Leavers lace

Leavers lace is machine-made lace produced on the machine that John Levers, a frame smith, built in Nottingham in 1813. The name is also spelled Levers, which is how William Felkin writes it in his 1867 history of the machine lace trade.

What was the Leavers machine?

According to Felkin, it was a modification of John Heathcoat's patented bobbin net machine, the "Old Loughborough", with all the carriages and bobbins in a single tier. Levers worked in secret in a garret and never took out a patent. His first machine was eighteen inches wide. Felkin also dates a new development in lace to the mid-1830s, when Jacquard apparatus and pierced bars allowed lace to be patterned in the process of making. The Textile Research Centre in Leiden says the machine produces imitations of handmade bobbin laces.

How can you tell it from handmade lace?

In Leiden's comparisons of Leavers copies with handmade bobbin lace, the machine fillings have a more parallel structure with obvious V-shaped movements, no pinholes, and an edge made separately and added later. The outline thread, called the gimp, shows only on the front. In the handmade pieces the threads follow the shapes, the edge grows with the lace and the two sides are the same.

Sources

1. A History of the Machine-Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures (1867). William Felkin
2. Lace Identification: 7 Examples. Textile Research Centre, Leiden

See also

• Bobbin lace
• Tulle
• Chemical lace

Read more

• Handmade or Machine? How to Read a Piece of Lace

Last updated October 17, 2026 · Markdown