Welcome to the Lace Guild
Home of both Traditional Craft and Textile Innovation
The Lace Guild is the largest lace organisation in the United Kingdom and is an accredited museum with a large collection of lace and associated artefacts. The Guild produces two quarterly magazines, Lace and Early Days in Lacemaking, and publishes books of lace techniques and patterns. Our aims are to:
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To provide information about the craft of lacemaking, its history and use.
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To promote a high standard of lacemaking.
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To encourage the design, development and professional presentation of lace.
bobbin lace in danger!
The Lace Guild’s submission to the UK list of Living Heritage
Many of you are undoubtedly already aware that, in 2025, bobbin lacemaking was added to the Heritage
Crafts Red List of Endangered Crafts.
Heritage Crafts is the UK national charity for traditional heritage crafts. They are a UNESCO accredited NGO for Intangible Cultural Heritage (also called Living Heritage). They are an official Community Support Hub for the UK Government’s Living Heritage in the UK inventory, and have advocated for UK ratification of the UNESCO Convention of the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2010.
The first round of submissions is now being invited for the UK Government’s Inventories of Living Heritage.
The deadline for submissions is 27 March 2026.
The Lace Guild believes that lacemaking should be on this inventory and is making a submission for bobbin lacemaking on behalf of all lacemakers (not just Lace Guild members). We hope to submit other types of hand made lace in future rounds.
An Expression of Interest (EOI) has been entered with the wording: “Bobbin lace is a form of woven fabric which gets its name from the handles (bobbins) on which the thread is wound. It has been made professionally in England since Elizabeth I and is now made throughout the UK by knowledgeable and enthusiastic practitioners.”
You can view this EOI by visiting Living Heritage EOIs and searching for “lace”.
Before we can complete our submission, we need to demonstrate that the bobbin lacemaking community ( i.e. lacemakers, collectors, bobbin and equipment makers, etc.) and its supporters consent to the application.
Please could you complete this short survey (before 13 March 2026) to indicate whether you support our application. You do not need to be a Lace Guild member. Please ask your lace friends and lace group or class members to complete the survey too. We do not need your name or contact details.
Thank you for your input.
Our Magazines
We offer two quarterly magazines to members of the Guild, published at the end of July, October, January and April.
Lace is the main magazine, 64 pages of articles, community news and patterns.
Early Days In Lacemaking is aimed at novice lacemakers, and contains around 30 pages of mostly easy patterns.
Our Museum and Library
Current Exhibition at The Hollies
Recent Acquisitions
7 February 2026 - 25 April 2026
In 2025 a varied and interesting cross section of Laces of various types and ages, lacemaking tools and ephemera were taken into The Lace Guild’s Collection; the majority were donations from both the general public and our members. None of these items have been exhibited before.
We asked two of our Museum Volunteers (Elise Naish and Iain Donald) to undertake the daunting task of selecting the items for inclusion from the many hundreds they had helped catalogue and accession over last year.