Irish lace : report upon visits to convents, classes, and schools where lace-making and designing for lace are taught : as well as upon steps taken for assisting the development of the lace industry in Ireland, with illustrations of specimens of recently produced laces
A government report by Alan S. Cole, published in London in 1887, documenting visits to Irish convents, classes and schools where lace-making and lace design were taught, with illustrated specimens of recently produced Irish laces. The pictures are photographic plates of lace on dark grounds, showing scrolling floral borders, a corner piece and a collar. A designer could take from them the dense, looping floral and scroll patterns of nineteenth-century needle and bobbin lace, and their use of strong light-on-dark contrast.
