"Alden's Handy Atlas Of The World" was published by John B. Alden, in New York, 1888. It is an American atlas with statistics in it. It has the following snippet:
| Lace | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nottingham | Persons employed: | 10,500 | Value products: | $29,782,980 |
| The Continent | Persons employed: | 585,000 | Value products: | $28,128,370 |
These are startling figures! Nottingham has one fiftieth of the people employed, yet makes more money! The figures may be inaccurate, or incomplete. Even for America, it seems an odd division, especially as lace was being made in other parts of England, and it is downright insulting to the famous lacemaking areas of mainland Europe to lump them all as "the Continent"! But the atlas might have been trying to make a point. Nottingham did make a little hand-made lace, but it is chiefly famous, especially by this time, for machine made lace. Perhaps the atlas was pointing out that the future of lace was machine-made, not hand-made. The other possibility is that the figures are only for machine made lace, and it is showing that Nottingham is pre-eminent. Or perhaps it's just plain wrong!
This shows one type of lace making machine. The white roll to the left of the machine is the program for the lace pattern.
© Jo Edkins 2017 - return to lace index