When I am researching the origins of vintage tatting patterns I visit The Archive of Tatting Books in Public Domain hosted by the Online Tatting Class, The Antique Pattern Library, and Project Gutenberg. These three repositories have literally hundreds of publications available for free download for all tatters. And they share documents to ensure that access will be available to all. You will find links to many of these books listed on the Free Tatting Books Online page here at BellaOnline.com (http://www.bellaonline.com/subjects/3137.asp). The Antique Pattern Library is the fast growing reference source to my knowledge.
Sytske Wijnsma keeps me informed of new postings. She works with Judith Adele and several others to scan craft pattern publications that are in the public domain, to preserve them, so that our craft heritages stays safely in our hands. Most of these scans have been graphically edited to make the images easier for craft workers to see, and to reduce file sizes. They are available, for free, to anyone who wants them, for educational, personal, artistic and other creative uses.
Surprisingly, I learned that there are people on the board that never sewed a thread in their life but have a lively interest in the arts and crafts, and as the joint collection contains craft books as well, they decided to expand from needlework only to woodworking, architecture design, drawing, calligraphy and the like. New Media Arts incorporated and obtained tax exempt status as a 501(c)(3) EIN 27-2500171 public charity in 2010. Their mission is to develop graphical, theatrical, literary, educational, library and other fine and practical arts on the internet, in 3D graphical user interfaces, multimedia, new generation computing devices, and other electronic and digital communication media. All of the work is accomplished online and in virtual world platforms, and their directors and officers are in six U.S. states, Canada and the Netherlands.
These public domain works are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. To view a copy of this license, visit Creative Commons licenses or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA 94305 USA. Antique Pattern Library (APL) (antiquepatternlibrary.org) which began in 2006 as an email list to share pattern books in the public domain, has grown to include a forum of a little over 5000 members, whose donations cover our organization's website costs, and about 70 volunteers who scan, edit, and catalog books, and help with the database. Your donations may be tax deductible, depending on your tax status and tax jurisdiction. (I donate through paypal, safe and secure - GS.)
There are other ways to help besides cash donations (which pay for the website hosting and other library costs.) are most welcome. The Antique Pattern Library is always looking for old craft books! They also need volunteers to do graphics editing and to help proof read the catalog listings. There are many people who have donated scans and books, and also people helping with the scanning and editing. But there is still loads of work to do in terms of publications. There's around 500 publications currently available, and another 1500 waiting to be scanned, edited, published, and each week more come in than get published.
Currently our main bottleneck is scanning, as most books waiting to be scanned can't just be shipped to somebody with a scanner - shipping costs and insurance are prohibitive. Once the scans are done, volunteers can help with the editing and with putting pdfs together. The research for copyright status that needs to be done before we can publish is another bottleneck. That is actually something everybody with a computer can do.
The Antique Pattern Library has a Most Wanted list. It currently contains books by Mme Hardouins Crochet Artistique, Wolf Dupeyrons Filet Ancien 9 and 10, Wolf Dupeyrons Alphabets et Chiffres, Wolf Dupeyrons Point de Venise, Priscilla Macrame, Priscilla Armenian Lace, Priscilla Junior books, Priscilla Wool Crochet and Ullsteins Jumperbuch. Anybody having or seeing one of these books for sale, is encouraged to contact the Antique Pattern Library.
Tatters are so fortunate to have these resources available to us. Please join the movement to preserve vintage patterns and books. Here's the latest article from the Tatting site at BellaOnline.com. Tatting Plus Needleweaving Tatting has been combined with needle weaving with stunning results. http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art35899.asp Please visit tatting.bellaonline.com for even more great content about Tatting. To participate in free, fun online discussions, this site has a community forum all about Tatting located here - http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=39 I hope to hear from you sometime soon, either in the forum or in response to this email message. I thrive on your feedback! Have fun passing this message along to family and friends, because we all love free knowledge! Georgia Seitz, Tatting Editor http://tatting.bellaonline.com One of hundreds of sites at BellaOnline.com
