VAM galleries including this work:
The Kentucky Library and Museum | Do You See a Pattern? | How’d They Do That? || VAM Home

Tatting, or the process of making lacework by knotting or looping using a shuttle or needle, is an example of a Victorian women’s domestic art. Here, a rosette pattern has been repeatedly tatted and joined together.

About the Artist

Nannie Chaney Crabtree was born to James Riley and Emma L. Chaney on September 5, 1893, in Hart County, Kentucky, one of seven children. She married F. Osborn Crabtree of the same county, and the couple lived in Peoria, Illinois, in the mid-1940s. Several years after her husband’s death in 1952, Nannie moved back to Kentucky to live with her sister Maud in Warren County. The only reference to Crabtree having been employed is in the 1967 Bowling Green City Directory, which lists her as retired. Crabtree outlived all of her immediate family and died in Bowling Green on July 11, 1981.

Classroom Ideas

Discussion: What repeating pattern or patterns do you see in the collar? What is tatting? Do people still tat today? What are other ways to make lace?

Activities: Bring in items made of lace for a class display.

Draw your own lace pattern with colored pencils or a computer drawing program.

Use a tatting shuttle and try your hand at a simple pattern.

Links

Read about tatting in the Wikipedia.
[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatting]

The page about the Crabtree tatted collar on the Kentucky Library and Museum web site includes a detail image.
[www.wku.edu/Library/onlinexh/kwa/crabtree.html]

Two tatting enthusiasts’ web sites, Tattered and Tatting, includes examples, instructions, and historical background.
[www.picotnet.com]
[www.ilchiacchierino.com]

Bella Online’s tatting page includes some online lace jigsaw puzzles.
[www.bellaonline.com/site/tatting]
[www.bellaonline.com/subjects/4990.asp]

Find out more about lace at the Lace Museum and Guild.
[www.thelacemuseum.org]