Historic Lace Machine

Inventing a machine to make lace Back in 1812, at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, a machine to make lace was invented in England by John Leavers. The basis of his machine was the Elizabethan "stocking frame", invented c.1589 by a Nottingham vicar, Rev. William Lee, to help his wife knit stockings. It worked a bit like "french knitting", where children make a knitted tube by winding wool round nails on top of a cotton reel.



The original English "Leavers Machine" was only 18 inches (0,5m) wide, but it made cheaper mass-produced lace for small garments. At that time many new inventions were transforming industry in Britain - textile machines, steam engines, iron-making... This was the age of the Industrial Revolution, and Britain was the "Silicon Valley" of those days.

Foreign lace makers could not get hold of the Leavers Machine. To protect valuable industrial secrets, the British government banned export of such new machines on punishment of death - just as the USA later banned exports of computers to Russia.

In 1816 - just after the end of the Napoleonic wars - three skilled workmen from Nottingham, Clark, Webster and Bonnington, thought there might be a better future in France. They smuggled some machinery over to Calais, and were helped to set up a new machine-lace workshops. They escaped from bitter opposition to their new machines back in England. Thousands of poor workers in Nottingham made lace by hand at home, and feared the new machines would deprive them of a living. There were bitter "Luddite" riots in which soldiers guarded the new mills against machine-smashers.

In Calais, the emigrant English workmen found people keen to work for them - the port was impoverished after losing its trade during the French wars. The French aristocracy had returned, so a revival in trade for luxury lace looked likely.

By the 1820's the new Calais lace workshops were flourishing. Protected by heavy tariffs on most imported goods, they didn't need to worry about competition from England.

In 1835 they perfected a device to make a near-perfect imitation of hand-made lace in any design, including traditional styles like "Chantilly" lace. This was the work of another Englishman, Samuel Fergusson, who adapted the French "Jacquard loom" (used to make tapestries for aristocrats) for making patterned lace - an early example of "numerical control".

Nord-Pas de Calais is still an important centre for machine lace, exporting it all over the world. The craft of making lace by hand, which had almost died out, was revived after the First World War.