By Molly-Claire Gillett
Published in Journal of Design History, January 2025.
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Abstract

Between 1883 and 1897, the British Department of Science and Art’s lace expert Alan S. Cole (1846–1934) made eleven official visits to Ireland to lecture, inspect lacemaking and design centers, and report on his findings. His interventions contributed to a period of growth and development in the industry, which had been introduced as a philanthropic venture in the mid-nineteenth century. However, Cole’s widely circulated writings on lace design and making produced between 1884 and 1897 also reveal ambivalence and inconsistency, particularly in relation to questions of mechanization in the lace industry, the agency of lacemakers, the relationship between good design and the demands of the market, and the home as a locus for lace production. This essay outlines Cole’s involvement in the Irish lace industry, placing his reports in the context of contemporary design education strategies and texts on lacemaking, and considering how he frames the industry—in particular, lacemakers and the spaces of lacemaking—in ways that negotiate the often conflicting needs of the market, design education bodies, and philanthropists, and intersect with colonial, gender, and class-based imperatives to mold, monitor, and represent Irish women and their homes.