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This Le Puy roller pillow
that the french call"carreau" shows a storage hole in the back. It is covered in oil-cloth: the lacers liked that type of surface that kept clean , and was rather cheap to change as every woman always had a piece of oil-cloth at home. Moreover, the surface eased the movement of the bobbins that skidded on it. To make the skidding still better, they used to rub the surface with a piece of candle or soap. Some used a talcum stone, called Pierre de Gedre, (Gedre is the name of a place in the South of France where talcum powder is produced from a stone extracted there) |
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Left is another version of the LePuy pillow covered with oilcloth. The bobbins in Le Puy are either like the ones here called "olivettes" (=small olives) or fatter, called "olives". The shapes in Le Puy vary from one bobbin -turner to the other, but in general they have this shape . These are box-wood bobbins, nice to work with. Poorer lacers had rough beech-wood bobbins. Fruit-trees were also used, depending on what wood was available. |
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*"Coussin de Maurienne" Pillow
This wonderful bolster pillow is made and used by Alpine lacers and is filled with sawdust. This one is a modern copy made by Françoise Monneret, the specialist of Freehand lace in the Alps. It sits in "sadle" cradle. And the bobbin s shown here are very unusual as well. click here to see portrait by Estella
Canziani
more on French bobbins |
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*The "coussin de Megeve"Pillow
is used in this village next to Mont-Blanc, to make horse-hair lace which was sold to women to adorn the children's coiffes (bonnets) in the Alpine villages both in France and Italy. They used to make that there in the 19th century because they bred a strong type of horse for the armies and could collect the tails. Françoise Monneret(whose hands are seen here)
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The "dentellieres d'Arlanc " is a picture taken at the beginning of the 20th century in the area of Le Puy. You can see a group of women with the Le Puy roller pillow that we call "carreau". |
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