Sri Lanka,ශ්‍රී ලංකා,Beeralu Lace making in Galle Fort,Spitzen,Dentelle

A woman is making laces in a shopin Galle Fort. Today a small concentration of women still continue this craft mainly in the Magalle area of Galle.Some of the museums in Portugal, such as the museum of popular art (Museu arte popular) display specimens of the articles used in lace making. These are well presented.

For instance, the bobbins are referred to as BILRU (pronounced Beeralu). In Sri Lanka the lace bone is known as Beeralu and the cushion on which lace patterns are worked out as Beeralu Kotte Different designs produced on the bottom of the lace is called Beeralu Mostara in Sinhalese. Mostara is the Portuguese expression of 'design'.

Beeralu lace making was introduced to Sri Lanka by the Portuguese in the 16th century and developed by the Dutch in the 17th century. It gained recognition as a national craft of women living on the southwestern coast of Sri Lanka.

It was a flourishing and profitable hobby with a keen demand for exquisite designs that were painstakingly created by nimble fingers. However, with time, middlemen entered the trade and this resulted in minimum income for the end producer of the lace.

Older residents said that many women could be seen seated amidst the sailing boats and catamarans silently creating the most beautiful designs while waiting for the menfolk to return from sea.

The art of beeralu was handed over from generation to generation to the third and fourth generation and served to augment the family income, while providing satisfaction to the lacemaker herself as she rolled out yard after yard of uniquely created designs.

Lace-making is a very delicate and time consuming craft. Before weaving the lace the lace-makers need to prepare a stencil (or Esbisalaya in Sinhala).To create a stencil the lace-maker needs to know all the different types of knots used in lace-making. The stencil is made on a piece of card-board using graph paper. They then trace the pattern of the lace onto a piece of paper and fix the pattern onto the rotatable structure of the beeralu kotte or pillow, the wooden structure used to make lace, which you can see in this movie and create their lace weaving over 30 wooden bobbins or beeralu. They create their pattern using pins where necessary in the design to separate the different kinds of knots. The craft is so intricate and difficult that it takes an experienced lace maker about a week to create a metre of one inch wide lace.In association with the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the beeralu lace makers of Mirissa near Matara were motivated, guided and instructed to produce more sophisticated designs and move from using the "raw" off-white yarn to a range of colours, progressing to multicoloured creations.

LACE (corresponding to Ital. merletto, trina; Genoese Pizzo; Ger. spitzen; Fr. dentelle; Dutch kanten; Span. encaje; the English word owes something to the Fr. lassis or laces, but both are connected with the earlier Lat. laqueus; early French laces were also called passements or insertions and dents or edgings), the name applied to ornamental open work formed of threads of flax, cotton, silk, gold or silver, and occasionally of mohair or aloe fibre, looped or plaited or twisted together by hand, (I) with a needle, when the work is distinctively known as " needlepoint lace "; (2) with bobbins, pins and a
pillow. (Wikipedia)