Bedfordshire Lace


Lace-making in Bedfordshire, England dates back as far back as 1596 and by the eighteenth century there were hundreds of families across the county who made lace as part of a cottage industry. The term, ‘Bedfordshire lace’, however, refers to a style of lace that was invented in the 1850s and was soon made throughout the Midlands in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.

This new lace was developed largely in response to the threat machine made lace was making to lace-makers. In 1809 John Heathcot of Nottingham developed a machine to make ‘bobbin net’ – a lace ground material to which decorative motifs could be added. By the 1840s machines had been developed to imitate the strips of Point Ground lace traditionally made by hand with cushions and bobbins. There was a need to produce a high-quality lace that could not be imitated by machine and the lace designers set their minds to creating new shapes and styles. One of the leading lights was a leading Bedford lace dealer Thomas Lester who with his sons brought in a lot of new designs and greatly influenced the evolving style. He borrowed several motifs from Honiton lace and adapted the raised wheatears from North Italian bobbin lace. These went alongside plaits, leaves and floral motifs to make a highly decorative lace along flowing naturalistic lines. Picots known as head pins and purl pins were also adopted and used very frequently, as they could not be copied by machine.

The market for Bedfordshire was at its peak in the 1860s - evident at the International Exhibition in 1862 where nearly all the exhibited lace from the East Midlands was Bedfordshire Maltese. The style was ideal for the lace collars and cuffs which had replaced earlier lace scarves and with bustles and long sleeves had become the height of fashion. However, the heyday of Bedfordshire lace was short-lived and by the 1870s machines had caught up and could imitate Bedfordshire lace almost perfectly and at a much cheaper price. Bedfordshire lace is still made today by lace-making enthusiasts and is prized for its light weight and delicate details.