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HONITON. 363 manship alone of a piece of this elaborate net, measuring scarce 2 inches in width ; 17 and one of the old lace-dealers showed Mrs. Treadwin, some years since, a piece of ground, 18 inches square, for the making of which she had paid 15?., shortly before the establishment of the machine-net manufacture. 18 The price of the lace was proportionably high. A Honiton veil would often cost a hundred guineas. The invention of Heathcoat 19 dealt a fatal blow to the Honiton net-makers. A hopeless struggle ensued between manual labour and the results of science : human industry yielded to the pressure. Young women, m large numbers, forsook the pillow and went to service, and but few children were trained to succeed them. The lappet (Coloured Plate YI. p. 101) has been shown to the author, purchased from a Devonshire gentlewoman in reduced circumstances, to whose great-grandmother it had belonged, which she at once pronounced to be Brussels needle point; but it has been shown to four different lace-makers, who all recognise the open-work or “ finishings ” peculiar to the Honiton fabric, and claim it as English ; but it is of such decidedly Brussels character we have placed it under that head, with this explanation. To return to our history. For twenty years the lace trade suffered the greatest depression, 20 and the Honiton lace-workers, forsaking the designs of their forefathers/introduced a most hideous set of patterns, designed, as they said, “ out of their own heads.” “ Turkey tails,” “ frying-pans,” “ bullocks’ hearts,” and the most senseless sprigs and borderings took the place of the graceful compositions of the old school; not a leaf, not a flower, was copied from nature. Anxious to introduce a purer taste, Queen Adelaide, 17 The manner of payment was some- of this veil, though perfectinitsworkman- what Phoenician, reminding one of Queen ship, is of a much wider mesh than was Dido and her bargain. The lace ground made in the last days of the fabric. It was spread out on the counter, and the was the property of Mrs. Cluck, worker herself desired to cover it with 18 The last specimen of “real” ground shillings ; and as many coins as found made in Devon was the marriage veil of place on’ her work, she carried away as the late Mrs. Marwood Tucker, about the fruit of her labour. The author once forty years since. It was with the greatest calculated the cost, after this fashion, of difficulty workers could be procured to a small lace veil on real ground, said to make it. The price paid for the ground be one of the first ever fabricated: it was alone was 30 guineas. 19 1839. 12 inches wide and 30 long, and, making 29 In 1822, Lysons remarks that “ some allowance for the shrinking caused by years ago the manufacture of Honiton em- washing, the value amounted to 201, ployed 2400 hands in the town and which proved to be exactly the sum neighbouring villages. They do not now originally paid for the veil. The ground employ 300.”