In 2020, the permanent exhibition ‘18th Century Fashion’ at the Rundāle Palace Museum was enriched by an object whose purpose and function require further commentary. It was an 18th century French knotting shuttle, handcrafted from mother-of-pearl and decorated with a silver floral motif and rocaille designs. The shuttle consists of two lace-like ovals joined in the middle by a spool for winding the thread. The term ‘frivolité’ mentioned in the object’s description evokes a popular contemporary handicraft lacemaking technique using small, looped circles of knots. However, this shuttle differs from the ones used today. It is larger in size and its application was rather different too. The question is: how did women of the 18th century use this object?
Handicraft technique ‘frivolité’ in the 18th century
In 18th century Europe, frivolité was a pastime for women who belonged to the upper classes – relaxed and casual, which is how it eventually developed its name around 1750. This carefree, practical activity often served as a way to idle the time away during social gatherings. Several portraits of upper-class ladies, produced at the time, show them with a shuttle in their right hand and the finished cord stretching from the shuttle to their knotting bag.
Here is a detail of the portrait of Madame Marie Elisabeth de Séré de Rieux painted by Antoine Coypel in 1743. The finished cord is tied into even knots. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York)
Detail of the portrait of Madame Dangé, painted by Jean Louis Tocqué in 1753. The evenly spaced knots and the madame’s knotting bag are clearly visible. (Louvre Museum)
The Russian painter Ivan Argunov in his 1760 portrait of Anna Petrovna Sheremeteva, had not paid enough attention to the handicraft technique, hence showing the knots in the cord as reaching all the way to the knotting shuttle. (Detail, Kuskovo Memorial Estate in Moscow.)
The Archduchess of Austria, Marie Antoinette, future queen of France, working with her frivolité knotting shuttle in a 1762 drawing by Jean-Etienne Liotard. (Detail, Museum of Art and History in Geneva.)
The artist Georges Desmarées has painted the Saxon princess Marie-Anne with the shuttle in her right hand and a knotting bag resting over her left arm. (Detail, c. 1764, Palace of Versailles.)
Madame Elizabeth de la Vallée de la Roche, portrayed in a 1771 painting by artist Michel Pierre Hubert Descours. The blue cord is tightly knotted. A knotting bag decorated with her family’s coat-of-arms, rests on her left arm. (Detail, Bowes Museum, UK.)
Lady Seymour Fort, in a 1780 painting by John Singleton Copley, appears with the thread pulled taut between the fingers of her left hand, allowing her to create knots using the knotting shuttle. A knotting bag rests over her arm. (Detail, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, USA.)
Margot Wheatley’s 1786 portrait of Francis Alleyne depicts the evenly spaced knots. (Detail, Yale Center for British Art, USA.)
Few descriptions remain of how these knotting cords were used in practice. One such source is Charles Germain de Saint-Aubin’s book L’Art du Brodeur, published in 1770, which describes their use in embroidery to emphasise the contours of a pattern. It contains drawings of different cords: one type with a row of single overhand knots, another with a double-sided shuttle knot, and a third type with tassels, made by slitting the knots.
Mary Delany’s letters provide another reference. She was a popular artist and craftswoman, favoured by the English court – King George III even presented her with a house in Windsor. Delany became famous for her flower paper-cutting and her lively correspondence with several notable people of her time. In one of her letters, she writes that she has knotted the fringes of a knotting purse, using a golden shuttle that the king himself had gifted her. Another letter states that she’s made chair covers with a looped linen frivolité trim. Chair and bed covers made of linen with simple plant motifs and delicate winding stems were in fashion in England during the second half of the 18th century. One could embroider these rather quickly using the ready-made frivolité cords. Quite possibly, these cords were also used for garment trims – for instance, in finishing the edging of fastenings on a bodice, designed to be tied with lace.
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London displays several balls of knotted silk cord, along with tassels and fringes made from this material. All of these have been dated to the second half of the 18th century. The knotted cords, made of silk thread, were particularly delicate, which is why so few examples have survived to this day.
The shuttles themselves were typically made of metal, timber, mother-of-pearl or ivory. The most luxurious samples were adorned with gold or silver.
This gold shuttle from 1771 was made by the goldsmith Matthew Coigny, with a special velvet-lined case that went with it. (Ouaiss Antiquités gallery, Paris)
The shuttles signified the social status of their owners, which is why they were often made from exclusive materials, including tortoiseshell. The shuttles used in the 18th century were larger than the ones used nowadays: they were 13–16 cm long and 2–5 cm wide. Along with the thread, the knotting shuttles were carried around in special bags or purses which became a staple fashion accessory in ladies’ 18th century attire.
Knotting was a form of amusement. Ladies had no need to make the cord themselves – these cords could be bought ready-made, since the production of various trim materials was very advanced at the time. One could learn the craft of making passementerie, cords and ribbons, and even obtain the title of master craftsman. Artisans of the 18th century would create various trimming ribbons for ladies’ garments including puckered, specially pleated fabric ribbons; open-work lace ribbons; braided passementerie ribbons; as well as braids with silk tassels, known in France as sourcil de hanneton (‘beetle bristles’) and in English as flos fringe or fly fringe. These were narrow bands with small silk thread tassels on the edges, created from trimmed knot tassels that had been braided into a single cord. Chenille threads, covered with tiny tufts, were also in use. This method is still used today to make decorative cords with tassels, primarily employing the frivolité technique where the outer loops are slit.
Various trim ribbons. 1735. (Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York)
Origins of the frivolité technique
Several authors attribute the origins of the frivolité technique to knotting. The method of knotting was already known in Ancient Egypt, and it was also used in China as garment finish. Travellers may have brought these methods to Europe from there. However, the technique of knotting in Europe was quite different.
In medieval Europe, knotting of various kinds was popular. Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400) even mentions it in his Canterbury Tales. Charlotte of Savoy (1441–1483) owned various cords with knotted gold and silver tassels, while Queen Mary Tudor of England (1516–1558) was such a devoted knotter that she would even bring her shuttle and cords on her journeys.
What differentiated the knotted cords from the web-like knotting, and when did they first appear? It’s known that 16th century Italian nuns made knotted lace with fringes. Few articles of knotted lace from the 16th century survive in museums. They resemble macramé woven bands with fringes.
Opinions differ over whether this form of handicraft originated in England or France. In England, the use of knotted cords can be found in 17th century samples of embroidery.
The term for this knotting technique differs across languages: frivolité in French; Schiffchenarbeit in German, tatting in English, chiaccherino or occhi in Italian, makouk in Arabic, sukkulapitsi in Finnish. Some of these terms originated only in the 19th century. The Italian term best describes the detail of this technique, as it forms shapes similar to eyes.
In early 18th century Germany, this technique was known as Knötgen knüpffen (‘the tying of knots’). The shuttle in German was called Schiffchen (‘a ship’), and this description often appears in the Latvian language too. The book Nutzbares, galantes und curioses Frauenzimmer – Lexikon, published in 1715 in Leipzig, describes two joined, elongated timber or ivory plates with sharpened tips, holding a spool in the middle, that enables a thread to be wound on it for knotting. Here’s how the book describes the method of knotting: ‘It’s a customary skill for women: using long white, double-twisted threads, they use the shuttle to tie loops tightly next to each other, thus creating knots.’ Using this method, they were also able to create fringes and tassels for curtains.
The development of frivolité in the 19th and 20th centuries
The beginning of the 19th century saw the development of smaller knotting shuttles which could be used for creating decorations of a more complex nature. Château de Malmaison collection contains the French Empress Joséphine’s purse, which was adorned with tiny knotted frivolité festoons named after her – picot Joséphine.
Contemporary frivolité techniques have been documented in handicraft manuals since 1821, when new methods for making more complex compositions were developed.
Anna Barbara van Meerten’s book Penélopé, of Maandwerk aan het vrouwelijk Geslacht toegewijd, published in Amsterdam in 1829, depicts frivolité festoons, known as the Saxon festoons. Shaped like a semicircle, they contain seven free loops on the outer edge.
The Ladies’ Handbook of Millinery, Dressmaking, and Tatting, published in 1843, describes the position of the fingers for frivolité, along with advice on how to make stars for decorating children’s caps, and how to trim handkerchief edging with frivolité festoons.
From 1850 to 1866, eleven books were published by the French lacemaker and needleworker Eléonore Riego de la Branchardière. These contained samples of frivolité that introduced more refined designs of so-called Joséphine’s loop – an open or tight circle, made of knots that had been grouped together in complex compositions.
This simple method of lacemaking became extremely popular at the beginning of the 20th century when countless books with examples and instructions of frivolité ornaments were published.
Thérèse de Dillmont’s book La Frivolité, published in 1900, depicts the different stages of casting frivolité loops.
Alongside complex examples of frivolité, Julia Sanders’s book Tatting Patterns (1915) showcases several types of frivolité cord – simple and reinforced, both of which use a thick base thread.
Tina Frauberger studied the history of frivolité. In her book Schiffchenspitze (1919), she argued that while little is known of the more ancient period, the skills have been preserved, passed on and refined from generation to generation.
The frivolité technique allowed for finishing the edging on garment trims, creating festoons and lace around handkerchiefs, napkins, or even tablecloths and collars. It was a relatively simple way of lacemaking. The more complex versions were created with the use of several shuttles. As a material, silk was replaced by cotton or linen thread. Contemporary shuttles can measure up to 8 cm long and 1.5 cm wide, with very pointed tips and made of slippery material. Shuttles with a crochet hook for a tip were used in making more complex articles; the crochet hook could also be used separately, to join up the different elements. In Latvia, this method of knotting lace can be learned at the decorative folk-art studio Bārbele, led by Gita Prīberga. Today, frivolité is also a favoured technique in jewellery making.
Author: Lauma Lancmane,
RPM long-term employee
26.11.2024