‘Cluny Lace’ – Everything you need to know about England’s Last Lace Maker!

Sometime, when I’m pulling on my jeans, tee-shirt, and slide into my Birkenstocks, I become incredibly nostalgic – not for months ago or even twenty years ago – no, I’m nostalgic for two hundred years ago.

Does anyone else have their “old fashioned” moods? During these bouts of historical fantasy, all I want to do is light beeswax candles, pour a cup of tea (from the pot!), and dip my quill in ink to write to my lover across the ocean. Of course, I always want to dress the part when overcome with one of my Bridgerton fantasies. There are a lot of clothing items that evoke this nonspecific old-timeyness: velvet, silk, and pearls…and, of course, LACE.

Nothing is so evocative, so reminiscent of the romantic days of yore, as lace – especially Cluny lace, which is a business teaming with historical significance.

Lace is one of those fabrics that inherently carries a romantic quality no matter how it is styled. Lace stands on its own in every context. It is delicate and elegant, refined and timeless. It is no wonder so many brides choose is as the fabric for their wedding dresses.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to speak on the subject of lace with Charles Mason, who owns the Cluny Lace Company, and almost single handedly is keeping the British Leavers Lace manufacturing alive. Remarkable people they say, come in different guises.

Charles is the quintessential Englishman. On a late summer afternoon, he welcomed me into the same office used for over 100 years and decorated with photos of earlier times lining the walls, with a cup of tea – yes, poured from the pot – and we sat down to chat about his favorite topic – Cluny lace.

His pride in the beauty of his product and his vast knowledge of the tradition of lace making in Nottingham made for a fascinating conversation! And the constant hum of the machines in the background lent a sense of timelessness.

Yes, it’s true. Cluny Lace began 250 years ago and is the last remaining lace making factory in England.

In a tall brick factory, situated in a quiet street in Ilkeston, an outlying town near the historic lace manufacturing city of Nottingham, Cluny Lace has been part of this lace-making community for well over 100 years – which, until recently, was a thriving and interdependent hive of companies. In Ilkeston alone, there once were forty or fifty other manufacturers, all making lace and specializing in a Cluny style of lace local to this area. At its height, in the 1890s, the lace industry employed over 25,000 people in the area. This slowly fell to just 5,000 by the 1970s as business steadily declined and manufacturing moved to the far east.

Cluny specializes in “Leavers Lace.” Leavers Lace, also known as the “Queen of Laces,” is a high-quality, elegant, and ornate style of lace with somewhat medieval appearance, made on 19th century Leavers lace machines (try saying that five times fast). The patterns often are of an antique and quaint style, mostly of flowers, and geometric motifs. Leavers machines were invented to replicate the traditional method of hand knotting lace.

Lacemaking is a long and labor-intensive process. It requires many stages: putting a new design on punch cards, threading dozens of bobbins of spun yarn onto the machines and stopping the machine to mend any snapped threads. Then the lace is stripped, cleaned, and prepared for dyeing.

This is the type of tale that you would expect to find in a leather-bound and gold leaf tome, a modern fairy-tale of sorts: a family-run business operating out of the English countryside, passing down a highly artistic trade from generation to generation (Charles’ mother, Sheila Mason, even wrote a definitive history of the Nottingham lace region).

However, as with many artisan goods in the post-industrial world, lacemaking is a dying art. The automatization of the process on a mass scale through advanced machinery coupled with the painstaking detail of the craft threaten its very existence.

In that sense, Cluny Lace’s continuation is a feat of human-powered grit, hard work, and investment in posterity. However, the business faces obstacles. For example, Brexit has been a major problem for Cluny. “We lost over 50% of our European business almost overnight,” Charles explained. Sending lace to France for dyeing now requires significant Customs documentation, adding to administrative load and delivery timelines.

In another vein, the demise of lace manufacturing in the area has meant the disappearance of the skills required to set up the machines and to oversee the lace-making process. Charles says, “if we recruit anybody new, we have to train them from the beginning. The old hands have all gone.”

That all being said, Leavers Lace still has its market. In Ilkeston, Charles maintains links with high-profile brands such as Vivienne Westwood, Christian Dior, Alexander McQueen, Dolce and Gabbana, and Burberry.

And who can forget that Princess Diana’s famous wedding dress was created with Cluny Lace! And more recently, in front page news, Catherine, Princess of Wales (Kate Middleton) and her bridesmaids wore Cluny Lace on her wedding day to Prince William.

Charles is also keenly aware of what’s on the forefront of fashion in the future: sustainability. “We are looking at developments in adding sustainability to our laces and testing the sustainable cotton yarns as we speak.”

As far as I’m concerned, lace will never go out of style!

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