The Laces of Ispwich : The Art and Economics of an Early American Industry, 1750-1840

In its lace making heyday in the late eighteenth century, Ipswich, Massachusetts boasted 600 lace makers in a town of only 6OI households.

Marta Cotterell Raffel's study is the first to focus specifically on the Ipswich lace industry in the wider world of eighteenth-century work.

She explores how lacemakers learned their skills and how they combined a traditional lace making education with attention to market-driven changes in style.

She shows how the tools of lacemaking were intrinsic parts of the craft, and how the shawls, bonnets, and capes created by the lacemakers designated the social class, and sometimes even the political affiliation, of those that wore them.

With extensive research based on hundreds of previously unseen artifacts and documents, Raffel shows how this preindustrial labor and craft - absolutely central to the economic health of Ipswich - created and sustained forms of early American culture such as fashion and political symbolism, and shaped an entire community for several generations.