I’m finally getting around to posted links to the following two internet resources for two reasons: 1. Whenever I want to find these websites, I have to rediscover for myself what they are called, where the are. So I decided that if I posted it to my website, I would have a permanent place to go to find this information in one place; 2. These two sites are waaaay too wonderful to keep to myself. Everyone who enjoys tatting, lacemaking, needlework or fiber arts in general SHOULD know about these sites!
These 2 internet sites are libraries/repositories for books, articles, manuscripts, patents, periodicals, etc. that are in the Public Domain.
A work of authorship is in the “public domain” if it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection. Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner.
Thus the following two websites (one called the Antique Pattern Library and the other called The Digital the Archive of Document Relate to Lace) house digital copies of publications in PDF format that can be downloaded by an individual for personal use only. I understand that one is not allowed to profit from these documents.
However, if you frequent either Etsy or Ebay, you will find people selling digital/PDF files (instant downloads) of books possibly acquired from one of these two sources.
It is my understanding though that if you own a physical copy of a public domain book, you could also create a digital copy (from scanning or photography) of it that would be your own property, allowing you to sell your copy.
https://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/
The following image is a snip image of the homepage of the Antique Pattern Library. If you click on any of the topics in the red boxes on the homepage it will take you more directly to just those publications of the genre/topic that you are interested in. There’s a lot of topics, huh?!
The second internet site to find a large collection of lace public domain publications is housed/collected at the University of Arizona. The following link will take you directly to the ‘Digital Archive of Documents Related to Lace’ (as seen in the image below) but if you go back a level (to …./patterns/weaving) you will find another archive dedicated to publications related to weaving (not lace). I think that this site started as a weaving archive and then added the lace archive later.
https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/lace.html
The following image is a snip image of the homepage of the Digital Archive of Documents Related to Lace. If you click on any of the topics in blue text on this page it will take you more directly to just those types of publications that you might be interested in. I would recommend starting with the ‘books’ link.
