The composition of new patterns for lace was attempted, and old
patterns which had degenerated were revised and redrawn for the use of
the workers connected with the convents. There are now twelve convents,
Mr. Cole tells us, where instruction in drawing and in the composition of
patterns is given, and some of the students have won some of the higher
prizes offered by the Department of Science and Art for designing lace-
patterns.

The Cork School of Art then acquired a collection of finely-patterned old
laces, selections from which are freely circulated through the different
convents connected with that school. They have also the privilege of
borrowing similar specimens of old lace from the South Kensington Museum.
So successful has been the system of education pursued by Mr. Brennan,
the head-master of the Cork School of Art, that two female students of
his school last year gained the gold and silver medals for their designs
for laces and crochets at the national competition which annually takes
place in London between all the Schools of Art in the United Kingdom. As
for the many lace-makers who were not connected either with the convents
or with the art schools, in order to assist them, a committee of ladies
and gentlemen interested in Irish lace-making raised subscriptions, and
offered prizes to be competed for by designers generally. The best
designs were then placed out with lace-makers, and carried into
execution. It is, of course, often said that the proper person to make
the design is the lace-maker. Mr. Cole, however, points out that from
the sixteenth century forward the patterns for ornamental laces have
always been designed by decorative artists having knowledge of the
composition of ornament, and of the materials for which they were called
upon to design. Lace pattern books were published in considerable
quantity in Italy, France and Germany during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and from these the lace-makers worked. Many lace-
makers would, no doubt, derive benefit from practice in drawing, in
discriminating between well and badly shaped forms. But the skill they
are primarily required to show and to develop is one of fine fingers in
reproducing beautiful forms in threads. The conception, arrangement, and
drawing of beautiful forms for a design, have to be undertaken by
decorative artists acquainted with the limitations of those materials and
methods which the ultimate expression of the design involves.

This lovely Irish art of lace-making is very much indebted to Mr. Cole,
who has really re-created it, given it new life, and shown it the true
artistic lines on which to progress. Hardly 20,000 pounds a year is
spent by England upon Irish laces, and almost all of this goes upon the
cheaper and commoner kinds. And yet, as Mr. Cole points out, it is
possible to produce Irish laces of as high artistic quality as almost any
foreign laces. The Queen, Lady Londonderry, Lady Dorothy Nevill, Mrs.
Alfred Morrison, and others, have done much to encourage the Irish
workers, and it rests largely with the ladies of England whether this
beautiful art lives or dies. The real good of a piece of lace, says Mr.