History of Lace by Mrs Bury Palliser Publisher Dover.

ISBN0-486-24742.2

536 pages 266 illustrations

Mine is a reprint 1984 revised edition by Jourdain & Dryden from 1911

The original edition was put out in 1875 by Mrs Palliser with the subsequent revised, rewritten and enlarged edition done in 1911 by Jourdain & Dryden with additional illustrations and several portraits showing the wearing of lace. I have found it a very useful and informative book with much on laces of France then on other European, Scandinavian and Russian laces. There is a lot on the English laces too. There are lots of quotes in the book and a very extensive explanation showing where the quotes on the page come from and why the writer may not feel some of them are accurate.

The illustrations are in most cases very good and show a lot considering the book is a reproduction from 1911. It gives a great deal about the actual history of the lace and the area where it was made.

I often use it for a reference book and am surprised at how often I find quite a bit about the lace I’m looking up. For example I looked up Wiltshire laces the other day after Rod was writing about them and there were a few pages devoted to them.

It is very much the sort of book you can just sit and read when you are checking on a lace.

I have no way of remembering what I paid for the book when I bought it as I used to haunt book sales, Dymocks  ,Angus & Robertson and other book stores in Sydney and it was often surprising what I was able to pick up at a sale price.   There are sales of the book still at a very reasonable price on line even now.
Marisha Kelly 1/11/20