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.
announcement
We are deeply saddened to announce that Chris Evans has resigned from the Lace Guild CIO board of trustees with immediate effect. Chris has been a cornerstone of Lace Guild operations for over 10 years and will be very much missed. This is very sudden and we will be working with Chris to effect a smooth and as speedy a handover as possible. Please do share this with other members of the Lace Guild and keep an eye on this page for further updates.
With all good wishes Alison, Amanda, Bryan, Emily, Lizzie and Margaret.
lacemakers of tomorrow
A free virtual event calling lacemakers to action!
SUNDAY 22ND MARCH 2026
7-9pm GMT / 2-4pm EST
Please attend if you possibly can!
To register for this event, click on the link below or scan the QR code on the leaflet image (right) with your phone.
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 UK ratified the UNESCO convention in 2024.
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.
UPDATE!
We submitted an entry for bobbin lacemaking on 13th March 2026. This submission is on behalf of all lacemakers, not just Lace Guild members.
A big thank you to all who participated in our survey, and to those who prepared the submission.
Our submission will now go to the Review and Decision Panels. If accepted, it will be prepared for publication. It is expected that the first inventories will be published in about 4 – 6 months. Watch this space!
We hope to submit other types of hand made lace in future rounds.
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.