About
The Lace Guild Museum, at the headquarters of The Lace Guild in Stourbridge, holds one of the finest collections of lace and lacemaking material in the country — a treasury of an exquisite and demanding craft that for centuries combined artistry, patience, and extraordinary manual skill. Based at The Hollies, the Guild is the largest lacemaking organisation in the United Kingdom, and its museum preserves and displays historic and contemporary lace from Britain and around the world, alongside the bobbins, pillows, patterns, and tools that reveal how this delicate fabric was, and still is, made by hand.
Lace has a rich and surprisingly important history. In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries it was a luxury commodity, a marker of status and wealth worn by royalty and the aristocracy, and a vital cottage industry that gave employment — often to women and children — across whole regions of England and Europe. The museum's collections illustrate the great traditions of handmade lace: the bobbin (or pillow) lace of the English East Midlands lace counties and of continental centres such as Flanders, the needle lace of Italy and France, the celebrated Honiton lace of Devon, and the machine-made lace that transformed the industry from the nineteenth century, centred on Nottingham.
Through its displays of historic pieces, costume accessories, sample books, and equipment, the museum tells the story of lace as both art and industry — the techniques and regional styles, the economics of the trade, the lives of the lacemakers, and the role of lace in fashion and society. As the museum of a living craft organisation, it also champions lacemaking today, supporting the Guild's members and the continuation of the skill into the present. Modest in size but rich in beauty and significance, The Lace Guild Museum is a place of pilgrimage for lacemakers and textile enthusiasts, and a revelation to anyone who has never appreciated the intricate world hidden within a piece of lace.
Categories:
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- As a small museum at a working organisation's headquarters, opening can vary — telephone or check ahead before travelling, especially for group visits.
- Lacemakers should allow time for the on-site shop, which stocks bobbins, threads, patterns, and books that are hard to find elsewhere.
- Ask about lacemaking classes, workshops, and demonstrations run by The Lace Guild at The Hollies if you would like to try the craft yourself.
- The museum is at Audnam between Stourbridge and Wordsley; free on-site parking makes driving the easiest option, with buses along the A491.
- Combine your visit with the nearby Stourbridge Glass Museum and Red House Glass Cone to explore the area's celebrated glassmaking heritage.
- Take your time with the fine needle and Honiton lace — the intricacy rewards close looking, and the displays explain how each piece was made.
- Group visits with talks and demonstrations can be arranged by appointment and are a highlight for textile and craft societies.
- The Black Country Living Museum at Dudley is a short drive away for a fuller day exploring the region's industrial and craft history.
Highlights
Bobbin (Pillow) Lace
Bobbin lace, also known as pillow lace, is made by braiding and twisting threads wound on bobbins over a pattern pinned to a pillow — a technique requiring great skill and concentration. The museum displays fine examples from the English East Midlands lace counties of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Northamptonshire, as well as the great continental centres such as Flanders.
The collection illustrates the regional styles and patterns that distinguished one tradition from another, and the equipment — pillows, bobbins, and pricked patterns — used to create them.
For many visitors, seeing how bobbin lace is built thread by thread is a revelation.
Needle Lace
Needle lace, worked with a single needle and thread to build up a fabric of stitches, is among the most prized and labour-intensive of all lace techniques. The museum's needle lace holdings include examples of the great Italian and French traditions — such as the celebrated points of Venice and Alençon — that adorned the costume of European royalty and nobility.
These exquisite pieces, sometimes representing months or years of work, demonstrate the extraordinary heights to which the craft of lace could rise, and explain why fine needle lace was once worth more than its weight in precious metal.
Honiton and English Lace Traditions
England developed its own distinguished lace traditions, and the museum celebrates them — above all the famous Honiton lace of Devon, a delicate bobbin lace whose floral sprigs were worked separately and applied to a ground. Honiton lace adorned royal wedding dresses and christening robes, and the museum's examples reveal its beauty and craftsmanship.
Alongside Honiton, the displays cover the other English regional styles, illustrating how lacemaking became a vital cottage industry in particular districts, shaping local economies and giving employment to generations of women and children working at their pillows in cottage doorways.
Machine Lace and the Nottingham Industry
The invention of lacemaking machinery in the early nineteenth century transformed the craft from a luxury handmade product into an industrial commodity, with Nottingham becoming the world centre of machine lace manufacture. The museum charts this revolution — the bobbinet and Leavers machines, the rise of the factory, and the impact on the handmade trade.
Machine lace made the fabric affordable to ordinary people and changed fashion and the home alike.
The displays set the handmade and machine-made traditions side by side, illustrating both the artistry of hand lace and the ingenuity of the industrial age that came to rival it.
Collections
The Lace Guild Museum holds one of the UK's most important collections of lace and lacemaking material, based at The Hollies, the Guild's headquarters in Stourbridge. The collection comprises historic and contemporary handmade lace — bobbin (pillow) lace, needle lace, and English traditions such as Honiton — alongside machine-made lace, costume accessories, and a rich array of equipment including bobbins, pillows, pattern prickings, and tools.
International pieces represent the great European lacemaking centres.
The museum documents the techniques, regional styles, economics, and social history of lacemaking, and as part of a living craft organisation it also represents contemporary lace and supports the continuation of the skill through classes, workshops, and its members.
Handmade Lace: Bobbin and Needle
The great traditions of handmade bobbin and needle lace.
English Lace and Honiton
England's regional lace traditions and the cottage industry.
From Hand to Machine
The industrialisation of lacemaking and the Nottingham trade.
The Living Craft
Contemporary lacemaking and the work of The Lace Guild today.
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.