Bobbinlace making

The pricking as a template

Her work is fixed to the pricking with pins. It is hard to understand how she creates the artistic patterns with both their wide and narrow links, or how she makes the curved edges of the lace without losing sight of the overall picture and its many different threads. It all proceeds logically, however, following the design of the pricking. There exist countless such templates, most of them representing a particular region. A few lace-makers also make lace pieces free-hand, but that is something that requires a great deal of experience.

A valley and a textile craft

Marianne Rubin grew up with bobbin lace-making. Her mother, her aunts and her grandmother made bobbin lace, and as was frequently the case at the time, as a cottage industry. The Lauterbrunnen valley was one the centres of bobbin lace in Switzerland. The women made luxury table linen, altar cloths for churches or lace collars for royal courts. They made bobbin lace not just for their own use, but to supplement their income in a small way. “Bobbin lace-making has changed a great deal in recent decades”, observes Marianne Rubin. Nowadays, women don’t make bobbin lace for economic reasons, but rather as a hobby and a relief from hectic everyday life. As a consequence, the techniques are changing and new materials and new patterns are being used.