Virtually all lace today is made on machines. Handmade lace, so dear to old ladies, is an insignificant item in world trade, and most of it is made not in Europe but in China. France and England are ...

I’m the ninth generation of my family to be in the lace trade. The Cluny Lace factory, near Nottingham, was built in the 1880s, but we had machines in Ilkeston and Long Eaton before then. By the 1730s ...