Unlike the other photographs in Talbot's Pencil of Nature which were positive prints made from negatives, this detail of lace was made by the process known today as photogram. The starched lace was placed in direct contact with the sensitised paper and the paper exposed to sunlight. Talbot used the opportunity of including this study to write about the method employed in creating such an image and to discuss the meaning of the term negative. "If...any object...be laid upon the paper, this, by intercepting the action of the light, preserves the whiteness of the paper beneath it, and accordingly when it is removed there appears the form or shadow...marked out in white upon the blackened paper...; each copy of it being an original or negative image: that is to say, directly taken from the lace itself. Now, if instead of copying the lace we were to copy one of these negative images of it, the result would be a positive image of the lace....but in this secondary or positive image the representation of the small delicate threads which compose the lace would not be quite so sharp and distinct, owing to its not being taken directly from the original."

As a result, each example of this plate from the Pencil of Nature is slightly different and therefore unique.