This is an Irish Crochet-style collar which I made for my mother in the late 1980s. Her periwinkle blue suit shows it off very nicely.
It’s the real thing! At least it’s as real as an Irish Crochet collar can be, when made by a USAmerican, a century after the Irish potato famine, which catapulted Irish Crochet lace to such fabulous heights. I make this distinction, because so many people who want to try Irish Crochet are very worried about whether they are doing it the “traditional way,” and they are nervous because they can’t be sure that our modern crochet threads are exactly like the ones used in the olden times.
I figure, unless you’re a survivor of the Irish potato famine, you crochet with a piece of wire embedded in a cork, and you crochet by candlelight after the sun goes down, you won’t be making truly traditional Irish Crochet. The best most of us can hope for is to make post-traditional Irish Crochet. That frees us to crochet it with modern tools and conveniences, and even non-traditional materials and colors. Hurray!
Having said that, I’d like to tell you that I’m teaching a workshop called “Irish Crochet Lace for the 21st Century” at the Taos Wool Festival in October 2009. Further information will soon be available at http://www.taoswoolfestival.org.
The pattern is in The Priscilla Irish Crochet Book No. 2, by Eliza Taylor (ed.), originally published in 1912. It is “Figure 85. Coat Collar.” You can download this book free at http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org. Click on their catalog of books, and look under “Taylor.”