by Barbara Ballantyne

Takes a close look at the lives and work of the crochet lace designers of the Victorian era, especially of Mlle Riego de la Branchardière.  This talented and prolific designer of many forms of needlework has been given the credit for ‘inventing’ Irish crochet, but his book reveals that she and the other English designers made only a very small contribution to Irish crochet design.