Gradually we had enough photos by some makers that we created albums to collate them in. We would research the maker and add in a short bio. Using the wayback machine, we'd look at the few websites that exisited at the turn of the century (most bobbin makers were still using paper catalogues) and augment our bios from there. So, one year after Jo and I started, we choose a website url, I registered it on 12th April 2022 and created the outline website. I initially copied the format of my own bobbin blog, on my personal website, and brought over the key makers that I'd started with, adding photos of our supporters bobins from the FTM album.
Creating a simply id page was more challenging. The website that we host the collection on didn't offer the ability to create a table and add in images of the heads and tails so I was faced with hard coding the html to do this. Initially not a big problem as I do predate the invention of the worldwide-web and my first sites were all hard coded, but as we realised the project was growing so big, it was unsustainable. Now I hold the ID summary on a web based spreadsheet that I can update from anywhere and it automatically renders onto the website, in real time. (for the techies out there I used an iframe to surface it and set the parameters so it will work as well as we can for such a large amount of data on mobiles).
This makes our project a living breathing thing that just goes on and on with more data (photos) being added and reminisences about makers who have gone before us.
So, bear with us as we carefully migrate the data over to this site from our fb albums. We are double checking each photo and bio info. It only gets posted here after it's been QA'd. For me, I feel that this project is in the spirit of Brenda Paternoster's seminal work; Threads of Lace. That started as a slim volume covering the best known threads and grew into 7 editions and a hefty book by the end.
0 Comments
Jo Buckberry writes: As we are getting a lot of questions about this I’m posting this as an announcement, with comments turned off. I buy most of my bobbins at lace fairs and lace days. Keep an eye out for events, and try to attend - there are fewer and fewer of these due to decreased footfall, please support them! You can buy bobbins online - Lace Suppliers Spotlight (mostly new from suppliers) and Bobbin Lace Market (mostly second hand) on Facebook are great groups. If you look our ID Summary page we've marked if they are currentyly active and we have included their website, Etsy shop or email address as appropriate. You can also get second hand bobbins (and books and pillows) from the Lace Guild.
I’ve not seen bobbins for sale in a shop in 15+ years, but you might get lucky. Hope this helps 26/4/2024 0 Comments By lacemakers for lacemakersAround 4 years ago, Jo Buckberry and I were talking about how the late 20th Century lacemaking revival in the UK had sparked so many great bobbin makers. We were looking at how we could capture information on what were now becoming vintage bobbins and make sure that the oral history of these bobbin makers was not lost. Our initial idea was to start a facebook group and get people to post photos of their bobbins into albums for each maker or painter. We thought that if we were lucky, we might get, if push came to shove, about 50 like minded lacemakers willing to share pictures of their bobbins and notes on their memories of different bobbin makers. Well, over Easter we hit 2021 members. In the past year, we have had 73k views of our posts. Yep, you read that right, Seventy Three Thousand views.
That's about 200 views a day. And over 156 posts. You'd think that by now, we'd have run out of things to say about bobbins but no, it seems that we tidying up our attics and cupboards and finding brochures and notes from different bobbin turners and painters. In fact, we now have 159 people identified and in our albums. Yes, most are from the UK, but we have a few from other countries. It looks like I'm going to be very busy transferring all of these to the website at some point. Liz Baker - webmistress |
|
Privacy & Cookie Policy
This site was designed and built by the Liz Baker FIDM
© Rothwell Bobbins & thelacebee 2021 Onwards
This site was designed and built by the Liz Baker FIDM
© Rothwell Bobbins & thelacebee 2021 Onwards