Even though Steven and I had already spent several nights in Bruges, there was still more we wanted to see after gawking at Renaissance Hall and City Hall. Just a couple of short blocks from Markt was City Theater that had been built in 1889 after several buildings were torn down. Built at a time of Flemish cultural revival when Dutch-speaking Belgians wanted to differentiate themselves from the powerful French-speaking citizens of Belgium, the Dutch-language theater was a source of great pride.
A few steps away was the Old Stock Exchange or Oude Beurseplein that was even older than the one in Amsterdam who claims to have the oldest one! It started with the Van de Beurse family in the 13th century and variations of their name, Beurse, have been adopted by most European languages to mean a stock exchange - bourse, borsa, etc. To start and end meetings of traders, a bell would be rung, a custom used still.
Just after the old stock market was the Burghers' Lodge, a meeting place for the town's businessmen, similar to the Rotary Clubs of today.
I was relieved to have travel writer Rick Steves' notes to know that the golden letters above the fancy doorway added up to 1665, the year the building was rebuilt after a catastrophic fire.
The adjacent Jan Van Eckplein or square honored the famous hometown painter with a statue and his name listed in both Dutch and French, the two languages of the city.
Van Eck's French backside faced another of Bruges' pretty-as-a-postcard canals.
If you thought these fire-engine red doors may once have been home to a fire station, kudos to you! Before that, though, the building was the city's tollhouse. Vessels needed to stop here to pay taxes before proceeding to Markt as the canal used to go several more blocks.
Just left of the tollhouse was an extraordinarily skinny façade of a building that was the Dockworkers House.
Here finally is the answer to why there were so, so many statues of Mary in Antwerp and here in Bruges! During the 18th century when the city was in financial distress and needed sprucing up, local authorities made an agreement with landowners - if the latter added a statue of Mary, the city would put up a gas light! That way the landowner benefitted both from the added security and more light. This statue was in a niche on an upper level of a building so it took some searching to find it.
What a delight just strolling along the canal. We loved doing the same in Amsterdam a few years ago but the canal 'scene' in Bruges is so much more peaceful and hands-down more charming in my opinion.
Nope, I'm not including the same photo twice - this one had the added bonus of a horse and buggy!
If you read the earlier posts about Bruges, you probably recall how much I loved our time in the city. Another reason was its eye-catching window boxes. Not one home we saw had any lawn or front porch so a homeowner's green thumb was expressed in the small space out front, i.e. their window boxes.
An entire block was given over to the Folk Museum, the businesses that kept Bruges in the limelight during its heyday in the 1600s. The museum was located in a row of interconnected, 17th-century almshouses. As we'd already toured other almshouses in Bruges, we gave this one a pass.
Just down the quiet street was the Lace Center where we watched an engrossing interview with an older lacemaker who told us the history of lace and how it had once been a critical industry for women in Bruges.
The word 'lace' came from Latin and means a type of net. Lacemaking began in the 16th century. There were two techniques to making lace, braided and bobbin. Bobbin lace became a thriving industry in the Flanders region of Belgium. Braided lace, also called needle lace, evolved from embroidery work.
This was an example of the lace's early period and was called 'hunger cloth' so that the altar would be hidden from the eyes of the faithful, I think.
The conversion of plain white thread into a luxury product was mostly performed by women who lived in poor conditions. The techniques were often passed down from mother to daughter.
With the European explorers and domination of foreign lands, religion, normally Catholicism, was also 'exported.' When nuns traveled around the world, they taught women in other countries how to make lace. That happened in Peru in the 1600s, for instance, and also in China in the 1800s. The nuns also took the tradition to Japan and India. Under European influence, lace evolved worldwide into an independent element in fashion.
In the late 1800s, when machine lace arrived on the market, interest in and production of handmade lace declined. Machine lace was attractive but it also threatened employment for lace workers. In 1911 the lace teachers' school began in Bruges. That was soon followed by many lace schools and production centers in the city.
Girls as young as seven or eight attended lace school, including the narrator, where they learned to read patterns. The lace school was run by nuns and was attended by girls from 7:30-noon and 1:30-7 with a break for a sandwich at 9 and noon. Regular school lessons were also taught in the first and second years.
Lacework was mostly done by poor women as convents played a major role in providing education for girls from lower classes in Bruges. By teaching the girls lacemaking, the convents also helped them earn a living. Lace was often made in orphanages up until the late 1800s.
Though lacemaking was a very poor existence, it did provide a livelihood and, as the narrator's grandmother said, "It was still considered better than nothing. I would rather work my fingers bare than go to the church and ask for (financial) support."
The lacemaker explained more refined lacework nevertheless still exists because it cannot yet be copied by a machine. Worldwide Bruges is still one of the most important cities to come to in order to learn about lacemaking.
This was a man's 17th-century collar made in the bobbin lace style.
Can you just imagine fanning yourself with this late 19th-century fan made from Brussels needle lace?
I read that lace begins with two basic movements made each time with just four bobbins: cross and twist. Different combinations of the movements form the three basic stitches. After WW I, the Bruges lace teachers' school developed a system of colors and symbols for drafting a working diagram and converting it into a pattern. The Bruges color code has become the world standard for lacemaking even today.
What essentially distinguishes different types of lace is the network of regular geometric holes or meshes that form the background for the figures or decorative features. The 18th-century saw certain regions begin specializing and developing characteristic lace from old Flemish lace. The lace was named for the region it originated in, i.e. Mechline, Binche, etc, even after it was produced elsewhere later.
With bobbin lace style, bobbins could be added or removed so motifs could be worked separately and attached to others. As a result, lace decorations could cover a wider area and the work could be parceled out among several lacemakers. I would have liked to know if 'tension' or the tightness of how the threads are used is an issue in lacemaking as it is with knitters.
This Milanese Bobbin Lace from the second half of the 17th- century was the Italian counterpart of Old Flemish lace and was described as having "the prominence of cloth stitch in the decorative features."
About 200 hundred years ago, statues in churches were dressed in luxurious and fashionable lace. This stunning piece was made for the Christ child.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was common to see lacemakers at work in the streets. In this neighborhood, which was the parish of St. Anne, there was an enormous concentration of lacemakers and small lace schools. The museum was frank in pointing out that the Bruges lace industry was a low-earnings industry with exploitation and child labor, appallingly low piece rates, strong competition among workers, and no labor regulations.
Upstairs in the museum, a teacher was instructing a group of mostly young women in the art of lacemaking.
I would love to have peppered this young woman sitting nearest the door with questions as, even after spending an hour in the museum, I had no sense of the different methods of lacemaking, how the lace was being created, what she was making, how long it took, etc. I could see her moving bobbins between her fingers but couldn't see the work being achieved as a result. Even with that frustration, our visit to the Lace Center had been very worthwhile as we saw some exquisite lace pieces and learned of the hardships earlier lacemakers had creating works of art.
Visiting the St. Janshuys Windmill, we learned that Bruges had 28 windmills in its heyday during the 1600s when they were used mostly to grind grain. This one was funded by bakers when it was built in 1770. I had had no idea that windmill keepers had to be as adept as sailors with the riggings to cover the blades with canvas as conditions required.
Built in the early 15th century, Kruisport was the best-preserved of the four remaining city gates in Bruges.
A short distance away was the Koelewei Windmill.
The other side of the Lace Center:
This was the perfect final photo of Bruges, a city I just loved for being very walkable, a mini-Venice for the canals, a mini-Amsterdam for its windmills, containing two top of the line churches and museums in the Basilica of the Holy Blood and Sint-Janshospitaal, the dreamy Burg Square, and a haven for discerning chocolate and lace lovers!
Next post: A day trip to Ghent to see the supposedly world-famous Ghent Altarpiece - no, we hadn't heard about it before either!
Posted on October 10th, 2021, from Varenna on Lake Como in northern Italy. It's hard to imagine a more beautiful site than this but we're about to find out as we have five weeks in Italy!
Loved the first photo of the angel in waiting. Janina
ReplyDeleteJanina,
ReplyDeleteThe baby and young girl clothes in the windows were a grandmother's delight, believe me. The costs, however, were astronomical!
Annie