In the Cause of English Lace

Plot

Catherine Channer's committment to the handmade lace industry and its workers, and her first-hand knowledge of each, are illustrated in her book Lacemaking in the Midlands Past and Present, written in cooperation with her friend Margaret Roberts. Although published 90 years ago, this book has few modern rivals, and is reprinted here for the first time within a more extensive work by Anne Buck. As a young museum assistant at Luton, Anne Buck took private lessons in lacemaking from Catherine Channer and provides here a memoir of her life and career as a lacemaker, designer, teacher, and trader. She includes an account of the Lace Associations, with which Miss Channer became involved, and of their attempts to form a new framework for the industry. Finally, she shows how lacemaking evolved from a poorly paid cottage industry into a popular craft.