Marvelous Skill of Hand

The Writing on the Wall: Lace and embroidery, likely done by Margaret Nicholson or her daughters. Amanda Vickery, in the History of Private Life, said women did embroidery to prove to their future husbands that they were ladies of leisure – and docile beings.

The Busy Man Magazine of 1910 had an article “Are We Losing our Ability to Work with the Hands” which is interesting in the context of Flo in the City. I have been writing about how technology deskills us and how Margaret Nicholson, born 1854, had many more homely skills than her daughters. But in 1913, when her family was in trouble financially, she lamented the fact that she ‘couldn’t earn her own living.’ In 1913, they would promote the Manual Training Movement in the Schools, as a way to train the new immigrant for work, but not as a fine craftsman, as a factory labourer, although the initial intent might have been to create more fine craftsman, but ‘ideals’ and ‘reality’ clashed and reality won out.

Here’s the article, which I have edited down.

“The man of to-day is inferior in certain points, to the savage who made the flint implements. It is safe to assume that Neolithic man was keener of sight and hearing and fleeter of foot than is the present inhabitant of these islands (England 1910). He surely, too, possessed greater powers of endurance.

And the process of decadence is still going on. The marvellous skill of hand, which was developed by our ancestors is being lost by degenerate descendants. Typewriters destroy fine calligraphy and sewing machines fine sewing. We are compelled to own that the human being is not showing signs of advancement but of decay.

The simple craftsman have all but disappeared. Spinning and weaving have vanished and with them have vanished the sensitiveness of the hands of millions of men and women in the country.

The knitting machine has destroyed the sensitiveness of the hand demanded by knitting. Embroidery has gone the same road. Lacemaking too. Even the shoemaker,who is all artist in his way, has gone the same road.

So it is with everything else. Paper making and book binding, as a means of hand culture, have practically ceased to exist. Wood engraving and line engraving have vanished.

It is not only with the finer uses of the hand that the machine has done its devastating work. There are a thousand and one machines that are taking the place of human muscle. These machines do not tend to improve the physical development of the man. ”

Dream-Catchers and Old Lace

A lace handkerchief once belonging to the Nicholsons. The dark pin is Margaret’s mothers, as it contains a picture of John McLeod. The other two pins, I have been told, are pins for kilts. The framed picture is Young Margaret, and the silver item at right is an ink well and pen. Yikes! I saw an advert in the 1909 Gazette for Christmas Handkerchiefs, costing from 2.00 to 25.00 or Irish lace. Nothing to sneeze at! Hmm. Maybe this one is worth a fortune. Antiques Roadshow, here I come.

Yesterday I went through a pile of ‘old lace’ and table linens once belonging to the Nicholsons, and put many on display in my home. My mother in law, who likely inherited them at Edith and Flora’s death (or perhaps her own mother’s death) kept them rolled up and hidden away for decades.

A few months ago, I took a long lace collar and draped it over an antique mirror in my bedroom. A few weeks later, I watched the movie Young Victoria for the first time and there’s a scene in her boudoir where you can see a piece of lace is draped over her dressing table mirror. “How clever of me,” I thought, to have done the same.

Yesterday, I took some lace doilies, in many different patterns and safety-pinned them together and pinned them up on a wall over the bed in the spare bedrooom which is turning into my ‘office’ as it is the only room in my house that has direct sunlight.

I write on my laptop, lying on my bed, listening to BBC Radio Four on the other computer my husband set up for me.

My mother in law kept this particular handkerchief in a separate box from the other antique linens, in her dressing table drawer, (also a Nicholson ‘memento’ and also in my office, here) so I suspect it is a special piece.

Now, in my Flo in the City blog, I often talk about the Nicholson girls as being deskilled, and compared to their mother, born in 1854, they certainly were.

But they could still do embroidery and lacework. I believe I read that Edith, the intellectual, was the best at this homely art. So these doilies, pictured at bottom, were likely stitched (what is the term for lace) by the Nicholson girls.

BCC Radio Four featured a mini series last year, the History of Private Life which I found fascinating. The narrator/author of the series, Amanda Vickery, said that women learned embroidery as a mate-catching tool….Now we all know that few men appreciate the beauty of lace (my husband has been very quiet about my recent home-decorating splurge but I will hear about it one day when he’s tired and mad at me for mocking his purchase of a broken down second hand snow-blower.) And embroidery isn’t a practical skill.

So why did lace-making maidens attract the men? Well, any woman with the time to make lace or embroidery was obviously well-to-do. And any rich woman with the inclination to waste her hours in this manner (my words) was going to be a passive easy-to-please mate.

Tomorrow, I think, I am going to take the old Nicholson hot iron I am using as doorstop and heat it on the BBQ (if my husband will fire it up for me, as I don’t do that kind of thing) and try to press one of the linen table mats (a not very good one)as an experiment. And then I’ll cook something from Marion’s 1912 copy of the Fannie Farmer Cook Book. Scones, I think. Maybe on the BBQ too. Since I cannot sew at all, I’ll never be able to make a shirtwaist, although patterns exist on the web. But I can do something very 1910′s. I can WALK to the mailbox 1/2 kilometer away. (No, not THAT! Anything but that. I’ll even learn to sew.)

You know, all this to get myself in the mood to really start in on this second draft of Flo in the City, my book in progress, about a girl coming of age in the 1908-1913 era in Canada, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/

The lace on the wall. It’s dark and rainy outside, so this lace doesn’t show up well, But these are very very delicate pieces, of little practical use. I probably should mount them on a bright background. You know, the native people have ‘dream-catchers’ that are very similar. So these are dream-catchers of another kind, embroidered by women hoping for husbands… They are also mandala-like. Hmm. Maybe there’s more to this ‘frivolous’ female activity than meets the eye.

Must ask Clarissa Pinkolas Estes. (I wonder what Edith would have thought of Women who Run with the Wolves.)