Dentelle Guipure Point D'Irlande

I was watching a sewing program on TV and during the final segment a clothing item from the "vintage collection" was shown. In this particular segment the vintage garment was a dress for an older girl. A comment about the lace was made saying that the two sided finished lace on the collar and going down the center was of the dress was Galloon and that it was probably Swiss.

Living in France it is hard to get the name of something in English and to be able to translate it to French. Most of the time the name is very different and can be confusing.

I had never heard of Galloon so I started asking questions. Sorry if I bore you with this, but as you all know and I did not, Galloon is the style of lace, not a type. One can have Galloon French Val,  Galloon English Netting or Galloon Cluny. Galloon just means it has a finished or scalloped edge on both sides of the length of the lace.

Now, let me continue to ramble. Galloon brought me to the next question, what was the lace called that was shown on the dress? If Galloon just means that it is finished on both sides, what kind of lace was used on the dress shown on the television program? This identification is important since I have a piece something like what I saw, well, actually it was very similar if not identical. I want to know what it is.

I think now I have my answer and I have pictures. Humor me if I am wrong. It would not be the first time.

When I bought the lace piece, the person who sold it to me told me the name of what they thought it was.  I wrote it down. But what I was told it was, at the time, made no sense.

 

According to my notes I had bought a piece of dentelle guipure point d'Irlande. That's nice, but what does that bunch of identifying names clearly written in French mean?

Let's look at them and dissect them:

Point d'Irlande - In English this is Irish crochet  I could talk about this but, this website does a nice job for me. I have shown pieces from my stash earlier. Irish crochet is three dimensional and amazing to look at. It is also done by hand.
 

 Here is a picture of one of the newer pieces from my ever growing and becoming amazing stash:

 

Here is a side view so you can see the dimensionality of this piece:

 

Now lets look at the next set of words:

 

Dentelle Guipure - Guipure lace

 

Definition: Any of various laces, often heavy, made of linen, silk, etc., with the pattern connected by brides rather than by a net ground.

 

Technically, I suppose Irish Crochet could be a form of Guipure. Those are brides interconnecting all of the beautiful flowers and leaves.

 

Here is the dentelle guipure point d'Irlande piece I bought:

Here is a close up of the middle:

Here is a close up of one of the edges:

Here is a side view so you can see the dimensionality of this piece:

This sample measures 17.5 x9.5 inches (44.5 x 24 cm). I know it was machine made in France since the manufacturer's information is still attached. It was a new sample manufactured in February but the year is not clear but from the style of the writing and what I can make out it is early 1900's The seller also told me when I bought it that it was made in the early 1900s.

 

This was obviously manufactured to mimic hand Irish Crochet.  There is a huge difference in dimension between the two of them and I bet when this style was first introduced it was considered not as good as the "real thing". It would have been cheaper to purchase and faster to manufacture. I can see how it would have put the cottage industry making this lace by hand out of business. Looking at it with "today's" eyes it is beautiful. 

 

Since I have your attention, let me show another interesting piece and comparison

Here is a machine made piece of insertion next to a similar hand made piece. The machine made is on the top and the hand work is on the bottom. Both have the same dimensionality from the side.

Now let's dissect the machine made piece. It looks like a long machine made length of lace insertion, but it is not. It is machine made in lengths of about 8 inches. Look close at the bottom of the picture and you can clearly see the machine zigzag stitch holding the two pieces together.

Backing out the piece, you can see more of it. Here is the first part where a machine made net embroidered square was added after lengths of the insertion were made.

 Backing further down the piece, here is what the entire piece looks like once a second medallion of similar style to the insertion was added.

I can't but wonder if women bought the parts separately and put it together, how many different ways could this be done? Did they have samples of different ideas in the shop? Why only 8 inch lengths? How was this manufactured in comparison to other laces.

 

To my knowledge this is the first time I have seen this done in vintage lace. Modern lace made with an embroidery machine would be joined like this. I love a challenge so I am now on the lookout for more vintage lace made this way.