Lace Maker

Irish needle lace is not woven and not knitted. It is drawn. In Carrickmacross the maker lays fine muslin over machine net, tacks the design through both layers, outlines it with a couched thread and then cuts the surplus muslin away with tiny scissors, so the pattern seems to float. Kenmare is a different craft again, a raised needlepoint built entirely from buttonhole stitch worked over a paper pattern, brought to the town by the Poor Clare nuns in 1861 and taught to local girls as a way of earning. Both were skills of hard decades, ways of putting money into houses that had none, and both survived for the same reason: women kept teaching them to other women. They are still doing it. There are classes in Kenmare, a co-operative and gallery in Carrickmacross, and a national guild running lace days around the country every year.