is very much in Britain's and in kind of elite circles, people that can afford this product because of course it is pretty expensive largely, although not so much crochet lace. But I can, I can talk about that a little bit later because that's more of a 20th century thing. But so we have in 1883, this big exhibition in London where a whole bunch of Irish lace is on display for these kind of elite consumers. And there's this real emphasis of the philanthropic potential of the Irish lace industry. But also the guys who write the exhibition catalog, Biddle and Lindsay, who are lace dealers, they point out that Irish lace used to be really good, and they don't really think that it's such good quality anymore. In the catalog, they show pictures of recent Irish laces, and largely they say, you know, these could be improved. Like, what we really need is we need to have a design intervention in this industry. Quality has kind of slumped since the famine, so this is their opinion. But they do point to some industries, such as the Y' all industry, which I mentioned earlier, as well as the Inish Mc Saint industry, as examples of lace making workshops that have maintained really high standards. So there are, there are some that they approve of, but largely at this exhibition, they say the potential is there. Look how much skill there is. The makers have so much skill, but the designs aren't great and we need to change that. And then very, very Shortly after, in 1883, there's also an Irish lace exhibition in Cork. So in Ireland, in the south, and at that exhibition, there are lots of examples of Irish lace on display. But very crucially, two characters in this story of. Of design, of lace making meet at that exhibition in Cork. And I have to tell you the story because it's kind of too good to be true. We have Alan Cole, who is the lace expert from the Victoria and Albert Museum, of course, at the time known as the South Kensington Museum in London. And then we have James Brennan, who was from the. The Cork School of Art. So he was the headmaster of the Cork School of Art. And so Alan Cole comes to this exhibition in 1883. He's supposed to be giving lectures on lace making at the exhibition. But as James Brennan recounts in a text that he wrote, the lectures were supposed to be given in a room that had a glass ceiling. And of course, the lectures were going to be illustrated with. With lantern slides. So the room had to be darkened. So they had to put tarps over the ceiling to make sure that it was nice and dark in there for the lantern slides. And the guys that were putting the tarps on the ceiling, like, fell through the glass ceiling and it smashed and they came tumbling down. And so the lecture had to be postponed because somebody had fallen through the ceiling, which, as you might imagine, would cause a lecture to be postponed. And so for that reason, Alan Col and James Brennan got to go on a little walk around the exhibition. And during this little walk, they went to look at the Irish lace and they had a chat. And James Brennan tells it as this kind of eureka moment where the two of them on this little walk, because of the broken glass, decide that they're. That really what Ireland needs is a new lace design program. And so the way that James Brennan tells it is that 1883 is the year that the. These, you know, two great, great men come together and. And. And find a solution for the problem of design in the Irish lace industry. Did that really happen? I don't know, but it makes a really good story. I love to think of somebody falling through the roof as being the reason that a new design program was developed. I wonder if that's happened in any other context.
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C
No, I'm so glad you told us that story. That's definitely one of those things. Things that if someone wrote it into a TV script, you'd be like, nah, that's not realistic. And yet look what you found.
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B
Yeah.
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C
So now that we've heard this need, apparently, for better design, for good lace design, what did that actually mean then for the rest of the 19th century? And what role did competitions play in spreading and emphasizing these design ideas?
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B
Yeah, that's a good question, because, of course, the notion of good design is a kind of problematic one, right? Like, who gets to decide what is good design? And especially if we think about the fact that I gave a little bit of context, this is during Union, Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, but of course, has always had this sense of being other, of being separate. It has at this time. Also, we have a lot of people in Ireland saying, wait a second, who's in charge here? Who should be in charge here? There's a lot of discussion of a home rule, of more agency in Irish governance, but also independence. The idea of people coming over from the South Kensington Museum or from the British Department of Science and Art and telling Irish people what good design is is something that should raise eyebrows a little bit. So we have this question of what is good design? And who gets to say what good design is? And so, of course, at this time, the people who get to say what good design is are the people coming over from London, like Alan Cole from the Department of Science and Art, which is the government body that administers design and art education throughout the United Kingdom at this time. So, again, these are the people who are telling us what good design is. But that is something that should give pause or should kind of raise some eyebrows a little bit. And there are some instances as well, of people, of designers and makers in the Irish context and indeed in other contexts throughout the Empire, such as in India, kind of pushing back against this hegemony in terms of defining good design and kind of defining good design from the center and then enforcing it around the quote, unquote, periphery of empire. But we have these characters coming over from the Department of Science and Art and circulating in particular, examples of continental laces. So there's a sense that good lace design is lace design that comes from. From Italy, from France, yes, from England, but mostly from the continent. So one of the first things that happens in these new design programs in Cork and in Dublin is the circulation of exempla, so of images, particularly photographs of lace from the continent, historic laces. So, yeah, so we have the circulation of images of lace from Italy, from France. These are then copied lace designers such as Emily Anderson. She was one of the. The first lace design students in Cork, which became a real center of lace design and lace making. She would have studied images of lace that were assembled by the Department of Science and Art and then sent out as exempla of good design. She would have copied them. She would have studied them. She was also also sent to the South Kensington Museum on a kind of scholarship to do sketches of lace designs, but also to do sketches of lots of different things. So one of the objects that was given to me by Emily Anderson's great niece, which I then took to the National Museum of Ireland and which was then lodged in the collection, was a series of sketchbooks from Emily Anderson's trips to the South Kensington Museum on scholarship as a lace design student to study the collection. And what's interesting is in these sketchbooks, you can see her sketching, you know, Italian and French laces, but you can also see her sketching motifs from Egyptian frescoes, and you can see her sketching, like, Persian floral motifs. And really, she has an interest as a lace design student in patterning, particularly in floral motifs, in kind of sinuous lines and curves from all over the world. So what I find really interesting about these sketchbooks as a source is this notion that, yes, she's being told that good design is lace design from the continent, but she's also looking to all of these different cultural sources, really looking to design from all over the world. And there are some motifs that you can see transferring from her studies in these sketchbooks to examples of lace that are maintained mostly through photography from that time, although there are a couple pieces of lace designed by Emily Anderson made by Irish lace makers in the Victoria and Albert Museum still. But her lace was photographed often because it won competitions. So competitions were really important in this process because they were a way of encouraging designers to produce more work and then a way of sort of rewarding what the Department of Science and Art considered to be good designs with recognition, with the sort of recognition that might lead to commissions or to other design or teaching jobs, but also an opportunity to ensure that lacemakers at workshops had sort of prestigious commissions to work on, so that workshops were able to make money. So, for example, there might be a lace design competition. Somebody like Emily Anderson might get a gold medal for lace design. And then because of the publicity of the competition, because that design was chosen as the best one, an elite philanthropic person, like even Queen Victoria, for example, or perhaps a lace patron like Mabel Morrison, who was a very wealthy woman in London in the late 19th century who commissioned Lacey, they might commission that winning lace pattern from a lace workshop, like, for example, the y' all workshop. And that would mean that the people in that workshop had paying work. They could work on this extremely prestigious commission using this award winning design. And then that piece of lace would be photographed, which would then in turn be circulated, and other people at other lace Schools would study that piece of lace. And so we see that process in action in this really amazing photograph that I was able to track down of a group of nuns. Poor Claire's at a convent in kenmare in the south of Ireland, sitting at a table in their lace design workshop. And on the table are photographs of lace, pieces of lace that have been made based on their designs. And you think, okay, this is great. They're sitting at this table with these photographs. Close your eyes, exhale. Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.
- [38:16]
C
Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh, my gosh, they're so fast.
- [38:25]
B
And breathe.
- [38:25]
C
Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw.
- [38:28]
B
The discount they gave me on my first order.
- [38:31]
C
Oh, sorry. Namaste.
- [38:33]
B
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts. Meet the computer you can talk to with copilot on Windows. Working, creating and collaborating is as easy as talking. Got writer's block? Share your screen with copilot vision. Tell, help, spark inspiration and use copilot voice to have a conversation and brainstorm ideas. Or maybe you need some tech help with copilot vision. Copilot sees what you see. Let copilot talk you through step by step guidance so you can master new apps, games and skills faster. Try now@windows.com copilot but then I was able to find out through a connection with a. A scholar at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Dr. Erica Lederman, that in fact, these photographs had been taken at the Victoria and Albert museum by Isabel Agnes cowper, who was the institutional photographer at the time and one of the very, very few extremely prolific women photographers at the time. So this photograph had been taken by her at her studio in London. So that piece of lace had been sent to London, photographed there, and then that photograph became part of the department of science and art or the South Kensington museum's teaching collection. So those photographs were then being circulated. So this is what I mean when I talk about kind of the department of science and art determining what good design is and kind of occupying this position of power in the center here. But then also we have of lace designs that were produced in these little convents in the south of Ireland that are then being circulated all through the design schools throughout the United Kingdom as examples of good design. So we have kind of these people from this quite peripheral, you might say, area in Ireland. Their work is then influencing the work of other makers and designers and through this system of circulation of photographs, largely because of competitions.
- [40:45]
A
Hmm.
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C
And is this why the Department of Agricultural and Technical Instruction for Ireland, which sounds very impressive, is this why they were interested in lace making?
- [40:56]
B
Yeah, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction is a really. I never thought I would say this, but it's an absolutely fascinating government body. I never thought that I would be a person that researched the history of a government body. I don't see myself as a political historian at all. But the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction was a government body that was. It was the first indigenous Irish government body. So it was set up. Up before Irish independence. It was set up in 1899, started working in 1900, and it was a government body that was administered from Dublin by largely Irish civil servants, and it took over the duties of the Department of Science and Art in Ireland. So. So Irish design schools and art schools and home industries, and of course, the lace making industry had been administered by the United Kingdom's Department of Science and Art until that date. But in 1900, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, which I'll call the dati, just because it's a very long name, took over those duties. So now the lace industry, as well as other small industries, which would fall under the category of Technical Instruction, were administered by this new government body. And so the DATI wasn't really doing anything new itself, but its structure and its combination of functions and just the way it worked and where it was based, that was new. So now all of a sudden, these lace industries, all the still in conversation with their counterparts and with other designers and makers in the uk, it was now being administered from Dublin. So the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction is interested in lace making because of the fact that they're taking over from the dsa, the Department of Science and Art and the Department of Science and Art had administered lace making, so they didn't really have any choice, but they were interested in the lace industry because of the fact that it was. It by this point had become very associated with Irishness. So there's this sense that Irish lace is Irish lace and there's something distinctive about Irish lace. And this is also when crochet lace starts to come to the fore in terms of production more broadly, but also in terms of. Of my research, because Emily Anderson was hired very, very early on at the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. She was one of their. One of their first employees. And that may have been because of the fact that through her brother, R.A. anderson, who was the secretary of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, the Irish, the body of the Irish cooperative movement. Through her brother, she had met, and presumably met several times, Horace Plunkett, who was one of the key figures in the. In the founding and the sort of advocating for the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, a really towering figure in kind of rural Irish politics and development at that time. And in fact, in his diary he writes about having met R.A. anderson's sister and he says that she was very shy, but she gave him some useful information about the lace making industry or about cottage industries. And so that little tiny snippet. We don't know if they had more conversations, we don't know if they met again. But it's entirely possible that Emily Anderson was actually somebody who advocated for the lace industry in the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, or perhaps that she was hired because of that connection to Horace Plunkett and because they had had conversations about the lace industry. I don't know for sure, but all of those things are possible. So she became a lace inspectress. She had been a lace design student and then teacher in Cork, and then she was hired to become a lace design or a lace inspectress at the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction very early on and moved to Dublin to take up that role. And increasingly she focused on crochet lace because again, as I had mentioned, it was easier to produce on a larger scale, it was faster to produce and therefore could be produced less expensively. So increasingly, crochet lace became one of the predominant types of lace produced in Ireland because it was just, it was a bit cheaper, it was faster to make, and increasingly it became known as, like the Irish lace. Very, very associated with Irishness, Irish identity, kind of a tourist souvenir, that sort of thing.
- [46:17]
C
That definitely is helpful to understand the rise of crochet lace. But can we stay for a moment on Lace Inspectress? Like what did she actually do in this role on a. I don't know, given Tuesday?
- [46:29]
B
Yeah, great question. Lace Inspectress is such a great title and in fact her title is listed differently in different documents. So the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, its archival presence is a little bit spotty. In theory, Emily Anderson should have left tons of detailed reports about her work, but I have not been able to find them. And in my conversations with archivists at the National Archives Archives in Dublin, they have said, you know, the DATI archives are spotty and it's possible that they were lost. It's possible that they were Destroyed. I agree they should be there, but they don't seem to be there. So I have found some of her, some of her writings, I guess, small bits and pieces of reports in individual county archives. So, for example, in the county archive in Donegal in the northwest. And I also have found reproductions of her reports in these larger sort of dotti. Wide reports, but again, these granular, everyday reports that should exist. Not able to find them. Maybe, maybe someday. But what I do know is that she, her job was to create a link between the DATI in Dublin, between the department itself and all the little local industries and local municipal county governments who were administering grants. So what the DATI did is it worked with municipal regions. It would give grants to municipalities or to county boroughs for technical instruction schemes. So her job was to go around to represent the department and to make sure that these schemes were going well, to do test examinations. So, for example, if there was to be a new lace teacher at one of these new schemes, they had to be qualified. So she would be in charge of making sure that that person did their exam and passed their exam. She was a judge at Home Industries Show. So as the lace inspectress, she would go and judge offerings of lace and other needlework at shows. And she also had some, some duties that you might not expect. So one of the things, for example, that she did was appear in court to give testimony about, about crochet lace in court cases where there was an allegation that somebody had tried to. To sell other things as Irish crochet. So, for example, to sell crochet that had been produced in Austria under the label Irish crochet lace. And so an inspector from the department in at least one case, Emily Anderson, would come to this courtroom and offer testimony almost on behalf of Irish crochet lace. So this issue of, of copyright and of kind of protecting the industry increasingly becomes part of Emily Anderson's role into the early 20th century, when there are copies of Irish crochet coming in from all over the world, sometimes even being sold in Ireland, because increasingly it was being produced at a much lower cost in other countries.
- [50:11]
C
Yeah, I'm definitely glad you added that in because I don't think that that would be expected as part of one's duties for that kind of role. So thank you for illuminating that. Even with some of the sources we might most want being missing. Thinking then about moving further into the 20th century. Obviously following Emily sort of suggests, you know, we come to a natural point when she retires. But as you mentioned earlier, like her career does kind of track with the sort of, to some extent, the rise and fall of Irish lace making. For example, this isn't necessarily something we think of as being like a huge industry in Ireland now, but to what extent was the sort of traditional story of like, yes, and then World War I killed the whole thing? Like, is that fully the case? I mean, it's continued in some ways, right?
- [50:56]
B
Yeah, absolutely. It's. It's not the full story. So we see in Emily Anderson's reports, even from the early 20th century, you can really start seeing that the lace industry is not sustainable on the whole. There's this sense that it's. I mean, even the fact that we're talking about it right now, it seems like it's a really big part of the industry in Ireland. It was not a big part of Ireland's economy on the whole. And it was always a little bit precarious. I mean, when we talk about in or when I mentioned after the famine, the fact that the industry had been founded largely by philanthropists. These are often individuals. And so when one clergyman's wife starts a local industry, maybe it goes really well. What happens when she decides to retire or when she dies? In the Clonus County Monaghan area, a woman called Cassandra Hand was really instrumental in starting the Clonus crochet industry in that area, and it was really successful. And she tried to retire. And the lace makers in the community wrote her a letter and said, like, please don't retire. We need you to keep doing this. And they gave her a. It's really lovely to think they gave her a vase from. From Balik, which is a ceramics manufacturer in the area. And so there's this sense that when an industry is founded with philanthropic intent, the question of its sustainability is really. Is really a problem. And that's something to think about in relation to, you know, fair trade and all of these kind of quote unquote, benevolent forms of production and of small industries now as well. I mean, there's been a lot of development in terms of how these industries are made more sustainable kind of small, small industry for development purposes. There's been a lot of change in. In that space. But in this early period, we really see philanthropy and sustainability kind of existing uncomfortably beside each other. So even early in the 20th century, Emily's reports really show that the industry is. Is on the decline. The other thing is, is that lace is really dependent on fashion. Like fashion changes. And huge, huge, huge skirts covered in lace or wearing lots and lots of lace started to kind of go out of fashion. And in the early 20th century, we see crochet lace becoming more fashionable at that time, but some of the other laces, like Limerick Lace, become a little bit less. Less fashionable. And then we really see in 1910 a kind of shocking example of how precarious this industry could be when King Edward dies in, in 1910. And that actually causes a depression in the industry, one person's death, because the British elite go into mourning. And so all of a sudden they're not buying tons and tons of new lace for all of their party dresses. And indeed many of them are not wearing white and most lace is white. And so we see this one event cause a depression in the industry, which really gives a sense of how precarious and ultimately unsustainable it was. So the story that World War I was the end is, is a little bit inaccurate in that way, because the lace industry was really unsustainable and precarious before World War I. But it's also inaccurate in another way in that the lace, Irish lace making continued long after World War I. The lace industry, lace as sort of a, an economic player, did kind of fade away at that time. But we see that Irish lace making in terms of a set of skills, in terms of small communities of practice, did really continue. So in rural areas where people were making crochet lace, we have stories of crochet lace makers selling lace to tourists quite consistently throughout the 20th century. There are various initiatives to revive particular laces in particular areas throughout the 20th century, as well as key figures who supported the industry in particular ways. So fashion designers, for example, who would commission large quantities of lace from particular, from particular workshops. So for example, we have Sybil Connolly, the mid century Irish lace designer, commissioning Carrick Macross lace and crochet lace for some of her really famous ball gowns. And the reason that she's able to commission this lace is because people are making it and skill is continuing in these areas. We also have examples of local lace makers and lace workshops teaching women how to make lace so that they could make their own wedding veil, so that they could make objects for friends and family. So even though there are fewer people making lace, even though it's not sort of being managed by these government initiatives, the skills are being retained and being passed on and it's still a part of Irish culture to this day. And in fact, many of the lace making traditions that I've mentioned have been added to Ireland's registry of intangible cultural heritage practices and considered to be intangible. Cultural heritage practices in the Irish context with kind of deep roots in particular regions, even particular towns.
- [57:24]
C
That's great. We love hearing things like that. But I have to ask, this is not just historical to you, right? You actually make lace like this?
- [57:34]
B
Yes, I always have to say I am learning to make lace like this. I don't actually make lace to the level of skill and to the level of finesse that I see in these communities. So one of the things that I did as part of my research for this project was to travel around to some of the different lace making communities in contemporary Ireland and try my hand at some of the Irish techniques. So the, the, the lace making techniques that are best known in association with Ireland, I would say, are Limerick lace, Carrick, Macross lace, Irish crochet lace, and needlepoint lace, or needle lace. So y' all lace is an example of that. Of course, there are lots of different ones as well. So Boris lace is another Irish lace making tradition that has recently been the subject of quite a lot of research. Mel Melek work is a type of white on white embroidery, but it's often considered alongside lace making because it's a fine needlework in white. So there's lots of these different regionally specific traditions. But I wanted to get a sense of how these laces came together, what it actually felt like to make them, so that I could better understand why the designs were the way that they, they were, and what it might have felt like to be, to be working on this type of textile. And so as part of my research, I started in 2019. You maybe can understand where this story is going. In 2019, I went to the Traditional Lace Makers of Ireland, which is a group in Cork, to learn of it. There I went to the Cloning Crochet Lace International Summer School in Monaghan to learn a little bit there. And then of course, the pandemic happened. So I wasn't able to continue in my planned journey of returning many times throughout the research to deepen my skills and deepen my relationships with these communities and try some of the other laces. But I did find a teacher who was willing to continue talking to me and continue working with me online. And that was Moira Trenor from the Clonus Crochet International Summer School, one of the really important figures in Irish crochet revival and teaching. And so I did continue making Irish crochet under Moira's tutelage and made three baby bonnets. And through that process of designing those baby bonnets and making them and gifting Them was able to really reflect on, you know, the transmission of skills in the present day, the way that the Internet and social media shape the way that lacemakers communicate today. And to kind of imagine this as a next or a new revival of Irish lacemaking. As I see social media and online teaching and the growth of, of craft practice at home during the pandemic all coming together to make this a moment when I think more people are making lace in the Irish tradition. Not than ever before, but certainly more people than in the from the mid 20th century onwards.
- [61:08]
C
Well, very exciting to, we'll have to I suppose, wait and see kind of how that continues, but a cool trajectory to hear about and I, I imagine that's going to be something you're continuing to pursue. You mentioned a little bit of your current project. I don't know if there's anything you're working on at the moment you want to finish us off with.
- [61:27]
B
Yeah, it is something that I'm continuing. So I'm certainly in my own time working on developing my skills in lace making through my postdoctoral research for which I've had to be in Galway quite a lot. I've connected with the Corrib Lace Makers, which is a lace making group in Galway, a group of fantastic makers and teachers. The Irish Countrywoman's association as well is a repository of tremendous skill in lace making. And indeed I started working on the Irish Country Women's association because I was noticing everywhere mention of that organization as, as a teacher, as a kind of steward, as a promoter, as an exhibitor of Irish lace making throughout the 20th century. And I started wondering how that organization could maybe be seen to function as a new and different form of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction in a way as a, almost like a para institutional body that, that has has stewarded and promoted Irish lace making throughout the 20th century, throughout this period when it kind of went under the radar for a little while. So that's why I started working on the Irish Country Women's Association. And the great thing about that research has been that it's enabled me to stay in touch with the Irish lace making world and to keep thinking about lace, to keep learning about lace. And one of the things that I'm working on now kind of in conjunction with that research is a pop up lace festival in Galway in April with the core of lace makers and some other groups from the Galway area that are involved in lace making and lace history research. So it's been a great way to kind of keep my hand in the game. And stay a part of that world. And then of course also having the Irish Lace making book come out has put me in touch with a lot of people who who I would love to continue the conversation with. So I'll have to find ways to continue returning to Lace in my in my future research, that's for sure.
- [63:49]
C
Well, for anyone who wants to learn more about lace, obviously they can read the book we've been talking about titled Irish Lace Art Industry and Cultural Practice, published by Bloomsbury in 2025 as the first first in the new Critical Craft Studies series. Molly Claire, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [64:06]
B
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