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Craftsmanship of Alençon needle lace-making

Le savoir-faire de la dentelle au point d’Alençon

Source SupportedContext Required1 supporting sources

Overview

The technique of ''point d’Alençon'' is a rare technique of needle lace-making, practised in the town of Alençon in Normandy in north-west France. Alençon needle lace is unusual because of the high level of craftsmanship required and the very long time that it takes to produce (seven hours per square centimetre). The pieces of openwork textile using the technique are used for decorative purposes in civil and religious life. The piece is made up of design elements held together by a finely stitched net. Its process comprises a number of successive stages: drawing and pricking of the design on parchment, creating the outline of the design and the background netting, then the typical stitching of the patterns, shading with filling stitches, decorating with designs, and embroidering to create relief. Then the lace is removed from the parchment with a razor blade; trimmed and, finally, the...

This record is imported from the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage public dataset as discovery metadata. ARED has not independently verified community authority, access protocols or local naming beyond the source record.

Community and Authority

Communities
France
Languages
Not specified in UNESCO dataset
Cultural territories
France
Countries
France

How the System Works

The technique of ''point d’Alençon'' is a rare technique of needle lace-making, practised in the town of Alençon in Normandy in north-west France. Alençon needle lace is unusual because of the high level of craftsmanship required and the very long time that it takes to produce (seven hours per square centimetre). The pieces of openwork...

Sources and Evidence

Imported from UNESCO DataHub dataset ich001. Field-level provenance is retained in the record metadata.

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Field-Level Provenance

title
UNESCO DataHub field title_en
preferredTitle
UNESCO DataHub field title_fr
summary
UNESCO DataHub field description_en
type
UNESCO DataHub fields type_of_element_en and type_acronym
countries
UNESCO DataHub field countries, ISO codes resolved with ISO-3166 regional metadata
categories
ARED category inference from UNESCO concepts_primary_names, concepts_secondary_names and title
relationships
UNESCO concepts_primary_names, concepts_secondary_names, type fields and World Heritage links
sourceUrl
UNESCO DataHub field http_url_en
rights
UNESCO DataHub dataset metadata license and license_url

Original Source Metadata

Why This Record Is Credible

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