PRESENTED TO THE ART DEPARTMENT 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 BY THE FAMILY OF 
 
 BERNICE IRENE SCHMIEDER 
 
 1973
 
 OLD LAC E 
 
 A Handbook for Collectors
 
 Plate I. 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
 PORTION OF LIXF.X COLLAR. 
 \\ith bonier anil broad ends of ro^e point. Venetian, seventeenth century.
 
 OLD LACE 
 
 A Handbook for Collectors 
 
 AN ACCOUNT OF THE DIFFERENT 
 STYLES OF LACE THEIR HISTORY, 
 CHARACTERISTICS & MANUFACTURE 
 
 M. JOURDA1N 
 
 WITH 163 EXAMPLES UN NINETV- 
 EIVE PLATES FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 
 
 LONDON 
 
 B. T. BATSFORD. 94 HIGH HOLBORX 
 
 MCMVIH
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IT may, perhaps, seem necessary to give some reason for the 
 appearance of a new work dealing with hand-made lace, especially 
 as two books on this subject have appeared in England alone in 
 the course of the year. It has been suggested to me, however, by 
 many collectors, that the historical aspect of lace has been dealt 
 with in previous works, almost to the exclusion of its technical and 
 artistic side. Mrs Palliser's history (first issued in 1865), which I 
 re-edited in 1902, is almost exhaustive in certain aspects, and a 
 storehouse of valuable material collected by the author relative not 
 only to the history of lace, but of embroidery and costume. But 
 even since 1902 new material, new facts have come to light in works 
 dealing with lace of various countries. 
 
 I have, therefore, in this book, while giving the chief landmarks 
 in the history of each lace in each important centre of production 
 especially those that affected the quality and design of the lace 
 produced included or referred to these fresh facts and information. 
 The French have been especially diligent in investigating the origins 
 and development of their national industries. I have also been 
 interested in tracing, where possible, the influence of contemporary 
 art and design upon the development of lace, which is, naturally, 
 largely subject to the influences of and fashions in textiles, as may 
 be seen by a comparison of French patterned textiles with laces of 
 the three great periods which correspond roughly to the reigns of 
 Louis XIV., XV., and XVI. 
 
 As the very large number of illustrations in each chapter are 
 arranged in order of date, it will be easy for readers to follow this 
 progress. For this reason, dated pieces -though these are naturally 
 rare have been illustrated wherever possible. 
 
 1891OG1
 
 viii ]' RE FACE. 
 
 Another very interesting subject which has not hitherto been fully 
 treated is the influence of lace of one country upon the lace of 
 another, i.e., that of Italian lace upon Points de France, of French 
 design upon Mechlin of the Louis XV. period, &c. 
 
 The comparison and dating of laces have been rendered much 
 more possible since the period when Mrs Palliser wrote, by the 
 improvement in public museums at home and abroad, which have 
 in many cases published portfolios of their lace collections. 
 
 Some account of the differences in manufacture of real and 
 machine-made lace, and enlarged illustrations showing their essential 
 differences in texture, will, I hope, be of use to collectors. 
 
 Many of these chapters appeared originally in the Connoisseur, 
 but have since been revised ; and I have to thank the courtesy of the 
 editor for the loan of some of the blocks. 
 
 M. JOURDAIX. 
 
 1 5l<0. \D\VI\SOK, DOKSKT. 
 
 \(>i'cui/>c>' 1908.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 II. LAC is OR DARNED XKTTINC. 7 
 
 III. CUTWORK (RETICELLA) AND I 'UNTO IN ARIA 12 
 
 IV. EARLY ITALIAN BOBBIN LACK - 18 
 V. VENETIAN NEEDLEPOINT AND BURANO LACE - 22 
 
 VI. MILANESE LACE 
 
 VII. CRETAN 3 
 
 VIII. FLANDERS 37 
 
 IX. BELGIAN LACK - 42 
 
 X. MECHLIN AND ANTWERP LACK 50 
 
 XI. VALENCIENNES AND DITCH LACE - 55 
 
 XII. ALENCON AND AKGENTAN - 62 
 
 XIII. LILLE AND ARRAS - 7y 
 
 XIV. CHANTILLV - - 81 
 XV. ENGLISH NEEDLEPOINT - 84 
 
 XVI. ENGLISH BOBBIN LACE - 89 
 
 XVII. ENGLISH BOBBIN LACES - 97 
 
 XVIII. IRISH LACES . I0 4 
 
 XIX. BLONDES - 10; 
 
 GLOSSARY OF TERM.- 
 INDEX -
 
 OLD LACE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE DATE OF THE ORIGIN OF LACE-MAKING TESTS FOR 
 
 REAL LACE. 
 
 " LACE is the name applied to an ornamental open-work of threads 
 of flax, cotton, silk, gold, or silver, and occasionally of mohair or aloe 
 fibre. Such threads may be either looped, or plaited, or twisted 
 together in one of three ways: (i) with a needle, when the work is 
 distinctively known as ' needlepoint lace ' ; (2) with bobbins, pins on 
 a pillow or cushion, when the work is known as 'pillow lace';* 
 (3) by machinery." f 
 
 It is the two former processes, i.e., hand-made lace, that we 
 have to consider. 
 
 The origin of hand-made lace is obscure. Flanders and Italy both 
 claim its invention, but there is distinct evidence that Flemish lace 
 was later than the Italian, in the fact that Flanders published no 
 lace pattern-book until that of Jean de Glen at Liege, in 1597, and 
 cle Glen in his preface himself says that he brought his patterns from 
 Italy. They are a transcript from Vinciolo. A pattern-book published 
 
 * Or ''bobbin lace," which is the more convenient term, as needlepoint lace is 
 also made upon a pillow. 
 
 t Art. Lace, Encyclopaedia Britannica. 
 
 A
 
 2 OLD LACE. 
 
 by "R. M." about the year 1550* at Zurich, by Christoff Froschower.f 
 gives proof that bobbin lace was known in Venice before 1526. 
 
 It says that "the art of lace-making ('die kuenst der Dentel- 
 schnuren ') has been known and practised for about twenty-five years 
 in our country, for it was first brought by merchants from Venice and 
 Italy into Germany in the year 1526. . . . Clever women and girls 
 admiring it, continued with great industry and zeal to copy and re- 
 produce the same . . . and invented new models much more beauti- 
 ful than the first." * 
 
 At the end of the sixteenth century bobbin and needlepoint lace 
 was made in Flanders, as well as in Italy, and pattern-books were 
 issued having the same general character as those published in Italy. 
 France and England followed Italy and Flanders in adopting lace, 
 and towards the close of the seventeenth century a great State- 
 subsidised enterprise, the establishment of a lace industry, took place 
 in France under the advice of Colbert, the minister of Louis XIV. 
 In these French centres Italian needlepoint was chiefly copied. The 
 lace made in Germany, Sweden, Russia, Spain, Denmark, Switzerland, 
 and Austria, did not result in work of any high artistic quality or 
 importance, and is not treated in this book. 
 
 In Belgium (though Brussels acquired some celebrity for her needle- 
 made laces), very fine and artistic bobbin lace was produced ; and 
 
 * This date is given as 1536 in Mrs Bury Falliser's "History of Lace,"' and 
 in K. Lefebure's "Broderie et Dentelles." 
 
 t Printed verbatim in Ilgs' "Geschichte und Terminologie der alten Spit/en," 
 
 P- 31- 
 
 The author continues : " In my opinion the art lias now readied its highest 
 point." Women "could earn a better living at lace than with spindle, needle, 
 shuttle, or anything else of the kind." "At first these laces were only used for 
 sheets, but now they have come to be used on collarettes, round the necks of 
 bodices, on sleeves, caps, as edgings and bindings, on and round aprons and 
 barber's cloths "or coarse cloths), on handkerchiefs, table and other linen, pillows 
 and bedclothes, besides many other things which I need not mention/' 'The 
 author suggests varying the laces by the use of coloured threads. The patterns 
 resemble the more elementary and least successful patterns of " Le Pompe"for 
 plaited lace. Ouoted in " Pillow Lace : a Practical Handbook," E. Minkoff. 
 
 A certain Barbara Uttmann of Nuremberg instructed the peasants of the 
 Hart/. Mountains in lace-making in 1561.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 like Belgium, Flanders produced almost exclusively bobbin laces. 
 From Flemish laces is derived the English Honiton. 
 
 The collector of old lace, unlike the collector of old silver, prints, 
 china, enamels, and the like, has not to fear delicate and almost omni- 
 present fraud. A box of modern enamel may be produced by methods 
 similar to those by which an old Battersea enamel box was produced, 
 and when painted by a clever French workman (who copies an 
 original piece) and finally chipped by the dealer, it would, and does, 
 deceive the very elect. The new box is in the process of its manu- 
 facture, and in all essentials, like the old. This, however, is not the 
 case with imitations of either embroidery or lace. The methods of 
 production of real and of machine-made lace differ essentially. There 
 is no deceptive quality in imitation lace, which is practically never 
 described or sold as real lace in the shop of any lace-dealer. 
 
 Needlepoint lace, in which a single needle and thread are alone 
 used to form the pattern, which is built up entirely of button-hole 
 stitch and other loopings, has never been successfully imitated by the 
 machine, which cannot produce a button-hole stitch. 
 
 Bobbin lace is more closely imitated than needlepoint by machine, 
 but even here the texture is not to be mistaken for that of bobbin lace. 
 The machine does not attempt to make a regular plait.* 
 
 The man who most materially aided in the development of the lace 
 machine was John Heathcoat, who was born in 1783. His interest in 
 the making of lace had been aroused by seeing a skilled bobbin lace- 
 maker at work. He began his experiments by patiently drawing out 
 threads from hand-made lace, and attentively watching the direction 
 they followed. He found that the majority of them were dealt with 
 in a regular fashion, some going lengthwise and scarcely varying their 
 direction, the others travelling backwards and forwards across the 
 width. This led him to construct a machine in which half the threads 
 were on a beam, while the twisting was done by the remaining threads, 
 carried in to those which passed between the longitudinal beam 
 threads. Since Heathcoat's clay the details of construction rather than 
 essential principles have been improved. " The bobbins of the weft 
 
 * A French machine, "La Dentelliere" (see La Nature, 3rd March iSSi), pro- 
 duced plaited work, but the expense of this was as great as that of pillow lace, and 
 it has never been adopted.
 
 4 OLD LACE. 
 
 threads as they pass like pendulums between the warp threads arc 
 made to oscillate, and through this oscillation the threads twist them- 
 selves or become twisted with the warp threads."* As the twistings 
 take place, combs passing through both warp and weft threads com- 
 press the twistings. Thus the usual machine-made lace may generally 
 be detected by its compressed twisted threads. 
 
 This consequent ribbed appearance of the toile is present in 
 machine-made imitations of every kind of pillow lace, and serves most 
 easily to detect it when compared with the flat and even appearance 
 of the toile of hand-made lace (see Plate If.). In the real lace also 
 the meshes are slightly irregular. 
 
 Of bobbin laces the most successfully rendered in machine lace are 
 Valenciennes and Mechlin, but there is a clumsiness in the rendering 
 of detail, and the poor readily torn edge of the machine-made lace is 
 noticeable when compared with the hand-made. Mechlin is remark- 
 able for its cordonnet of thick flat thread outlining the ornament. 
 The first imitation Mechlin left out this distinctive feature, and at the 
 International Exhibition of 1867 Nottingham exhibited imitation 
 Mechlin, in which the cordonnet was run on by hand. At present 
 modern imitation Mechlin is provided with the cordonnet of stout 
 cotton which is often cut at certain points in the design (as the 
 design in Mechlin is not continuous). The cut ends are not firmly 
 fastened do\vn, and break away readily, especially after washing. 
 
 The finer qualities of Brussels, remarkable for the fidelity and 
 grace with which floral compositions are rendered, it is impossible to 
 reproduce in the relatively coarse machine-made cotton. 
 
 In addition to these special differences, Seguin in his book ' ; La 
 Dentelle" gives a general reason why machine-made lace cannot 
 ecjual the handwork it imitates : " In machine work the operating 
 force is uniform, continually the same, hence there is always an equal 
 tension in the threads and a perfectly regular tissue is produced, but 
 at the same time perfectly flat. Handwork, on the contrary, is bound 
 to be irregular because, though the worker's hand represents a force 
 of uniform strength, its action is unequal and cannot be regulated in 
 the same way as can a mechanical force/' lie proceeds to show the 
 
 * Art. /.tier, Encyclopa-dia Britannica.
 
 _jr* itssi WIT, x 
 
 1 V- WMf '"' W >?l'* Hi 1 "~i
 
 INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 advantage of this regularity by alluding to the uneven surface of hand- 
 woven cashmere shawls, which " present an infinite succession of waves 
 and little imperceptible roughnesses which catch the light and cast 
 shadows," making a surface vastly different from anything a machine 
 can produce, " different in somewhat the same way in which the inside 
 of a limpet shell differs from that of a ' sea-ear.' The one is flat, dead 
 white, the other by its irregularities breaks the light into prismatic 
 colours we call mother-of-pearl, and these colours depend only on the 
 uneven surface of the shell ; a cast taken in sealing-wax will reproduce 
 them." 
 
 The best flax thread is too soft to bear the tension needed by a 
 machine, hence the poor " cotton}' " texture of machine laces. 
 
 The variability of texture is easily recognised by people who are 
 accustomed to look for the small but significant marks of the tool or 
 the hand in works of art. This irregularity can be seen more readily 
 under a lens. 
 
 The making up of flowers from Italian rose point is the only 
 " faking" which is possible in lace, and this is really only the re- 
 arrangement of genuine old pieces. 
 
 In rose point the brides are more liable to be destroyed than the 
 relatively thick and solid ornament ; lace-menders replace the brides, 
 and this is a legitimate branch of lace-mending. In some specimens, 
 however, it is easy to avoid replacing the brides, by forcing the details 
 of the ornament to touch one another. An exceptional piece now 
 and then appears to have been made without brides, like the collar 
 of rose point in the Musee de Cluny (Plate XXIV.), or with a 
 minimum of brides, as in a fine specimen in the Victoria and Albert 
 Museum (see frontispiece), but for the most part specimens without 
 brides should be looked upon with suspicion. 
 
 In pieces that have been forcibly dealt with, the scroll design, 
 originally free, and linked by its background of brides, is wrenched 
 and bent from a natural to a debased, flattened, or irregular curve in 
 order that portions of the design may touch one another. Such 
 specimens can be recognised by the overlapping and encroachment 
 of certain details, and by the absence of continuity of design. As it 
 is often impossible to fill up the required space with the scroll in its 
 new position, detached flowers with no relation to the original design
 
 6 OLD LACE. 
 
 are sewn in, the main line of the scroll is broken again and again, 
 and the whole piece presents a fortuitous concourse of ornamental 
 detail. 
 
 In clumsily pieced specimens (such as Plate XXVI.), one flower 
 can be seen overlapping part of the ornament ; a small detached 
 flower is often suspended in an open space without any connection 
 with a stalk or scroll. The scroll in its new position often wrinkles, 
 and will not lie flat. As the flowers are often taken from pieces of 
 different design and quality, the difficulty of combining them into a 
 continuous or even coherent pattern can readily be imagined, and 
 certain portions appear thicker and heavier than others. In more 
 carefully treated specimens, the thickness and heaviness of the bride- 
 less design alone is visible.
 
 [ 7 ] 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 LACIS OR DARNED NETTING. 
 
 DRAWN-THREAD work was known in Egypt in the earliest times, 
 and examples of this work are to be seen in the mummy cloths in 
 the Egyptian room of the British Museum. The withdrawal of 
 threads from linen is the simplest form of its ornamentation of linen. 
 The material in old Italian drawn-work is usually loosely woven ; 
 certain threads were drawn out from the ground and others left, upon 
 and between which needlework was made. The withdrawal of threads 
 regulated the pattern to be produced ; a curved scroll or a circle had 
 to be approximately rendered in small squares. The background of 
 such work appeared to consist of a net of square meshes. 
 
 What is known as Lads is darned work upon a network of meshes 
 (known as rcsean, reset, rczeuil], which we learn from the pattern-book 
 of Matthias Mignerak (1605) was made by beginning a single stitch 
 and increasing a stitch on each side until the required size was 
 obtained, then the square was finished by reducing a stitch upon 
 each side until it was reduced to one. 
 
 Lacis, though generally a term applied to the reseau when 
 embroidered, was also occasionally used for the reseau itself. Such 
 is its use in the " Bele Prerie contenant divers caracters, et differentes 
 .sortes de lettres alphabetiques . . . pour appliquer sur le reseuil ou 
 iassis " ''Paris, 1601), and in the lines of Skelton quoted on next page. 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, referred to her lacis-work as " ouvres masches " 
 (Fr., inailles ; \\.<\\.,niaglia*\ Cotgrave+ gives, among other meanings 
 of maille, " a mash of a net, the square hole that is between thread 
 and thread." 
 
 The rcscit il was generally of linen thread, sometimes of silk or 
 gold. Lacis were sometimes made in a long border or panel, at 
 other times in small squares, which, joined together and combined 
 with cutwork, were much used for bed hangings, table-cloths, &c. 
 Prominent parts of the design were sometimes thrown into relief by 
 
 * '' .Ifag/iii is properly the holes in any net. Also a shirt or jacket of mail" 
 (Florio, ''A Worlde of \Yordes''\ 
 
 t Handle Cotgrave, " Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues," 1611.
 
 OLD LACK. 
 
 a thicker outlining thread the forerunner of the cordonnet in lace. 
 The darning is sometimes quite even in workmanship, at other times 
 it is of different degrees of strength, lighter for certain portions of 
 the surface, and heavier for others, thus producing a shaded effect. 
 Relief is very seldom obtained ; but in a fine piece with a vine pattern 
 in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the grapes are raised into a 
 considerable degree of convexity by tightly sewing round each portion 
 of the canvas ground which had been previously darned so as to 
 represent a grape. 
 
 A book containing designs for lacis was issued at Cologne, by P. 
 Quentell. The patterns consist of borders, alphabets, &c., some on 
 white, others on black, ground ; some with counted stitches. The 
 earliest edition extant is dated 1527; Quentell, however, refers to a 
 previous edition, hence M. Seguin obviously puts the date of its in- 
 vention too late when he gives 1520 as the approximate limit of its 
 earliest use. In a painting by Lorenzo Costa in S. Giacomo, at 
 Bologna (1488), the square openings of the dresses of the three 
 persons depicted are filled in with a border of lacis. Knotted net 
 (probably ornamented) was very much used in church work for lectern 
 and frontal veils, and pyx cloths and " corporals," as early as the 
 fourteenth century, and Rock in his " Textile Fabrics " quotes from 
 Dugdale's " St Paul's " : " St Paul's, London, had a cushion covered 
 with knotted thread" ( u pulvinar copertum de albo filo nodato"). 
 Network (filatorium) was probably another name for this darned net ; 
 in the "Exeter Inventory" we read that its cathedral possessed, A.D. 
 1327, three pieces of it for use at the altar, and one for throwing 
 over the desk (" tria filatoria linea, uncle unum pro desco "). 
 
 The earliest mention of lacis, by name, is to be found in the lines 
 of the "laureate" Skelton (1460-1529"), which also contain the earliest 
 literary reference to samplers : 
 
 " When that the tapettes and carpettes were laycl 
 
 Whereon theis ladys softly myght rest, 
 The saumpler to sew on, the lacis to embraicl." 
 
 Another argument against dating lacis only from the first quarter 
 of the sixteenth century is the exceedingly archaic character of the 
 design of some specimens ; the work also must have been widely 
 known before it created the demand for a pattern-book. The patterns
 
 LACIS OR DARNED NETTING. 9 
 
 for lacis which form the greater part of the designs of the early Italian 
 and German pattern-books * until Vinciolo could be also used for 
 embroidery in short and cross stitches. The earliest designs are 
 conventional diapers. Subject designs and religious emblems, 
 however, were soon introduced, and Vavassore gives patterns of a 
 large flower-pot, mermaid, Paschal lamb, and a double plate repre- 
 senting Orpheus playing to the beasts. " Marriage groups, the bride- 
 groom with a flower, the bride with a fan, and behind, a procession of 
 tiny cavaliers and ladies ; hunting scenes, animals of every species ; 
 rows of mermaids, winged lions, and cocks, dogs, stags, and eagles, 
 forming a border to the central ornament. Castles, towers, falconers 
 " whole scenes to which we have now lost the key," are to be found 
 among the designs for lacis. f The most influential designer, both 
 for lacis and cutwork, was Vinciolo, the first edition of whose \vork + 
 was published in 1587. The second half of this edition contains 
 designs representing the seven planets Sol, Luna, Mars, Mercury, 
 Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. Four in squares of various designs, two 
 of Amorini shooting stags and birds ; Neptune and the winds, an 
 arabesque with impresa of a column with circle and double triangle; 
 five borders and squares, and "two bordures a carreaux." The interest 
 of Vinciolo's work is that specimens of lacis are extant which 
 reproduce his designs. In the Victoria and Albert Museum there 
 is a specimen of lacis representing designs similar to those of Vinciolo. 
 This bed-cover is composed of a series of squares, darned with repre- 
 sentations of the months of the year, male and female heads, figures 
 and groups. There is also a piece in the Musee de Cluny very much 
 in Vinciolo's style. 
 
 In the second part of the edition of 1588, in his "Advertisement au 
 
 * The earliest known pattern-book now appears to be that of Jorg Gastel of 
 Zwickau, 1525, a copy of which has recently been added to the collection in the 
 Konigliche Kunstgewerbe Bibliothek, Dresden. Next in order of date seems to 
 come the publication of 1'. Ouentell of Cologne, "Eyn new Kuntslich boich," 1527. 
 In the same year and at the same town appeared "Liure noveau et subtil touchant 
 1'art et sciece" of ''matrepiere Ouint\v' See "Early Pattern-books of Lace, Em- 
 broidery, and Needlework,'' by Edward F. Strange (Transactions of the Biblio- 
 graphical Society, vol. viiA 
 
 t Elise Ricci, " Antiche trine Italiane." 
 
 1 "Les Singuliers et Nouveaux Pourtraicts et Ouvrages de Lingerie," Paris, 1587. 
 
 ^ No. 109, acquired in 1884.
 
 IO OLD LACK. 
 
 Lecteur," Vinciolo says that having promised, since the first impression 
 of his book, to give a " nouvelle bande d'ouvrages," and not to 
 disappoint certain ladies who have complained that he has not made 
 " du reseau assez beau a leur fantaisie," he wished for the third time 
 to place before their eyes many new and different patterns of " reseau 
 de point conte que j'ay cousus et attachez a la fin de mes premieres 
 figures." After the thirty plates already published, follow the twenty 
 additional of "reseau de point conte," consisting of the lion, pelican, 
 unicorn, stag, peacock, griffon, and the four seasons, &c. Lacis was 
 frequently combined with point coupe or reticella in the late sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries, when the combination was known as punto 
 reale a reticella. Elisabetta Catenea Parasole (1616) gives designs 
 for this type of work, which made use of small squares of lacis. 
 
 In a pattern-book* in the National Art Library is one for lacis, 
 bearing the name of Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Frederick II., 
 King of Denmark and Norway, and Sophia of Mecklenburg, who was 
 the second wife of Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, 
 Calenburg, and Blankenburg (1589-1613), and is dated two years after 
 the death of the latter. It contains the arms of Denmark, a quaint 
 representation of the Child Jesus, Jacob wrestling with an angel, the 
 two spies with the bunch of grapes, Samson and the lion, Satan being 
 chained by the angel, the four evangelists, &c. ; also emblems of faith, 
 hope, charity, justice, prudence, the story of the prodigal son. and a 
 (double-page) dance of Saxon peasants. 
 
 In comparing characteristic specimens of German and Italian lacis 
 and German and Italian pattern-books, we see that in the German 
 designs eagles and heraldic emblems, oak leaves, acorns, thistles, and 
 hunting scenes are often met with ; in the Italian lacis the foliage 
 is more conventional in character. Some squares of German lacis in 
 the Kunstgewerbe Museum at Leipzig show coats of arms darned 
 in a variety of stitches, with a raised cordonnet forming the outline. 
 Some of the designs in this Museum are conventional, in others 
 
 * The book is a MS., the draughtsman is unknown, and there are no indica- 
 tions of place of origin beyond the association with the person whose name it bears. 
 'I'hc-re is no title-page, but the first leaf bears the arms of Denmark. It was de- 
 scribed and illustrated in the Mn^irJnc <>f\-lr/, vol. xxvi., pp. 179, 180, by Edward 
 K. Strange.
 
 Plate III. 
 
 1'AKT OK A I'.AM) OK LAC1S. 
 Italian, late sixteenth ivntury. 
 
 OI;LOX<; PIKCE OK LACIS.
 
 LACIS OR DARNED NETTING. II 
 
 an attempt at naturalistic effects appears. Pieces of German make 
 are frequently of a loosely made net, and of coarse linen thread. 
 Germany, however, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was 
 renowned for its lacis and embroidery with thread on net, of which 
 there are several good examples in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 
 But it is exceedingly difficult to assign a specimen of lacis to 
 any definite country, there is but little refinement in the manner 
 of working, and often little differentiation in design. The finer 
 qualities were, no doubt, made in Italy. A very coarse type was 
 made in Spain, of interest from the bold and nai'f designs. Much 
 lacis was produced in France under Catherine de Medicis, the patron- 
 ess of Vinciolo, and the popularity of the work is proved by the 
 number of editions of Vinciolo's work printed in Paris from 1587 to 
 1623, and by the fact that his designs were copied.* 
 
 Italian lacis shows richer and more conventional designs than those 
 of any other country. An angular scroll with a conventional vine-leaf 
 is frequently met with (Plate III.), and curious Renaissance fantasies, 
 tritons, terminal figures, or figures with foliated extremities, such as 
 are met with in the decoration of the period, are combined with 
 effective scroll designs. In Southern Italy and Sicily the influence 
 of Oriental taste was of necessity more direct than in the north. In 
 other South Italian and Sicilian lacis small skirted figures, holding up 
 their hand, and other traditional motifs, are represented. 
 
 Cretan lacis is especially interesting, from the combination 
 of the Italian structure of ornament and the strange way in which 
 that system, with its cultured knowledge of form and balance, has been 
 misinterpreted by the Cretan workers. There is a certain quaint 
 almost grotesque air common to all the specimens of Cretan lacis, and 
 it is especially pronounced in the human, quadruped, and bird figures 
 which are introduced into the midst of the conventional branchage 
 and foliage. The pink is a prominent feature in the design as in 
 Cretan embroidery. The lacis is frequently divided into three 
 portions the most important central piece, and two narrow borders 
 or insertions at top and bottom. 
 
 * The title of Jean de Glen's pattern-book, u Les singuliers et nouveaux 
 pourtraits, pour toutes sortes de lingeries," published at Liege in 1597, is 
 borrowed from Vinciolo, and the plates are mostly drawn from his.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CUTWORK (R.KTICKLLA) AND PUNTO IN ARIA. 
 
 LACK appears to be of Italian origin, though attempts have been made 
 to trace it to Oriental sources. Though, however, it is impossible to 
 prove that the work of the earliest laces was borrowed by Italy from 
 the East, or from the Saracens of Sicily,* or from the Greeks who 
 took refuge in Italy from the troubles of the Lower Empire.f the 
 influence of Oriental design upon the earl}- geometric laces is a 
 hitherto unrecognised fact. Venice in Italy was peculiarly fitted by 
 her position to transmit Oriental influences. There are documents 
 that prove that in 1390 the Venetians traded with India and had a 
 consul at Siam. Venice was the great emporium and distributor of 
 metal-work, silk, cloth of gold, which came to her from Constantinople 
 and Greece; and in the fifteenth century Venetian commerce covered 
 the whole of the civilised world. In furniture, the intarsia or inlaid 
 work, which was in such favour in the sixteenth century, shows in 
 its design the obvious influence of Eastern art ; and in many cases 
 the patterns have been taken directly from Arab sources. The same 
 influence shows itself in the stuffs, embroideries, damascened metal- 
 work, and other such objects, of which the industries were naturally 
 directly affected by the importation of Eastern models and Eastern 
 methods. The influence of the East upon European ceramic art and 
 the artistic pottery of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, cspc- 
 
 * Francesco Xardi, "Sull' Origine dell' Arte del Ricamo," I'adova, 1839: 
 ''What further confirms its Byzantine origin is that those very places which kept 
 up the closest intercourse with the (ireck Empire are the cities where point lace 
 was earliest made and flourished to the greatest extent," e.tf., Venice. 
 
 + Diyby \Vyatt, " Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century/'
 
 Plate IV. 
 
 Oviu'rages dc point count 
 
 A DESIGN FOR LTTWUKK (Reticella). 
 From Vinciolo, ''Les Singuliers et N'ouveaux Pourtraicts,'" 1587.
 
 Plate V. 
 
 '!?- (XT'* :>1!KS- " '*?.^&f*' 1 ?m 
 
 ''^fati^; ^^rawa 
 
 STRIP OF LINEN. 
 With squares filled in with cut work (Reticella). 
 
 
 CUTWOKK (Reticella). 
 
 CUTWORK (Reticella). 
 The lines of the linen foundation entirely covered with needlepoint. 
 
 
 VAXDVKED EDGING OF NEEDLEPOINT.
 
 CUTWORK (RETICELLA) AND PUNTO IN ARIA. 13 
 
 daily that of Italy, has been noticed. " In the painting of the 
 Coronation of the Virgin, by a pupil or follower of Giotto, in the 
 National Gallery, there is a band of ornament on the upright of the 
 step beneath the throne, composed of stars and crosses, as in Persian 
 wall-tiles. Again, in the picture of the Circumcision, by Marco 
 Marziale, in this Gallery, star shapes, similar to the tiles, figure in the 
 ornamentation of a linen cloth."* As Venice f was the place where 
 embroidery and trimming of white linen first came into fashion in 
 Europe, the motives of Oriental design these same stars and crosses 
 were first applied to linen ornamentation in Venice, and it is 
 possible that from Persian drawn-thread work with whipped stitches 
 possibly of the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century the Italian 
 art of drawing out threads and stitching over them was derived. } 
 
 What were these principles of design thus borrowed ? Interlaced, 
 repeating star-shaped and polygonal ornament, purely geometrical ; 
 never naturalistic, or combined with figured ornament. 
 
 These geometrical forms are exclusively used in early Italian reticella 
 and punto in aria, at a date when flowing scrolls and conventionalised 
 flower ornament was freely used in the designs for embroidery.! 
 
 The successive types of lace we have to consider are : cutwork, or 
 reticella ; and its derivative punto in aria. 
 
 Cutwork is a term which is also used for reticella or Greek lace, 
 which is its trade name. Reticella, first mentioned in the Sforza 
 Inventory (1493), is not named in the pattern-books until Vecellio 
 (1592). It is worked upon linen as a foundation; threads were 
 
 * Henry Wallis, "The (iodman Collection of Persian Ceramic Art belonging 
 to F. Du Cane Ciodman, with examples from other Collections," London, 1894. 
 
 t Venetian linens for fine towelling and napery in general at one time were in 
 favourite use during the fifteenth century. In the " Dues de Bourgogne," by the 
 Comte de Laborde, more than once we meet with such an entry as : " Une piece 
 de nappes, ouvraige de Venise," &c. 
 
 1 A. S. Cole, Journal of the Society of Arts, 26th July 1895. 
 
 ^ " On pent considerer 1'art arabe comme etant un systeme de decoration fonde 
 tout entier sur 1'ordre et la forme geometriques, et qui n'emprunte rien ou presque 
 rien a 1'observation de la nature" (J. Bourgoin, "Les Arts Arabes," 1873). 
 
 (I "L'idee qui domine dans le dessin des premieres dentelles ne se rattache, par 
 aucun cote, aux tendances de 1'art decoratif du siecle ou elles furent crcces " 
 (J. Seguin, "La Dentelle").
 
 14 OLD LACK. 
 
 withdrawn or cut out of the linen to form the open spaces, and the 
 remaining threads overcast with button-hole stitches (see Plate XL). 
 The effect of this work is identical with that of the geometric patterned 
 needlepoint lace (early punto in aria'} ; and the same patterns are 
 equally suited to both classes of drawn linen and needlepoint lace, as 
 may be seen by an examination of Vinciolo's pattern-book. The 
 drawing out of the threads, by means of which the framework neces- 
 sary for the reticella pattern was produced, was more laborious than 
 the construction of skeleton frameworks of thread, firmly tacked 
 down upon a piece of parchment the foundation of puuto in aria* 
 The crossings of these intersecting lines of thread were secured, and 
 then all the foundation threads were covered with the button-hole 
 stitch. The elaboration of this foundation into solid pattern was 
 effected by adding row upon row of button-hole stitches, sometimes 
 close, sometimes open in effect. These skeleton designs were made in 
 squares, and by joining several similar bits together a long border 
 was constructed. Some reticella made in Sicily and Southern Italy 
 is embroidered rather heavily upon the solid portions of the ornament. 
 The basis of design in both types of lace is very similar. Accord- 
 ing to the pattern-books it is open squares or diamond shapes with 
 diagonals from corner to corner, and two bars from side to side, the 
 diagonals and bars crossing one another at the common centre, and 
 so forming a radiation of eight lines bounded by a square. In the 
 earliest examples the geometrical forms are simple ; the details of 
 the ornament touch one another. Later, the design becomes more 
 refined and complicated, and picots or small loops are freely used. In 
 some late specimens Q{ puuto in aria of the seventeenth century there 
 is a raised rib upon the design, and some have the pattern emphasised 
 by a raised button-hole stitched border. The restriction of design to a 
 series or combination of squares (the constructive basis of reticella), is 
 broken through in later specimens, and curved lines are introduced ; 
 the next step was the fuller mastery of design, shown in the representa- 
 tion of figures of light scroll designs. This change in the character of 
 pnnto in aria took place at the very close of the sixteenth century, 
 
 * The term is first mentioned in Taglienti, "Opera nuova che insegna a le Done 
 a curare. . . ." Venice, 1530. Brunei gives an edition dated 1528. In Taglienti 
 it is mentioned as a stitch in embroidery.
 
 DETAIL IN A FRESCO. 
 
 In the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena. By Anibrogio Lorenzetti. 
 (See openwork ornamentation on cushion.)
 

 
 X 
 <u 
 
 
 
 .^..r.^ipnp- m*Kr* <** ^^wr 
 
 ii:%H*s;S 
 
 mwm
 
 CUTWORK (RETICELLA) AND PUNTO ix ARIA. 15 
 
 when the pattern-books give all varieties of odd figures to be worked 
 on lace.* One design of Vecellio represents, within a border with a 
 dentated edge, a harp, guitar, fiddle, horn, organ, trumpets, and pipes ; 
 and dolphins, running hounds, hunting scenes, Amorini, and mytho- 
 logical figures, are commonly introduced. In the collection of Mrs 
 John Hungerford Pollen is a chalice cover representing the figure of 
 St Peter with Bible and keys, supported by cherubs. Greek and 
 Levantine work of the seventeenth century introduce curious archaic 
 figures and devices with vases and stiff flower sprays. 
 
 In spite of the development oi punto in aria reticella was in Italy 
 not entirely abandoned even as late as the nineteenth century. In 
 1862 a certain Francesco Bulgarini was still living at Siena who made 
 reticella of extreme fineness.^ 
 
 In pictures I have found very little lace until the second quarter 
 of the sixteenth century. * White lace has been said to be found in a 
 portrait of a lad} 7 , by Carpaccio (1476-1522), in the gallery at Venice, 
 but I have not been able to trace this picture. In other pictures by 
 Carpaccio there is no lace and but little embroidery, and the linen is 
 for the most part plain; in one case embroider}- in cross-stitch appears. 
 Xo lace is to be found in the paintings of Mantegna (1431-1506) or of 
 Luini (1470-1530). In the work of Pinturicchio (1454-1513) em- 
 broidery of cord or metal gimp is applied in conventional patterns to 
 the borders of dresses.*, To judge by Italian painting, there is no 
 
 * In Parasole (1616; the patterns for " ponti in aria' ; are varied, apparently to 
 show variety in stitch, some of which are close, some open. The punti in aria 
 patterns are most rich and varied, and include in almost every design grotesque 
 figures and animals. 
 
 t Elise Ricci, "Antiche trine Italiane." 
 
 1 Cav. A. Merli cites as the earliest known painting in which lace occurs, a 
 majolica disc, after the style of the Delia Robbia family, in which is represented 
 the half figure of a lady, dressed in rich brocade, with a collar of white lace. As 
 the precise date cannot be fixed, and the work may be by one of I.uca Delia 
 Robbia's descendants, this, as evidence, is useless. 
 
 S " The cuffs of the lady are edged with a narrow lace, the pattern of which 
 appears in Vecellio's 'Corona,'' not published till 1591 '" (Lefebure;. 
 
 In Luini's " Presentation in the Temple " geometric outwork or embroidery 
 appears on the priests robe. 
 
 *" Later, lace appears more frequently. In Titian 1477-1576) narrow lace is 
 used to edge shirts and shirt sleeves in female costumes. In the Prado Museum,
 
 1 6 OLD LACE. 
 
 evidence of Cav. A. Merli's theory that " the art was even at the apex 
 of perfection at the commencement of 1500"! 
 
 An exceptionally early instance of what appears to be needlepoint 
 fillings of open spaces in a linen cushion is to be seen in a fresco by 
 Ambrogio Lorenzetti (completed in 1339) in the Public Palace of 
 Siena (Plate VII.). Here Pax reclines upon a linen cushion with an 
 openwork seam and diamond-shaped openings filled in with star-like 
 devices. Simple work of this nature, approximating to embroidery, 
 was no doubt produced as early as fine linen was in use in Venice. 
 
 Of the pattern-books, the earliest in date we know of is 1525.* 
 There may, however, have been earlier lost editions. Vavassore^ 
 begins the first book of his we know of by saying, " Havedo io 
 pel passato alcuni libri di esempli " (" having made myself in the past 
 some books of patterns "). The patterns are described as being for 
 recami. 
 
 In that by Alessandro Pagannino, dated Venice, 1527 putting 
 aside the author's ascription to himself of the credit of having 
 published the first book on the subject neither patterns nor titles 
 indicate lace work. The first six cuts are designs for embroidery, 
 the rest designs upon squares to be used for lacis or embroidery. 
 In the work by Antonio Taglienti, 1530, * there are also patterns for 
 embroidery to be done upon a foundation of stuff with silks of 
 various colours and gold and silver thread. Man}' embroidery stitches 
 are mentioned, among others, punto in aerc, a term afterwards 
 
 Madrid, a portrait of a woman, ascribed to Del Sarto (1486-1531), has a narrow 
 edging of lace. Del Sarto's " Portrait of a Sculptor" (portrait of the artist) has a 
 border of lace to the shirt (National Gallery). In Tintoretto (1518-1594) narrow 
 lace, apparently bobbin-made, appears in the picture of " Lucretia.'' 
 
 * See Note, page 9. 
 
 t Esemplario di lavori, &c., N.D., Venice. 
 
 * Brunei gives an edition dated 1528. 
 
 S In the six pages of instructions we learn the various stitches in which these 
 wonderful patterns may be executed : " Damaschino, rilevato, a filo, sopra punto, 
 ingaseato, Ciprioto, croceato, pugliese, scritto, incroceato, in acre, fatto su la rate, 
 a magliato, desfilato, and di racammo " That punto in acre or in aria was a term 
 used for embroidery appears from the fact that so early as "1476 the Venetian 
 Senate decreed that no punto in aria whatever, executed either in flax with a 
 needle or in silver or gold thread, should be used on the curtains or bed-linen in 
 the city or provinces."

 
 X
 
 E- -
 
 CUTWORK (RETICELLA) AND PUNTO IN ARIA. 17 
 
 used for needlepoint lace. The designs to be worked for collars, bed- 
 hangings, and insertions in pillow-cases consist of scrolls, arabesques, 
 birds, animals, flowers, herbs, and grasses. 
 
 In fact all the earliest engraved pattern-books contain only designs 
 for various sorts of embroidery upon material, such as darning upon 
 canvas (panto fa su la rete a maglia quadra], drawn thread work of 
 reticulated patterns (punto tirato or punto a reticella}, and "cutwork" 
 (punto tagliato) cut-out linen, not the cutwork before described. 
 
 It is not until about thirty years later that we have special geo- 
 metric patterns workable by lacemakers. This development of lace 
 was the consequence of the innovation of collars and ruffs, which 
 began to be used in 1 540. 
 
 From this date geometric lace made rapid progress, until it cul- 
 minated in the beautiful and brilliant designs of Vinciolo (1587).* 
 
 * The various types of lace appear in the pattern-book of Elisabetta Catanea 
 Parasole (1616). Her patterns are entitled (i) Merletti a piombini ; (2) Lavori di 
 ponto reticella ; (3) Lavori di ponto reale e reticella (cutwork combined with reti- 
 cella) ; (4) Lavori di ponto in aria.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 EARLY ITALIAN BOBBIN LACE. 
 
 KNOTTED FRINGES EARLY BOBBIN LACE (MERI.ETTI A PIOMBINI) 
 EARLY GENOESE LACK. 
 
 KNOTTING, a treatment of the fringed ends of stuff, may be con- 
 sidered a forerunner of bobbin lace, being made (when made separately 
 as a fringe) on a pillow, though by knotting, and not by plaiting. A 
 fringe of loose threads was formed at the edge of the material 
 generally linen by drawing the warp threads, and then binding or 
 knotting the weft threads together as tassels. During the sixteenth 
 century much of this work was produced at Genoa. In a specimen 
 illustrated in Elise Ricci's " Antiche trine Italiane," the threads are 
 knotted to represent small figures. Macrame a word of Arabic 
 derivation used for a fringe or trimming by which similar work is 
 known in modern times, was reintroduced in Genoa in 1843. 
 
 The earliest bobbin lace appears in the form of twisted or plaited 
 thread edgings for ruffs. Judging from the pattern-books in which 
 they appear, they have the same dentated edge, but a more wiry 
 make, and a lighter, more open appearance than the contemporary 
 needle-points, and were consequently a more effective contrast to the 
 lawn ruff.* 
 
 " Ces guipures plus souples et plus vapeureuses que celles a 1'aiguille, 
 distributees a flots au bord des enroulements de gaudrons a triple rang, donnaient 
 a 1'objet une certaine elegance qui rendait supportable son developpement exage're : 
 tandis que les passements de point coupe a 1'aiguille, d : une nature plus ferine, 
 fournissaient un pli plus sec dont les bords aigus, se tenant ranges trop correcte- 
 ment, les faisaient ressembler a une arnn'e de piques qu'on aurait elites disposees 
 pour la defensive" (Seguin, u La Dentelle r ).
 
 Plate XIII 
 
 Siim'Jgyy;K <; -VW r '*:
 
 Plate XIV. 
 
 EARLY BOBBIN LACE. 
 
 Merletli a piombini. 
 
 BOBBIN LACE (German). 
 In the possession of the Misses Trevelvan.
 
 Plate XV. 
 
 COYKRLET OF KOBHIX LACK (Italian).
 
 EARLY ITALIAN BOBBIN LACE. 19 
 
 In " Le Pompe " (1557) small round loops are shown at the edge 
 of various details, and this ornament also appears in Parasole. It 
 consists of a single thread brought out in a loop and carried back 
 again. Larger loops of plaited thread are also used to give a light 
 appearance to the pointed Vandykes. The design is geometrical like 
 cutwork, but the pattern is formed of lines rather than solid forms, 
 and these lines are less rigid and precise than the more solid needle- 
 point. A narrow " footing," though worked in with pattern, appears 
 in many of these merletti a piombini.* The first edgings were narrow, 
 and when a greater width was required the vandyked edge was sewn 
 on to an insertion. The threads composing the pattern are, as has 
 been said, plaited together, not worked across each other at right 
 angles to form a linen-like toile. The development of more important 
 ornamental devices is shown in certain paintings, such as that of 
 Charles of Saxony (1582), whose ruff is trimmed with deep and 
 elaborate merletti a piombini. 
 
 Some later specimens show the transition from geometrical design 
 to a conventional scroll with leafy ornaments. The important bed- 
 cover in the Victoria and Albert Museum,* which is stated to be 
 " either Flemish or Italian," and is catalogued under the Flemish laces, 
 belongs to this period. To judge by the peculiar lightness and pre- 
 cision of the design, the " value " of the background, the design of the 
 bordering pattern with its arrangement of diagonals with scrolling 
 ends and the conventional treatment of every detail, it must be Italian, 
 and probably Venetian (Plate XV.). 
 
 The piece is said to have belonged to Philip IV. of Spain, and the 
 sixth circle from the centre is formed by the collar with jewels of the 
 Golden Fleece, and within the four corners are two-headed eagles, 
 displayed and surmounted by crowns. 
 
 * u Mcrlctti, all manner of little battlements, also the several wards or springs 
 in a lock, by met. long purles wrought in bone-laces, usually worn in bands or 
 ruffs" (Dictionary of Florio and Torriano, London, 1659). 
 
 The Italian word for lace, pizzi, is also derived from the vandyked character of 
 the early laces. " Pizzcfti, tongs, languets, lappets, labels or latchets of anything, 
 also peaks in bands and cuffs or any other linen" (Dictionary of Florio and 
 Torriano, 1659). 
 
 " Pizzo, a peake or tip of anything" (Florio, "A Worlde of Wordes," 1598). 
 
 + Xo. 270, 1880.
 
 20 OLD LACE. 
 
 The workmanship of this piece is remarkable. The plumage of 
 the eagle is imitated by means of small holes left in the plaiting, in 
 each of which a small loose loop or picot of thread appears. " The 
 cross-bars of twisted threads which hold the feathers of the out- 
 stretched wings in their places are separate details of twisting, and 
 are looped into the edges of the feathers. This is also the case with 
 the trellis-work which occupies the space between the central circular 
 device and its square border." * 
 
 Genoa first imitated the gold threads of Cyprus, and her gold 
 work, at first restricted to bed trimmings, was largely used for orna- 
 menting dresses in the fifteenth century. After about 1420 this 
 industry rapidly declined, and its workers emigrated. Genoese thread 
 bobbin lace, which appears to have preserved the heaviness inseparable 
 from metal passements, does not appear in portraits or inventories 
 until just before the middle of the sixteenth century.^ The portrait 
 (Plate XVI.) of Henry II., Due de Montmorency (d. 1632), one of 
 the earliest examples, shows a deep and elaborate collar with a 
 scalloped edge and wide insertion, and the popularity of Genoese lace 
 was doubtless coincident with the first introduction of the falling 
 collar, as it died out with the appearance of the cravat* (about 1660). 
 
 Genoese lace, as has been said, was coarse and solid, a characteristic 
 which is early noticed in the seventeenth-century jeu-d'esflrit, known 
 as " Revoltc des Passemens," where it is spoken of as having " le corps 
 u n peu gros." This very heaviness and solidity was eminently suited 
 t<> its use upon boot tops, garters, shoe-roses, carriages, as well as upon 
 collars, scarves, aprons, &c. 
 
 The "wheat grain " ornament reappears in the various examples, 
 combined with Vandykes of the usual plaited and twisted type. The 
 
 * Descriptive Catalogue of the Collections of Lace in the Victoria and Albert 
 Museum, 1881. 
 
 + Yulson cle la Colombiere states that Genoese lace was not used in 1597. 
 
 i". The cravat was a natural consequence of the periwig, which seems to have 
 arisen in France about 1660. In England the Duke of York first wore one in 
 1663-4. 
 
 .i These "wheat-grains' 1 are also a feature of Maltese lace. In 1833 Lady 
 Hamilton Chichester introduced lace-making into Malta, and by adapting Genoese 
 designs evolved what is known as Maltese lace by means of workers imported 
 from Genoa.
 
 Plate XVI. 
 
 PORTRAIT OF HENRI. DUC UE MONTMORENCY (1595-1632 
 
 Bv Lenain. 
 
 I)
 
 > 
 
 w s 
 
 O - 
 
 Pi c 
 
 O Ji 
 
 S 
 
 W " 
 O _b 
 
 3 B
 
 X 
 
 2 8 
 
 5 ^
 
 Plate XIX. 
 
 BOBBIN MADE TAPE-LACE. 
 The pattern is linked together by twisted threads. Italian, seventeenth century. 
 
 SGflB 
 
 ^^^^m^m^^mms^mm^ 
 
 '^^^**^*^~+?^*>*.^^~^**^^'^*-*^^~*mf&*^^-** 
 
 ITALIAN TAI'E-LACE. 
 
 With needlepoint fillings. About 1640.
 
 EARLY ITALIAN BOBBIN LACE. 21 
 
 lace used to decorate the collars of the period appears to be of two 
 distinct types: first, a scalloped lace (which was used contempor- 
 aneously with the Flemish edgings for collars of the seventeenth 
 century), the pattern of which consists of a tape-like, simple design, 
 strengthened and connected by short brides. In the centre of the 
 scallop is the profile of a flattened carnation. A succession of these 
 carnation-like forms produces the effect of ornamental scallopings to 
 the border. This lace was in vogue about 1640, succeeding the more 
 formal scallops of the earlier part of the century. 
 
 The second type (point de Genes frise) is made entirely with plaits 
 of four threads each, following the design, and is characterised by 
 small oval enlargements resembling grains of wheat which are some- 
 times arranged as beads on a thread and sometimes composed into 
 trefoils and quatrefoils, or spokes radiating from a common centre 
 (Plate XVIII.). This lace, made up of an insertion and an edging 
 of deep rounded scallops, is well illustrated by Lenain in his portrait 
 of Cinq Mars. The scalloped edge and the insertion were made 
 separately, but were supposed to harmonise in pattern. In an early 
 comedy of Corneille, " La Galerie du Palais," a character criticises a 
 piece of point de Genes, of which 
 
 "la dentelle 
 Est fort mal assort! avec le passement." 
 
 In the portrait of the Due de Montmorency a figure of a horseman 
 occurs in the insertion an isolated example, for in no other illustra- 
 tion or extant specimen has any deviation from simple geometrical 
 design been introduced in point de Genes frise.* 
 
 By the middle of the seventeenth century the varieties of pillow 
 lace had been considerably developed. The thin wiry pillow lace had 
 been discarded, and the heavier Genoese collar laces went out of 
 fashion, as we have said, by 1660. A tape lace with a straight edge 
 between the ornament of which were grounds of meshes, or of bars or 
 brides, was subsequently made in Genoa, and is remarkable for the 
 twisting of the tape, always looped back upon itself. 
 
 * The name is an old one. In the wardrobe of Mary de Medicis is enumerated 
 among other articles a "mouchoir cle point de Gennes frise" (" Garderobe de feue 
 Madame," 1646 ; Rib. Xat. MSS., F. Fr. 11,426).
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 VENETIAN NEEDLEPOINT AND BURANO LACE. 
 
 ACCORDING; to Molmenti,* lace-making \vas always at Venice a 
 private enterprise, unlike the great State-protected industries, such 
 as the glass manufactures at Murano. A great quantity of cutwork 
 was made in the houses of the nobility for their own use, and in the 
 convents. Viena Vendramin Xani, to whom Vecellio dedicated his 
 book t in 1591, was accustomed to make lace, and to employ the 
 young women of her household in this "virtuous exercise." 
 
 Cutwork, as in Erance and England, was originally "greatly 
 accepted of by ladies and gentlemen." and "consequently of the 
 common people." The art spread downwards, J and in the time of 
 Darn "occupait In population de la capitale " the daughters of the 
 fishermen in the islands and the convents, as Peuchet writes. Geo- 
 metrical-patterned lace continued to be freely made for ornamenting 
 linen for household purposes until the eighteenth century, but in the 
 
 * " I.;i Vie I'rivee a Yenise." 
 
 ^ The " Corona delle nobili ct virtuose donne" (1592). The dedication (dated 
 2oth [anuary 1591, is " Alia Clarissima et lllustrissima Signora Vendramina Xani," 
 
 and mentions the delight she takes in these works and "in fame essercitar le 
 cionne di casa sin, ricetto delle piu virtuose giovani che hoggidi vivano in ijiiesta 
 ritta." 
 
 I Morosini Grimani, wife of the Doge Marino Grimani, set up at her own 
 expense a workshop, in which were employed 130 workwomen under the direction 
 of a niitti'ti (maestra), Cattarina Gardin, who worked exclusively for the Dogaressa. 
 
 i " Di< tionnaire I'niversel de la Geographic Commergante," 17X9. 
 
 A piece of point lace border in white and brown thread, lent by Mrs C. Martin 
 to the Victoria and Albert Museum, though of the eighteenth century, resembles 
 the designs of the late sixteenth.
 
 X
 
 X 
 X
 
 X 
 
 c 
 o
 
 VENETIAN NEEDLEPOINT AND BURANO LACE. 23 
 
 last years of the sixteenth curved forms were introduced, and a new 
 type of lace developed. In the early seventeenth century floral and 
 human forms were often treated. The specimens with figures and 
 animals are curious rather than beautiful. A type of lace of scroll 
 design in flat needlepoint, recalling by its lightness very fine metal 
 work or the arabesques of Persian ornament, is very interesting and 
 well designed. In this type is a rosette-like or many-lobed flower, and 
 the interlacing ribbon-like scrolls which show the influence of Oriental 
 art. The solid part of the pattern is, in many cases, outlined by a 
 slightly raised rib or edge, which also models portions of the ornament. 
 The edge is also enriched by short picots, and the design is frequently 
 united by short brides, either ornamented or varied by a single picot. 
 
 There is no distinguishing name for this rare and beautiful type 
 of lace. It is, strictly speaking, late punto in aria, but the needle- 
 point laces which were produced in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries were virtually all comprised under the general name of 
 punto in aria, for in 1616, 1633, and 1634, the Proveditori alle Pompe 
 forbade the wearing of " punto in acre da Venezia," under penalty 
 of a fine of two hundred ducats for each offence. 
 
 The term is an unfortunate one, as it was also applied to a stitch 
 in embroidery,* " the high raised stitch," and continued to be applied 
 to every kind of Venetian needlepoint lace. Marini quotes from a 
 document of the seventeenth century, in which punti in aria appears 
 to have been an alternative name for Burano lace,~|" and Peuchet states 
 that Venetian laces were known by that name.} 
 
 Rose point differs from punto in aria in three important details : 
 in the highly conventional character of its design, its relief, and the 
 elaboration of its brides. The design of the heavier rose points is 
 
 * Punto in aria in Florio and Torriano's Dictionary (1654) is defined as 
 "the high raised stitch." 
 
 t " Elles portent le nom de paint ou punti in aria" ('' Dictionnaire Universel 
 de la Geographic Commergante," 1789). 
 
 J It is curious that in Florio's Dictionary the special terms used for lace have 
 quite other significations. Pizzo is "a peake or tip of anything," Merli are "little 
 turrets, spires, pinnacles, or battlements upon \vals," Alerletti, "the several! wards 
 of a locke," Trine is a term for "cuts, iags, snips or such cuttings or pinching, 
 pinkt works in garments." "Punto in aria" does not appear in Florio's "World 
 of Wordes," 1598. 
 
 E
 
 24 OLD LACE. 
 
 almost invariably a foliated scroll, with an ornamental flower based 
 upon the pomegranate, but much conventionalised. A natural pome- 
 granate appears in many specimens of late pnnto in aria, but the 
 fruit, as it appears in rose point, is hardly recognisable. This con- 
 ventional treatment of natural forms is a prominent feature of Italian 
 design, as compared with the more naturalistic art of France, Flanders, 
 and England. 
 
 Figures and natural objects are rarely introduced even in ecclesi- 
 astical lace. A specimen of rose point, however, illustrated in Flise 
 Ricci's " Antiche trine Italiane," shows a ship in sail containing three 
 figures ; and in a piece belonging to Mrs John Hungerford Pollen, 
 which forms the front opening of an alb, is represented the Madonna 
 crowned and seated on clouds, with her foot on the neck of a cherub, 
 and attired in a robe sprinkled with stars. Above are the Three 
 Persons of the Trinity. Part of the robes are worked in open stitch, 
 small black beads are added to the eyes. Mr Samuel Chick, again, 
 has an altar border, the central portion of which contains emblems of 
 the Passion. In the middle is our Lord's face upon a cushion wearing 
 the crown of thorns, and surmounted by a halo ; underneath are the 
 dice, pincers, flagelluin, and hammer, to the right the flogging-post 
 and ladder, to the left the cross, spear, and sponge on a reed. At 
 the top are the crown of thorns and nails. This piece was at one 
 time the property of Mary of Orleans, Oucen of Saxon}-, grand- 
 daughter of Charles I. of Fngland.* In a curious " pale " or square 
 of rose point in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Plate XXXIII.),- 1 - 
 two angels are displayed holding up a chalice, above which is the 
 sacred monogram I. M.S. set in rays of glory. In one unique collar 
 mythological subjects are either outlined by pin-holes or distinguished 
 from the background by a closer stitch upon the flat toile in irregular- 
 shaped compartments. In a triangular piece in the possession of 
 Mr Sydney Vacher stags and other conventionalised animals are 
 introduced. Such specimens, however, were no doubt experimental 
 in design, and are not often met with. 
 
 The second point in which rose point differs from pnnto in aria 
 
 See Catalogue of the /)<n'/y Mail Exhibition of British Lace, March 1908. 
 Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 556, 1875.
 
 Plate XXIII. 
 
 MODERN NEEDLEPOINT LACE. 
 
 After a design of Yecel!io. 
 
 BORDER OF NEEDLEPOINT LACE. 
 
 With scallops. " Flat Venetian." In the possession of Mrs Christie Miller.
 
 Plate XXIV. 
 
 COLLAR, ROSE-POINT. 
 
 Venetian, late seventeenth centurv.
 
 Plate XXV. 
 
 PORTRAIT OF A .MAN, SHOWING COLLAR OF ROSL-I'OINT. 
 French School. (Corsini Gallery.}
 
 fe 2 
 O .s
 
 VENETIAN NEEDLEPOINT AND BURANO LACE. 25 
 
 is in its relief. In rose point, besides the raised edge which it has 
 in common with some specimens of flat Venetian,* higher relief is 
 given by laying down a pad of coarse threads, varying according to 
 the amount of relief it was desired to obtain, and covering this layer 
 of thread by close button-hole stitches. 
 
 This thick sheaf of threads takes naturally an unbroken curve, 
 and to this may be attributed the almost invariably rounded and 
 lobed forms of the ornament. This pad is often ornamented with a 
 close fringe of picots, or by an ornament of free loops tier upon 
 tier ornamented with picots. 
 
 No open spaces or jours are introduced into the toile, which is 
 of an even and close button-hole stitch, varied by very small pin- 
 holes arranged in lines or veins, or in simple chequer, chevron, or 
 diamond diaper patterns, subordinated to the general effect of the 
 design. In a specimen in the possession of Mr Sydney Vacher the 
 pin-holes form a date. 
 
 The design is connected by a groundwork of brides, which have 
 been already noticed in flat Venetian. 
 
 The brides, simple in the heavy points, become highly ornamented 
 in the finest specimens, and in point de neige are ornamented not 
 only with picots, but with picoted circles and semicircles, and S-shapes, 
 and star devices. Sometimes the brides are single sometimes two 
 or three meet together, and are ornamented at the point of section f 
 
 * In some specimens of rose point, however, the pattern is not strengthened 
 on the edge by outer cordonnets of button-hole stitched work. 
 
 t In three square inches of a very fine specimen of rose point the following 
 varieties of brides are to be found: (i) A single bride ornamented with picots. 
 (2) Double brides joined in the centre and ornamented at the sides by a circle 
 four times picote. Small picots also ornament the brides between the circle and 
 the extremities. (3) Three double brides meeting in a small triangle, each side 
 of which is ornamented with a circle five times picote. (4) Three brides meeting 
 in a point in the centre. Each is ornamented in a different manner. The shortest 
 bride is ornamented with two picots upon each side, and by two semicircles, 
 joining the two other brides, and ornamented with six picots. The second bride 
 is decorated at one end by a similar semicircle eight times picote, which joins 
 the semicircle previously described, thus forming an S-shaped figure. Upon the 
 opposite side is a small semicircle ornamented with three picots, forming the 
 head of the S. The third bride, at the point of intersection, is ornamented with 
 a segment six times picote, which forms the tail of the S. The foot of this bride
 
 26 OLD LACE. 
 
 (Plate XXIX.). Occasionally there is a ground of cross-barring or 
 trellis-pattern, the effect of which is a very open square mesh, orna- 
 mented at the points of section and in the centre of each side with 
 an ornamented device or loop. 
 
 In certain late specimens the brides form a slightly irregular 
 hexagonal mesh, richly picote. This mesh is never, as in Argentan, 
 a perfect hexagon, but is richer in effect, owing to this slight irregu- 
 larity and to the enrichment of the picots, than the plain Argentan 
 mesh. 
 
 The raised points are divided into gros point de Venise, punto 
 neve (point de neige) with its ground of ornamented starred brides 
 resembling snowflakes, and coraline point. Gros point de Venise, 
 which was elaborated from 1620-50, and which was designed to lie 
 flat and ungathered, is distinguished by the continuity of its designs, 
 which are mostly horizontal ; its scrolls are heavier than in point de 
 neige, the brides simpler and less ornamental, the border or edge is 
 usually straight a single line of button-hole stitched thread enriched 
 here and there with semicircles picote. In point de neige, which 
 was to hang fully or to be gathered, and which was in vogue from 
 circa 1650-1/20, the style is modified ; the designs are composed on 
 a smaller scale, and the groundwork of brides becomes a more im- 
 portant element, the scrolls are no longer continuous ; detached sprays, 
 consisting of slender leaves and minute renderings of the flowers of 
 gros point, covered with a profusion of flying loops which almost 
 hide the form it enriches, spring from a vase-like ornament and are 
 arranged in many specimens symmetrically on either side of a 
 vertical line. This change was probably owing to French influence. 
 
 is also ornamented \vith a small circle picote. (5) A straight double bride orna- 
 mented at either end by two picots on either side, and in the centre by two semi- 
 circles joined, and connected by another semicircle, forming a trefoil. Each 
 semicircle has three picots. (6) A double bride ornamented on either side by 
 two picots ; in the centre by two semicircles, each four times picote. (7) Two 
 single brides and one double bride meeting in a point, the single bride ornamented 
 on one side by a semicircle four times picote, the double bride ornamented in the 
 centre with a circle four times picote. At the point of section the three brides are 
 united by three semicircles five times picote, forming a rosette. (8) Three 
 curved brides meeting in a point, each bride being ornamented by a scroll-shaped 
 ornament which crosses it, and ornamented with thirteen picots.
 
 X 
 X 
 <a 
 
 rt
 
 Plate XXVIII. 
 
 PORTION OF A WIDE FLOUNCE OF ROSE-POINT.
 
 Plate XXIX. 
 
 PORTION OF A FLOUNCK OF FINK ROSE 
 
 Ycnelum, eurlv eighteenth centurv. 
 
 'OINT
 
 VENETIAN NEEDLEPOINT AND BURANO LACE. 2/ 
 
 S-shaped motifs are frequent, and upon details of the pattern knot- 
 work is used as ornament. This type is always ornamented with a 
 hanging pattern, or one in which the arrangement of the details is 
 conspicuously vertical, which was more appropriate to the folds of 
 cravats and full flounces than are the horizontal and continuous 
 scrolls of the gros point de Venise. 
 
 Coraline point is a very attenuated variety of rose point in which 
 relief is almost entirely absent, the leaves of the scroll have entirely 
 disappeared, leaving a winding tangle of narrow coral-like ramifica- 
 tions ending in a small unimportant flower. The ground is of brides 
 picotees arranged in hexagonal meshes. 
 
 Point plat de Venise is similar in design to rose point, but, as its 
 name implies, is entirely without relief. The diaper and chequer 
 pin-hole patterns are more freely used than in rose point, but the 
 general appearance is that of unfinished rose point. 
 
 It is to be borne in mind that much of this lace was the produce 
 of private individuals, or of convents outside Italy, and similar designs 
 were often interchanged ; but with the exception of such private or 
 conventual manufactures of lace^ it is highly improbable that point 
 d'Kspagne or Spanish point, a term applied to a heavier make of 
 Venetian rose point, was ever made in Spain. The heavy and 
 valuable point laces which unexpectedly came out of Spain after the 
 dissolution of the monasteries in 1830, were in no way distinguishable 
 from similar pieces known to be of Venetian workmanship, and it was 
 no doubt from the great lace-making countries of Flanders and Italy 
 that these valuable laces were brought. 
 
 From the unfinished piece of lace (Plate XXX.), made in the 
 eighteenth century, at Freiburg, it will be seen that elaborate needle- 
 point of typically Italian design was occasionally made outside Venice 
 by private workers. 
 
 In point de Venise a reseau, a delicate type of Venetian needle- 
 point, the design, unlike that of rose point which rarely varies from 
 its variations on its highly ornamental flower, shows conventional 
 tulips and pomegranates. This type of lace is chiefly distinguished by 
 the conventional treatment and arrangement of the ornament, and by 
 the general flat look of the work, by the outlining thicker thread 
 or cordonnet stitched to the edges of the pattern and worked in
 
 28 OLD LACE. 
 
 flatly,* by a minute border to the cordonnet of small meshes which 
 intervenes between it and the reseau, and by the horizontal appear- 
 ance of the reseau, which is of square meshes composed of double- 
 twisted threads throughout, and very fine. The pomegranate motif, 
 so frequent in heavy rose point, reappears ; but the crest of the fruit 
 is elaborated into a scrolling leaf (Plate XXXVI.). 
 
 In other specimens a French influence is apparent in the larger 
 number of open modes, in the ribbon motif crossing the design, the 
 spacing of the ornament, and the cordonnet which is worked around 
 certain flowers, and the more broken outlines of the ornament. 
 
 The work of these grounded laces is always flat ; but in some 
 pieces minute raised button-hole stitched rings are added. 
 
 Compared with this type, Brussels could not reach the high standard 
 of Venetian workmanship, being forced to content herself with a 
 frequent use of modes more open than the fine close modes belonging 
 to the Venetian point a reseau, which are in general bar, chevron, 
 trellis, and chequer pin-hole patterns, such as are found in the raised 
 points. Variety of effect is obtained by the use of barring (or honey- 
 comb grounding) inserted amongst the stems and leaves of the sprays ; 
 but very open modes, as a general rule, are used sparingly, like "high 
 lights" upon a picture. The style of Venetian a reseau is less floral 
 and more conventional than in Brussels ; and the cordonnet of Brussels 
 straggles. 
 
 From this grounded point certain details of fine Alencon appear 
 to have been borrowed. Alencon differs from grounded Venetian 
 point in design. Whatever France touched became French. Natural- 
 istic imitations of flowers, birds, vases, and other material objects are 
 freely interspersed in the more ornamental portions of .Alencon, while 
 in Venetian lace there is rarely any change from purely conventional 
 treatment. Alencon also differs in workmanship from Venetian point 
 in the raised and continuous outlines to the ornament. Lighter and 
 more open decorative modes are introduced in Alencon ; the reseau 
 rosace 'v. p. 6<S is more freely used as a groundwork ; the reseau of 
 grounded Venetian point is square ; that of Alencon is hexagonal and 
 
 * In some specimens certain details are outlined with a thick thread stitched 
 aloiij; the stems, leaves, and flowers. The introduction of the thick thread, to j^ive 
 stronger definition to some of the forms, is, however, unusual in this make of lace.
 
 o f 
 
 K "2 
 O ~
 
 X 
 X 
 X 
 
 5 
 
 o ~ 
 
 rt&| , S^\ ; ^i 
 
 ' ^'v . ''^ 
 
 K^n&^ /^v%S5|f 
 
 2 1 
 
 a g
 
 Plate XXXIII. 
 
 ROSE-POINT SQUARE. 
 
 A pale for covering the paten. The design displays two angels holding up the chalice. 
 
 above which is the sacred monogram I. U.S. Rose point, seventeenth century. 
 
 The details of the ornament are pieced. 
 
 FLAT NEEDLEPOINT,
 
 VENETIAN NEEDLEPOINT AND DURANO LACE. 29 
 
 less fine ; the horizontal waved lines of the reseau are more irregular 
 and marked in Alencon ; the foliations in point de Venise a reseau 
 are marked by minute regular open-worked fibres or veinings. 
 
 In general appearance, according to Mr Cole, the designs would 
 seem to give a date somewhere about 1650, that is, at the time when 
 the raised points were largely in circulation. Upon the establishment 
 of the Points de France, in 1665, the French were diligent under the 
 tuition of their Venetian workers in their attempts to imitate. Upon 
 this the skill and invention of the Venetians perfected the point a 
 reseau an attempt to win back the custom the French manufacturers 
 were taking away from them. Here their labours culminated. As 
 Alengon rose this type of lace declined. " Hence it is that point de 
 Venise a reseau, having probably had but a short existence, died out 
 soon ; comparatively few specimens of it are to be seen." There are a 
 fair number of specimens in perfect preservation the Victoria and 
 Albert Museum is peculiarly rich in them and these do not appear 
 to be later than the last years of the seventeenth and the beginning of 
 the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the eighteenth century 
 the lace industry was already declining. In 1734, French, Flemish, 
 and English laces were sold at cheaper rates in the Venetian lace shops 
 than the local production.* 
 
 In 1/50, Benedetto Raniari and Pietro Gabriele attempted to 
 " improve" the lace industry by imitating Flemish and French laces, 
 especially blonde. They were exempted from taxation for ten years 
 by the Senate, and their enterprise succeeded from the commercial, if 
 not from the artistic, standpoint, as is proved by their prosperity in 
 
 I75S.+ 
 
 The old Burano laces are a coarser outcome of the point de 
 
 * " Figurarsi lo Stato Yeneto tributario degli Stati forestieri nelP industria del 
 pizzi. E'l bello e che verso la meta del xviii. secolo alcune botteghe veneziane 
 vendevano per lo piu de ; pizzi esteri. Xel 1734 existevano ancora a Yenezia i 
 seguenti spacci de pizzi : al San Carlo, alle due Rose, all Premio, all Bucintor 
 Ducale, all' Aquila d'oro, alia Madonna degli Angeli, al Cardinal. Non pochi 
 certamente e piu che sufficient! se in ognuno se fosse lavorato e venduto soltando 
 della produzion locale :; (^lelani, "Svaghi Artistic! Femminili"}. 
 
 t " N,el 1758, si racconta, erano addette alia suddetta fabbricia quindici maestre 
 e quattrocentotrentetre scolari e in dicci anni vi si produssono 289.000 braccia cli 
 pizzi di varia altezza" (Ibid.}.
 
 30 OLD LACE. 
 
 Venise a reseau, and alone of all the Venetian needle laces survived 
 the dark days of the close of the eighteenth century. Marini quotes 
 from a document of the seventeenth century in which, speaking of 
 merletti, it is said that " these laces, styled ' punti in aria,' or di Burano, 
 because the greater part of them were made in the country so called, 
 are considered by Lannoni as more noble and of greater whiteness, 
 and for excellency of design and perfect workmanship equal to those 
 of Flanders, and in solidity superior." 
 
 Very little is known of the early history of Burano lace. . Peuchet* 
 writes that a great number of fisherfolk in the island of Burano, as 
 well as people in Venice itself and in the convents, were employed in 
 lace-making ; but that their profits were small. The thread, he adds, 
 comes from Flanders, as the local flax thread was not so strong when 
 equally fine. In 1/93 the Gasetta Veneta refers to Burano lace, 
 " del quale si exercitava largo commercio anche nei vecchi tempi." f 
 
 The designs of old Burano, like those of Venise a reseau, are dis- 
 tinguished by a conventional treatment of the flowers and ornament ; 
 but the designs are somewhat thinner, there is more reseau in pro- 
 portion to the pattern, and in some specimens there are semes upon 
 the ground, as in French laces of the Louis XVI. period. 
 
 In a description in a letter written in 1875, of certain Burano laces 
 in the possession of Sir Henry (then Mr) Layard, specimens were 
 described as "exactly like Alencon,"^ the only difference perceptible 
 being that " the flowers are matted and thick, and very clumsily put 
 into the ground." In an account of Venetian lace-making, written by 
 
 * " Dictionnaire l.'niversel cle la Geographic Commergante," 1789. 
 
 t Melani, " Svaglii Artistic! Femminili." "II Moschini nel suo 'Itineraire' 
 mostro rhe nel 1819 ne'll' isola de Burano non era scomparsa ancora 1'industria dei 
 pi/xi :: '//>/i/. . 
 
 ~\. Extract from a letter of 3oth August 1875, to Mr A. Blackborne, re Burano 
 laces : '' Lady Layard joined with Sir I lenry Layard in this enterprise, but it was not 
 successful. Modern Burano laces at first suffered from the quality of the thread." 
 One disadvantage long seemed unsurmountable, the coarseness and unevenness of 
 any thread that would then be found in Italy. This difficulty, which had so much 
 to do with the failure of the English lace trade in the seventeenth century, threatened 
 to doom modern Bunmo lace to an inevitable inferiority. However, thread was 
 chosen by Baron Beckmann, imported from the Belgian thread manufacturers, and 
 much improved the quality of lace produced.
 
 X 
 X 
 X 
 
 < -E
 
 X 
 
 X 
 X 
 
 1 
 
 '< ^ 
 
 w 
 
 gs 
 
 2 
 C 
 
 O 
 
 ^ fx^asssa
 
 X! 
 X
 
 VENETIAN NEEDLEPOINT AND BUKANO LACE. 31 
 
 Urban! de' Gheltof, published in Venice, and translated into English 
 by Lady Layard, a very detailed description, accompanied by dia- 
 grams, is given of the mode of execution of Burano point. 
 
 From this it appears that it is usually worked on a pillow, not, 
 however, of course with bobbins, as for bobbin lace, the object of the 
 pillow or bolster is merely to raise the work to a suitable height on 
 the lap of the lace-maker, and to diminish the necessity of much 
 handling. On the middle of the upper side of the pillow there rests 
 a small wooden cylinder across which the parchment pattern is 
 stretched, leaving an open space under it for the convenience of the 
 worker; thus the strip of lace is kept smooth and flat. In working 
 the reseau ground, a thread is fixed straight across the whole width 
 of the lace as a foundation of each row of meshes, being passed 
 through and fastened to any sprig or part of the pattern which may 
 intervene, and on this thread the looped meshes are worked. The 
 result is the formation of a remarkably square- shaped mesh, and by 
 this and also by the streaky and cloudy appearance of the reseau 
 (owing to the bad quality and unevenness of the thread), Burano point 
 may be recognised. The cordonnet is, like the Brussels needlepoint,* 
 of thread stitched round the outline, instead of the Alengon button- 
 hole stitch over horsehair. 
 
 In 1866 the industry was extinct. f "Venice point," writes Mrs 
 Palliser, " is now no more ; the sole relic of this far-famed trade is the 
 coarse torchon lace of the old lozenge pattern, offered by the peasant 
 women of Palestrina to strangers on their arrivals at hotels." 
 
 * Sometimes the cordonnet is button-hole stitched. 
 
 t An important revival of the Burano industry took place after the great distress 
 following the severe winter of 1872. The Burano workers do not copy only the 
 old Burano lace, but laces of almost any design or model.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MILANESE LACE. 
 
 MILAN, like many another centre of lacemaking, was early famed 
 for its embroideries.* In 1584 a " Universita " of embroiderers was 
 already in existence, and flourished until the middle of the seventeenth 
 century. Coryat mentions that the Milanese embroiderers are " very 
 singular workmen, who work much in gold and silver." In the S for/a 
 Visconti Inventory, the well-known instrument of partition between 
 the sisters Angela and Ippolita S for/a Visconti, f are to be found the 
 earliest records which are quoted in reference to Italian lace. Trina is 
 mentioned there under its old form tarnete, but trina, like our English 
 "lace" and the French "passement," was used in a general sense for 
 braid or passement long before the advent of lace proper. Florio, in 
 his Dictionary fi59<^j> gives trine, cuts, tags, snips, pinck worke on 
 garments, and trinci, gardings, fringings, lacings, &c. It will be seen 
 that the "trine" of the S for/a Inventory are always of metal and silk. 
 
 * r>r;mu'>me, in his " Dames Galantes,'' remarks that the embroiderers of Milan 
 u ont seen bien faire par clessus les autres." 
 
 " Len/uolo (sheet un<> di revo di tele linen thread), cinque lavorato a punto. 
 
 " 1'exa de tarnete (trina) d'argento facte a stelle. 
 
 " Lenxolo uno de tele, c|iiatro lavorate a radexelo. 
 
 " 1'e/a c|uatro de radexela per mettere ad uno moscheto (xanxariere mosquito 
 curtain;. 
 
 " Tarneta uno d'oro et seda negra facta da ossi (bones). 
 
 '' 1'ecto une d'oro facto a grupi. 
 
 " Uinda una lavorata a poncto de doii fuxi two bobbins ?j per uno lenxolo " 
 (" Instrumento di divixione tre le sorelle Angela ed Ippolita Sforxa Yisconti, di 
 Milano, 14^3, giorno di (iiovcdi, 12 Settembrc ").
 
 Plate XXXVII. 
 
 PANEL OF MILANESE LACE. 
 Without brides. Seventeenth century.
 
 X 
 
 * f^< 
 N^& 
 
 a 
 
 C/) 
 
 y d 
 
 a "
 
 X 
 
 $n
 
 X 
 
 _) 
 
 a | 
 
 w i 
 
 < ^ 
 
 O 
 
 ~ 3 
 
 Ob 
 SJ3
 
 MILANESE LACE. 33 
 
 Frattini, in his "Storia dell' Industria Manufatturiera in Lombardia," 
 states the inhabitants of the Cantu district made lace from about 
 1600. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century the industry 
 had fallen into decay. "The Milanese," writes Lalande, "only fabricate 
 lace of an inferior quality,"* to which may be added the later testi- 
 mony of Peuchet, who writes that the laces are very common and 
 not highly priced. f 
 
 The earlier Milanese laces are not grounded with the reseau, but 
 covered by bold rolling scroll designs held together by brides, some- 
 times of twisted strands of thread. A specimen in the Bolckow 
 Bequest, catalogued as Italian or Flemish, but certainly Italian in 
 treatment, has a design of large flowering scrolls, in the centre of 
 which is a lady playing a lute, while toward her flies a cupid bearing 
 a heart, and on the other side is a nude figure with a flowing scarf. 
 The cupid, blindfolded, has a bow and arrows (Plate XXXVIII.). 
 One very fine piece of Milanese lace in the Victoria and Albert 
 Museum has no brides ; the details of the pattern touch one another^: 
 (Plate XXXVII.). The toile is a close, firm, even braid, varied with 
 pin holes, or larger open devices. The reseau ground was introduced 
 by 1664, at which date a portrait by Gonzales Coques shows a 
 straight-edged piece of Milanese with meshed ground. 
 
 The reseau is of various kinds. Its most common type is a 
 diamond-shaped mesh, formed with a plait of four threads like 
 Valenciennes, but many experimental grounds, loosely worked, are 
 met with in earlier pieces. Sometimes the mesh is square with the 
 threads knotted at the points of intersection. 
 
 The pattern is first made on the pillow by itself, and the reseau 
 ground is worked in round it afterwards, sloping in all directions so 
 as to fit the spaces, while Valenciennes is worked all in one piece, 
 
 * "Voyage en Italic," 1765. 
 
 t "Milan. Dentelles en fil. Elles sont tres-communes. Cette fabrique n'a 
 rien qui puisse nuire aux fabriques franchises cle meme espece, ni pour la con- 
 currance ni pour la consommation de Milan. Beaucoup sont employees par les 
 paysannes de la Lombardie. La plus fine peut procurer quelque manchettes 
 d'hommes d'un prix fort modique" ("Dictionnaire Universel de la Geographic 
 Commerqante," 1789). 
 
 + Xo. 42, 1903.
 
 34 OLD LACK. 
 
 pattern and reseau together. If the lace is turned upon the wrong 
 side the strands of thread of the Milanese reseau can be seen carried 
 behind the pattern. The designs are beautiful, and consist of light 
 ribbon-like scrolls and conventional flowers,* which enclose small 
 chequer or other simple fillings. Animal forms, eagles, hares, bears, 
 hounds, archaic in drawing, but always vigorously treated, are frequently 
 introduced. 
 
 Coats of arms are frequently met with, and animals which, no 
 doubt, represent family badges. The double or imperial eagle is of 
 very common occurrence. This is to be accounted for by the fact 
 that Charles V. conceded as a mark of special favour the privilege of 
 bearing the imperial arms to several Italian as well as Spanish families, 
 who used them instead of their own arms.f 
 
 The very curious piece of Milanese lace (Plates XXXIX. and XL.), 
 shows a clumsily-drawn figure seated upon an ornamental fountain. 
 The graceful scrolls include various long-tailed birds, angels, horsemen 
 chasing stags and lions ; while part of the pattern has a kind of knot- 
 work upon the more important motifs ; the lion's mane, the angel, the 
 horsemen are ornamented with this work in black silk, as is also the 
 double eagle surmounted by a crown. It is dated i6.-5. 
 
 In church lace, figures of the Virgin, angels, and monograms occur. 
 
 An interesting piece, dated 1/33, in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, 
 at Brussels (of which two photographs are given on Plate XLIII.), 
 should be studied. The first portion, with arms of "Julius Cajsar 
 Xaverius Miccolis abbas et rector S. Mari;e Gnecnj, A.D. 1733," and 
 its repeating scroll design with its characteristic birds and stags is 
 perfect, while the second portion shows a hopeless confusion of motifs 
 carelessly thrown together, and the reseau mended. The angels 
 supporting the shield with its rayed monstrance are followed by a stag 
 and a crowned double eagle, which are quite unrelated to the design 
 and to each other. The scroll, instead of repeating like the first 
 portion, is twisted into a broken and irregular volute, and a single 
 
 r Not conventional beyond recognition, like these highly ornamental flowers of 
 Venetian rose point. The pink, lily, and other flowers are met with, often treated 
 naturalistic ally. 
 
 + I-'roni 1535 till 1714 Milan was a dependency of the Spanish Crown.
 
 X 
 o 
 
 
 o ^
 
 y 
 
 o ~
 
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 O s 
 
 x 5 
 
 o jf 
 
 a g 
 
 I
 
 MILANESE LACE. 35 
 
 supporter of the abbot's arms is transferred to a new position beside 
 an ornamental pillar. 
 
 Plate XLL, with its naive rendering of floral design, is perhaps a 
 late or peasant rendering of Milanese work ; the twisting, ribbon-like 
 convolutions, which may be seen in the stems of the flowers and other 
 ornament, became more prominent in the decadence of Milanese lace. 
 The trade name for such lace is " Genoese lace," but it was made both 
 in Milan and Genoa and the district. The design consists merely of 
 the tape looping back upon itself, and linked together by brides with 
 picots, or with a reseau ground. It has been much used for church 
 vestments, and was frequently of considerable width (Plate XLII.). 
 
 Strong peasant bobbin laces were made very freely throughout 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Northern Italy. Coryat * 
 notices in Piedmont "that many of the inns have white canopies and 
 curtains made of needlework, which are edged with very fine bone- 
 lace," and in Venice that " the sides under the benches " in the 
 gondolas are " garnished with fine linen cloth, the edge whereof is 
 laced with bone-lace." About fifty years ago, sheets and pillow-cases, 
 towels and table-cloths were still to be bought from country inns, 
 trimmed with pillow lace of coarse thread and indeterminate pattern. 
 
 * Coryat' s Crudities, 1611.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CRETAN. 
 
 Boi;r>lN-LACK making in Crete would seem to have arisen in 
 consequence of Venetian intercourse with the island,* and Cretan 
 white thread laces bear distinct traces of Venetian influence, as 
 for example those in which costumed figures are introduced. "As 
 a rule, the motives of Cretan lace patterns are traceable to orderly 
 arrangement and balance of simple geometric and symmetrical details, 
 such as diamonds, triangles, and quaint polygonal figures, which are 
 displayed upon groundworks of small meshes. The workmanship 
 is somewhat remarkable, especially that displayed in the making of 
 the meshes for the grounds. Mere we have an evidence of ability 
 to twist and plait threads as marked, almost, as that shown by lace- 
 makers of Brussels and Mechlin. Whether the twisting and plaiting 
 of threads to form the meshes in this Cretan lace was done with the 
 help of pins or fine pointed bones, may be a question difficult to 
 solve." t Cretan lace is very often worked on silk. The patterns in 
 the majority of the specimens made of linen thread are outlined with 
 one, two, or three bright coloured silken threads, which may have 
 been run in with a needle. 
 
 * In the partition of tin- ('.reek Empire after the capture of Constantinople by 
 the Latins in 1204, Crete fell to the lot of Honiface, Marquis of Montferrat, and 
 was by him sold to the Venetians, to whom it continued subject for more than four 
 centuries, till if/>o. 
 
 t " A Descriptive Catalogue of the Collections of I. ace in the Victoria and 
 Albert Museum."
 
 r* 
 J 
 
 X
 
 [ 37 ] 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FLANDERS. 
 
 WHILE the conditions of art in Flanders wealthy, bourgeois, proud 
 and free were not dissimilar to those of the art of Venice, from the 
 very infancy of Flemish art an active intercourse was maintained 
 between the Low Countries and the great centres of Italian art, so 
 that it was not unnatural that at the close of the sixteenth century 
 laces were known and made in Flanders.* As a matter of fact, 
 Flemish paintings do not begin to show the use of lace until about 
 1600.+ The evidence of the series of engravings after Martin de 
 Yos is hardly conclusive as to the making of bobbin lace in Flanders 
 in the sixteenth century, as he spent many years in Italy ; and 
 though the third of the series (assigned to the age ;//;/;-) shows a girl 
 sitting with a pillow on her knees making bobbin-lace, the treatment 
 and the background are Italian. 
 
 Needlepoint lace was hardly made at all. A specimen of needle- 
 point lace, of which the pattern consists of a number of small blossom 
 devices arranged very closely together, is notable for the characteristic 
 absence of contrast between the compactly worked ornaments and 
 
 * '' It is a noteworthy circumstance that the two widely distant regions of 
 Europe where pictorial art first flourished and attained a high perfection, North 
 Italy and Flanders, were precisely the localities where lace-making first took root 
 and became an industry of importance both from an artistic and from a commercial 
 point of view " (Art. Lace, Encyclopaedia Britannica). 
 
 t " I ritratti fiamminghi non cominciano a essere ornati di pizzi che intorno al 
 1600; solo dopo il 1600 1'uso di cotale ornamento e estesissimo nelle Fiandre " 
 (A. Melani, " Svaghi Artistic! Femminili ")
 
 38 OLD LACK. 
 
 open spaces about them, and the same defect is to be seen in Flemish 
 bobbin laces of the same period.* 
 
 In the Wardrobe Accounts of Queen Elizabeth, Flanders cutvvork 
 is priced less highly than the Italian variety and is of less frequent 
 occurrence.! 
 
 In one point Flanders was superior to other countries of Europe 
 its linen, whereof the Flemish " exporte great quantity, and fyner 
 then any other part of Europe yealdeth."* Spinning flax threads 
 and weaving fine textiles is closely associated with the early 
 commercial history of Flanders, and " when the progress of 
 manufactures was endangered by the religious persecutions of the 
 sixteenth century, the linen trade alone is said to have upheld itself, 
 and to have saved the country from ruin." The fineness of the 
 thread used especially affected the lace designs when the early 
 twisted and plaited merletti a piombini after the Italian models began 
 to give way to scalloped laces in which flattened, broader tape-like 
 lines forming some sort of floral ornament, were prominent. These 
 date from about 1630 to 1660. Curved forms seem to have been 
 found easy of execution in the bobbin lace, no doubt because (unlike 
 reticellaj it was not constrained by a foundation of any sort. 
 
 The- immense quantity of bobbin lace produced in Flanders during 
 the seventeenth century was aided by the improvements in spinning 
 threads, and in the making of pins. 
 
 The design, as we have said, is usually somewhat crowded," com- 
 
 * Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 243, 1881. 
 
 + " For one yard of double Italian cuuvork, a quarter of a yard wide, 555. 4(1- 
 For one yard of double Flanders cutwork, worked with Italian purl, 338. 4cl." 
 ('.AY. A., 33rd and 34th Elizabeth). 
 
 Fynes Moryson. 
 
 :; About 1^30. A portrait of a lady by Rembrandt about 1040, in the Royal 
 collection at Windsor Castle, shows a fichu bordered with scallops of this type of lace. 
 The fir>t improvement in the primitive spindle was found in the construction 
 of the hand-wheel, in which the spindle mounted in a frame, was fixed horizontally 
 and rotated by a band passing round it and a large wheel set in the same frame- 
 work. Such a wheel became known in Europe about the middle of the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 " "While the painters of ( lermany and the Netherlands were fond of filling a 
 L;iven space \\ith figures and incidents, the Italians preferred to deal with an
 
 X 
 
 o
 
 Plate XLV1I. 
 
 FLEMISH LACE. 
 Beginning of the eighteenth century.
 
 FLANDERS LACE. 39 
 
 posed of the local flora;* the edge spread into a fan-shaped or rounded 
 broad scallop. In Flanders a means was invented for producing laces 
 of great width, which consisted of " dividing the patterns not by 
 bands, but into small and separate pieces, the boundaries of which 
 coincided with the capricious curves of the ornament." 
 
 Of this century is a bobbin-made lace a brides "point de Flandres," 
 or "guipure de Flandres" as it is sometimes called. In this the 
 pattern is composed of bold scrolling stems connected together by 
 brides a picots. When the ground to lace of similar character and 
 make consisted of small meshes, the lace was termed point d'Angleterre, 
 and was made for the English market.f 
 
 There has been some doubt as to the country of origin of certain 
 seventeenth-century pillow-made tape guipures in the Victoria and 
 Albert Museum, which are described in the cases containing them as 
 "Flemish or Italian." If a distinctive difference may be suggested 
 between lace of the same style of pattern made in the two countries, it 
 would perhaps appear to be in the quality of the thread. As has been 
 said, the inhabitants of the Flemish provinces have always been noted 
 for their superior skill in spinning and weaving linen, and from a 
 difference in national taste, Italian lace is heavier and stouter than that 
 produced in the north of Europe. The loose texture of this Flemish 
 lace gives a pulled appearance to the outline, as if the brides were 
 slightly straining it, and the pin-holes, from the same looseness, appear 
 less precise in form than in the Italian work. 
 
 Pillow-tape guipure is composed of a tape made on the pillow to 
 follow the curves of the pattern, and connected by brides, generally 
 plaited, also made on the pillow, or by "sewings/' 
 
 expanse of background, and by their treatment of it, gave an effect of air and 
 freedom to the scene" (Woltmann and Woermann, "History of Painting," p. 399). 
 
 * " Pour la plupart de la nationalite germaine, les populations du nord-ouest de 
 la Gaule tiennent de cette origine des tendances vers le naturalisme dans Fart. 
 Cette origine a contribue . . . a donner aux habitants de la Gaule Belgique, comme 
 trait principal de leur physiognomic artistique, une aptitude toute speciale a 
 reproduire la nature" (Deshaisnes. u Histoire de 1'Art dans la Flandre"). 
 
 t For explanation of this name, see p. 48 ct set/.
 
 40 OLD LACE. 
 
 The braid follows the curves and lines of the pattern, and the 
 various turns and curves are connected by means of sewings. The 
 manner in which the braid is carried round the curves is extremely 
 ingenious. By working partly across the braid and then returning to 
 the outer edge of the curve a kind of wedge can be formed which 
 brings the work round flat without any apparent thickening of the 
 material. In the Flemish lace the fine thread obviated the necessity 
 for the careful turning of the curves, and the method was gradually 
 forgotten. Though we see less of the absolutely continuous line, 
 patterns remained of a continuous scrolling character. 
 
 The "sewing" (as now practised by Brussels lace workers) is 
 formed by catching a thread through a pin-hole in an adjacent piece 
 of braid, and passing another thread through the loop thus formed. 
 In this way a pattern worked in separate narrow lines is all joined 
 into a homogeneous whole. Sometimes instead of the braids being 
 closely united, two threads are twisted, or four threads are plaited into 
 a bride fastened with a sewing into a part of the pattern, and then 
 carried back into the braid. 
 
 In most of the pillow guipures the braid is lightened by holes or 
 " bird's eyes," sometimes single, sometimes arranged in groups. Some- 
 times a coarse quality of lace was made in which tape (not the tape 
 made on the pillow) was used. The weaving of tape appears to have 
 been begun in Flanders about the end of the sixteenth or the beginning 
 of the seventeenth century. 
 
 " Mat Spanish," or point de Flandres, is a pillow lace without any 
 raised work. The lace was probably intended for Spanish consumption. 
 " The making of lace," writes Sir John Sinclair in 1815, "at the time 
 the French entered the Low Countries, employed a considerable 
 number of people of both sexes. ... A large quantity of sorted laces 
 of a peculiar quality were exported to Spain and the colonies." The 
 pattern which consists of detached and fantastic cut-up forms of 
 varying widths, sprays, ribbons, flowers, &c., lightened by many 
 varieties of open work, grille, and veinings of pin-holes, &c., shows 
 often an architectural and balanced arrangement. 
 
 A Flemish lace, straight-edged, with indeterminate pattern, and 
 cloud}- ground of irregular round circles with solid portions, is fre- 
 quently met with. Its trade name is " Binche." Such specimens in
 
 Plate XLVIII. 
 
 BORDER OF FLEMISH LACE. 
 
 With figures adoring a monstrance. 
 
 FLOUNCE OR BORDER OF FLEMISH (?) LACE. 
 -Seventeenth centurv.
 
 FLANDERS LACE. 41 
 
 the Gruuthus Collection, however, as are attributed to Mechlin, in 
 other collections are assigned to Antwerp. It is probable that it 
 was a widely spread type of lace in Flanders, from which Mechlin, 
 Valenciennes, &c., developed. It seems unlikely that this simple and 
 ineffective lace was produced at Binche, of which the lace was 
 admired by Savary, and said to be " equal to the laces of Brabant 
 and Flanders."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 BELGIAN LACK. 
 BRUGKS LACE. 
 
 BRUGES made bobbin lace in the late seventeenth and early 
 eighteenth centuries, and the name of Bruges is given to a lace of a 
 scrolling character.* A guipure de Flandres piece of this kind, dated 
 1684, is preserved at Bruges, in the Chapelle du Saint Sang. The 
 central portion shows two angels supporting the tube of the Holy 
 Blood.-*- This oblong picture is surrounded by a scrolling design 
 upon a rescau ground. 
 
 There is a good collection in the Gruuthus Museum, and a number 
 of pieces were given to the Victoria and Albert Museum by the 
 Rev. R. Brooke. The earlier examples have no brides ; the later 
 have brides picotees. The pattern as a rule resembles that of 
 Venetian rose point. It is interesting to notice the pillow render- 
 ings of forms of "diaperings" and modes, which were originally done 
 with the needle. 
 
 Later than the ground of brides is the rcseau, of which there are 
 some good specimens in the Victoria and Albert Museum. One 
 specimen shows the tendency to naturalistic treatment of flowers in the 
 eighteenth century, and has its floreated scroll pattern ornamented 
 with tulips, primulas, and poppy-pods, acorns, &c.^ 
 
 * SocieU' de 1'Art ancien en Beljjique, 1883-92. 
 
 + A copy in lace of the original ijlass tube containing the lloly Blood, which, 
 though broken, is still preserved in the chapel. 
 
 ;: No. 888, 1853.
 
 BRUSSELS LACE. 43 
 
 BRUSSELS LACE. 
 
 There is at present no information as to the date when the manu- 
 facture of Brussels lace began. In the eighteenth century it was 
 famous, as Lord Chesterfield wrote in 1741, as the place "where most 
 of the fine laces are made you see worn in England." The Beguinage 
 was a great centre for lace-making, and English travellers often visited 
 to buy lace.* In 1756 a Mrs Caldenvood, who visited it, gave an 
 account of the process of lace-making. " The manufacture is very 
 curious," she writes; "one person works the flowers. They are all 
 sold separate, and you will see a very pretty sprig for which the 
 worker only gets twelve sous. The masters who have all these people 
 employed give them the thread to make them ; this they do according 
 to a pattern, and give them out to be grounded ; after which they give 
 them to a third hand, who ' hearts ' all the flowers with the open-work. 
 That is what makes the lace so much dearer than the Mechlin, which 
 is wrought all at once."f Thus half-way through the eighteenth 
 century some special characteristics of Brussels work the low rate of 
 wages, the division of labour, and the specialisation of lace-workers on 
 some branch of this work, the domination of the " masters "is already 
 established. 
 
 Brussels pillow lace is, as Mrs Calderwood writes, not made in one 
 piece on the pillow ; the reseau ground is worked in round the pattern 
 which has been separately made.* "Thus the long threads that form 
 the toile of Brussels lace of all dates always follow the curves of the 
 patterns, while in other Flemish laces these strands are found to run 
 parallel to the edge the whole length of the lace, and to pass through 
 the pattern into the reseau ground." 
 
 * "We went to the Beguinage Convent to buy lace" (Letter of Elizabeth 
 Viscountess Xuneham, 1766 " Harcourt Papers," vol. xi.). 
 
 t "Mrs Calderwood's Journey through Holland and Belgium, 1756" (printed 
 by the Maitland Club). 
 
 J In old Brussels lace the ornament was worked on the pillow into the ground. 
 Later, and at the present time, the flowers are applied to or sewn in the ground. 
 Sometimes they are sewn on to the ground. 
 
 8 A. M. S., " Point and Pillow Lace."
 
 44 OLD LACE. 
 
 There are two sorts of toile, one the usual woven texture, as of a 
 piece of cambric, the other a more open arrangement of the threads, 
 which is used for shading effects. 
 
 Relief is given to certain details of flowers and fibres of leaves by 
 a flattened and slight!}' raised plaited cordonnet. A slight modelling 
 is imparted to flowers by means of a bone instrument, which gives 
 concave shapes to petals, leaves, and other ornaments. 
 
 There were two kinds of ground used in Brussels lace the bride 
 and the reseau. The bride was first employed, but was already dis- 
 continued in 1/61, and was then only made to order.* Sometimes 
 the bride and the reseau were combined. f 
 
 The ground used in Brussels lace is of two kinds needlepoint 
 and pillow. The needlepoint reseau is made in small segments of an 
 inch in width, and from 7 to 45 inches long, joined together by a 
 stitch long known as "fine joining," consisting of a fresh stitch 
 formed with a needle between the two pieces to be united. The 
 needleground is stronger, but three times more expensive than the 
 pillow, which has a hexagonal mesh, of which two sides are made of 
 four threads plaited four times, and four sides of two threads twisted 
 twice. Since machine-made net has come into use, the vrai reseau is 
 rarely made, save for royal orders. Of course, lace-makers so skilful 
 as those of Brussels occasionally made experiments with other 
 grounds, such as the star-meshed reseau ; but this is uncommon. 
 
 Brussels needlepoint was introduced into that city about 1720, 
 evidently in imitation of the Alencon fabric, which it closely resembles 
 in pattern and general effect. The Brussels needlepoint, however, is 
 not so firm and precise, and the toile is of looser make than the French 
 work. The button-hole stitched cordonnet a distinguishing feature 
 of Alencon is replaced by a single thread* or strand of threads. 
 The Brussels needle-made reseau is made with a simple looped stitch. 
 
 * ' Dictionnnirc <lu Citoyen," 1761. 
 
 "I'nc cocffure a une piece d'Angleterre bride et reseau" (Comptes de 
 Madame tin Harry, Hib. Xat., MSS. F. Kr. 8157-8 . 
 
 ; In the needlepoint laces of Hrusscls the cordonnet is generally only a thread, 
 but in some few cases it is covered with button-hole stitches, as in point d'Alencon. 
 
 i " I,e point d'aiguille de Hruxelles fait pour imiter le point d'Alencon est loin 
 d avoir sa soliditc et son travail artistique. I'our imiter la brode qui donne tant de
 
 BRUSSELS LACE. 45 
 
 The earliest Brussels needlepoints were grounded with this needle- 
 made reseau, but much of the best needlepoint is grounded with the 
 more familiar pillow-made " droschel." The Alencon " modes " are 
 rendered with great accuracy. In this kind of mixed lace the 
 cordonnet is usually a single moderately thick thread. In a specimen 
 in the Dublin Museum, the cordonnet is like that of Alencon lace, 
 buttonhole stitched, but the stitchery is not very close or regular/ 
 
 The making of Brussels lace is so complicated, wrote Mrs Palliser, 
 that each process is assigned to different hands, who work only at her 
 own special department, the first termed : 
 
 1. Drocheleuse (Flemish, drocheles), makes the vrai reseau. 
 
 2. Denteliere (kantwerkes), the footing. 
 
 3. Pointeuse (needlewerkes), the point a 1'aiguille flowers. 
 
 4. Platteuse (platwerkes), the plat flowers. 
 
 5. Fonneuse (groundwerkes) is charged with the open-work (jours) 
 in the plat. 
 
 6. Jointeuse or attacheuse (lashwerkes) unites the different sections 
 of the ground together. 
 
 7. Striqueuse or appliqueuse (strikes) is charged with the sewing 
 (application) of the flowers upon the ground.+ 
 
 The pattern is designed by the head of the fabric, who, having 
 cut the parchment into pieces, hands it out ready pricked. The 
 worker has no reflections to make, no combinations to study ; the 
 whole responsibility rests with the master, who selects the ground, 
 chooses the thread, and alone knows the effect to be produced as 
 a whole. " The same design," writes Peuchet, " was never executed 
 twice; continual variations were introduced."^ 
 
 cachet au point d'Alencon et qui est fort longue a faire, on 1'a remplacee dans le 
 point d aiguille de Bruxelles par un gros fil passe dans les mailles pour entourer 
 le dessin" (Mine. Despierres, " Histoire du Point d'Alencon"). 
 
 * Xo. 40, Dublin Museum. 
 
 t Mrs Palliser, " History of Lace, : ' p. 122, edition 1902. 
 
 1 '' Le dessin est le premier objet de son attention ; il (le fabricant) le vane 
 continuellement et ne fait executer le meme une scconde fois il en 
 
 detache les fleurs en les piquant d'un millier d'epingles pour faciliter aux ouvrieres 
 la lecture du dessin, et les mettre a portee de 1'executer avec exactitude. C'est lui 
 qui juge des fonds les plus convenables pour faire ressortir les fleurs du dessin, 
 pour donner a la dentelle 1'eclat et la finesse/'
 
 46 OLD LACK. 
 
 The fineness of thread used in Brussels lace is almost a fable. " It 
 is made of the flax grown in Brabant, at Hal and Rebecq-Rognon. 
 The finest quality is spun in dark underground rooms, for contact 
 with the dry air causes the thread to break, so fine is it as almost 
 to escape the sight. The threadspinner closely examines every inch 
 drawn from her distaff, and when any irregularity occurs, stops her 
 wheel to repair the mischief. A background of dark paper is placed 
 to throw out the thread, and the room so arranged as to admit one 
 single ray of light upon the work." * + 
 
 Representation of objects naturalistically treated is one of the 
 characteristics of Brussels work. In eighteenth-century specimens 
 accurately rendered leaves and flowers, in especial the pink and the 
 tulip and the rose, insects and birds are the main components of 
 the design. * 
 
 In larger and more important pieces of the last years of the 
 seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, the 
 structure of the design is most elaborate, and figures, " subjects," and 
 every variety of plant-form are most skilfully rendered. In a flounce 
 given by Madame de Maintenon to Francois de Salignac de la Mothe 
 Fcnelon, who was consecrated Archbishop of Cambray in 1695, the 
 ground is of brides picotees. In the two later specimens in the 
 Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Brussels (one of which is dated 1720, 
 while the other belongs to the early eighteenth century), a centre of 
 the rescau ground contrasts with the surrounding border of brides 
 picotees (Plates XLIX. and L. ). The cravat-end in the possession of 
 Miss Josephs is entirely grounded with the reseau (Plate LI I.). 
 
 * Mrs I'alliser, " History of Lace," edition 1902. 
 
 + Thread spun by machine in England from Belgian flax is much used now in 
 Belgium. It has, however, never arrived at the fineness of that made by hand, 
 and frequently in it there are traces of cotton, which depreciate its quality. 
 
 "A Genes, a Milan, a Venise, les dentelles au fuseau moins fines de matiere 
 se reconnaissent surtout aux details de la composition. L'ornement y reste plus 
 conventionnel et, lorsque les personnages et les animaux y apparaissent, ils sont 
 d'expression allegorique. Le meme genre de dentelle au fuseau fabrique a 
 Bruxelles ou en France contiendra des details plus realistes, les personnages y 
 porteront le costume contemporain, les animaux y seront representes sous la 
 forme active" (" Le Musee Ilistorique des Tissus de Lyon." K. Cox, Lyon, 1902). 
 
 \'ictoria and Albert Museum, Xo. 755, 1890.
 
 o
 
 Plate LI I. 
 
 CRAVAT KM) OF 15RUSSKLS LACK. 
 F.i^hkrnth century. (/;/ the possession of Miss Josephs
 
 BRUSSELS LACE. 47 
 
 The two specimens from the Musee des Arts Decoratifs are very 
 wonderful pieces of work. The dated piece (1720) represents the 
 Invention of the Cross by Saint Helena, whose train is carried by 
 an Eastern attendant. The second piece represents the pope seated 
 under a canopy presenting or receiving a document from a lady who 
 kneels before him. Her train is borne by an Eastern attendant, and 
 her crown by a lady who stands behind her. The work upon the 
 costumes is remarkable. Among the scroll work are angels blowing 
 trumpets, and others beating drums. 
 
 During the reign of Louis XV. Brussels lace was much affected 
 by the French court, and was almost preferred to point d'Alengon. 
 This produced a certain French style of design in Brussels to meet 
 this demand. In large designs figures, whimsical devices, and mottoes 
 were introduced. Some of the details are graceful and ornamental ; 
 others, again, are misshapen. There is a distinct reflection of French 
 mannerisms in Brussels of this period* the balanced designs of 
 repeated similar groups of fragmentary floral sprays, the valanced 
 canopy, the royal attributes, cupids, pillars, trophies, &c., and the 
 waved bands or ribbons dividing the design into compartments, and 
 worked with very varied modest (Plate LI 1 1.). 
 
 In the last years of the seventeenth and in the early part of the 
 eighteenth centuries, ornamentation in the Chinese style, fantastic 
 zigzag forms, pagodas, and Indian or Chinese figures were introduced 
 a reflection of the taste that demanded negro attendants, and 
 Oriental lacquer plaques inlaid on furniture. The Chinese influence 
 may have received an impetus from that Siamese embassy which 
 is said to have brought over many specimens of Chinese lacquer 
 work as presents to Louis XIV. 
 
 Two specimens of the Louis XV. period belonging to Mine. Doistau 
 and the Comtesse Foy, which were lent to the Exposition Inter- 
 nationale of 1900 at Paris, are good examples of this exotic style. 
 
 * And again at a later date, when a number of lace makers left France for 
 Belgium after the French Revolution. To-day the influence of French design is 
 as strong as ever. 
 
 t Brussels pillow-renderings of various modes, used in French needlepoint, the 
 Argentan hexagonal mesh, the reseau rosace, star-devices, &c., are very close and 
 skilful. 
 
 K
 
 48 OLD LACK. 
 
 Mine. Doistau's piece (which is bobbin lace) is a square cravat end, 
 showing motifs of pagodas, and the longtailed crested bird that so 
 often accompanies them. The point lace belonging to the Comtesse 
 Foy shows the influence of the design of Dresden china in the little 
 kiosks, the minute landscapes, rocks and rivers, among which are 
 huntsmen and dogs chasing stags. 
 
 Brussels in the late eighteenth century followed French laces in 
 the change that took place on the accession of Louis XVI., when 
 design became " thinner," and the lace appeared to be mostly reseau, 
 edged with a stiff rectilinear border of conventional design, the ground 
 powdered with little detached flowers, sprays, and, later, spots and 
 rosettes. 
 
 In the early nineteenth century the pseudo-classic style of ornament 
 then in vogue in France influenced Brussels design. The introduction 
 of machine-made net, upon which Brussels bobbin-made flowers were 
 applied (Brussels applique), also had an influence upon design. 
 
 In France the term point d'Angleterre is used for Brussels lace. 
 This is somewhat confusing, as point d'Angleterre was a term applied 
 in the late seventeenth century to a variety of Flemish pillow lace, 
 of which the design was in imitation of the scroll patterns of point 
 lace of that date. Flanders lace was worn almost exclusively during 
 the reign of Charles I. and the Commonwealth, and in 1662 an Act 
 was passed by the Fnglish Parliament, alarmed at the sums of money 
 expended on foreign goods, prohibiting the importation of all foreign 
 lace. The Fnglish lace dealers endeavoured to improve the national 
 fabric by inviting Flemish lace makers to settle in England, and 
 establish a manufacture there,* but when this scheme proved 
 abortive they adopted the simpler experiment of smuggling in 
 Brussels lace, and selling it under the name of Point d'Angleterre 
 a term which, like point d'Fspagne and "flat Spanish," relates 
 to the country that consumed it rather than that which produced it. 
 
 This fact is corroborated in a memorandum by the Venetian 
 
 * 1'euchet gives a somewhat different account. " Les fabricans Anglais, pour 
 favonser les premiers essais de leurs manufactures, achetaient beaucoup de 
 dentellcs de I>ru\elles cju'ils vendaient a Unite Tluirope sous le nom de point 
 d'Angleterre" ('' Dictionnaire I'nivetsel de la (leographie Commerqante," 1/99).
 
 FRAGMENT OF BRUSSELS LACE. 
 
 Beginning of eighteenth century. 
 
 LAGMENT OF BRUSSELI
 
 r -, 
 l 
 
 *-* A - i
 
 BRUSSELS LACE. 49 
 
 ambassador to the English court in 1695, \vho states that Venetian 
 point is no longer in fashion, but " that called English point, which, 
 you kno\v, is not made here, but in Flanders, and only bears the name 
 of English to distinguish it from the others."* The name point 
 d'Angleterre is used nowadays, of a variety of Brussels lace, with 
 many open fillings of the bride variety. 
 
 * Quoted in Mrs Palliser's " History of Lace," edition 1902, p. 117.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 MKCHLIX AND ANTWERP LACE. 
 
 PRIOR to 1665 nearly all Flanders laces were known under the name 
 of Mechlin to the French commercial world. "The common people 
 here," writes Regnard, who visited Flanders in i68i,"as throughout 
 all Flanders, occupy themselves in making the white lace known as 
 Malines." The laces of Ypres, Bruges, Dunkirk, and Courtrai, accord- 
 ing to Savary, passed under the name of Mechlin at Paris. Peuchet 
 writes that a great deal of Malines was made in Antwerp,* Mechlin, 
 and Brussels, and that the industry was an important one at Antwerp. 
 He adds that an excellent quality of thread is made in the town 
 and neighbourhood. 
 
 In Fngland Mechlin is not mentioned by name until Queen 
 Anne's reign. f 
 
 In 1699 the Act prohibiting foreign lace was repealed in so far as 
 it touched the Spanish Low Countries, and Anne, while prohibiting 
 lace made "in the dominions of the French King,'' admits the import 
 of Flanders lace, so that from the first years of the eighteenth century 
 Mechlin was without rival in England among light laces. According 
 to Peuchet, Mechlin laces arc " les plus belles, apres celles de Bruxclles, 
 et elles out un pen plus de duree." It was eminently suited to the 
 less severe modern costume which came in with the eighteenth century, 
 and by reason of its open a jours and transparent appearance was worn 
 
 Specimens of Mechlin lace are preserved in the Steen Museum at Antwerp. 
 + " Flanders lace" is the only term used for Flemish laces in the (ireat Ward- 
 robe Accounts until Oueen Anne, when "Mackliiv' and Brussels are first noted 
 down.
 
 ~ 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 W T=: 
 
 O 
 
 H ^ 
 
 
 o
 
 MECHLIN LACE. 51 
 
 as a trimming lace. It thus remained in fashion through the eighteenth 
 century, when references like " Mechlin the queen of lace,"* " Mechlin 
 the finest lace of all,"f bear witness to a vogue in England little short 
 of extraordinary. The disappearance of lace ruffles before 1/80 from 
 women's sleeves, and the disappearance of the cravat and men's ruffles, 
 put an end to lace as a fashionable adjunct to dress. In 1834 there 
 were but eight houses where it was fabricated.^ Unfortunately, also, 
 for the prosperity of the industry, Mechlin is of all laces the easiest 
 to copy in machine-made lace. 
 
 Historically, Mechlin developed, like Valenciennes, from the straight- 
 edged laces of indefinite pattern, with an irregular ground which has 
 the appearance of being pierced at intervals with round holes. | 
 
 The earliest examples of what we can recognise as Mechlin show 
 a design consisting of groupings of heavily drawn flowers, clumsily 
 designed rococo devices, cornucopias, &c. 
 
 Later, with the adoption of the characteristic Mechlin reseau, the 
 floral design becomes more delicate and light, and a French influence 
 is apparent (Plate LVIL). Much of this lace, worn in France during 
 the Regency and later, was made up in the style of modern insertion, 
 with an edging on both sides,*" campane or scalloped, and used for the 
 gathered trimmings called "quilles," like the Argentan sleeve-trimmings 
 of Madame Louise de France, painted by Nattier in 1/48. 
 
 The attempt to imitate Alencon extended not only to the motifs 
 
 * Young, " Love of Fame." 
 
 t Anderson, " Origin of Commerce." 
 
 i Mechlin lace was also made at Antwerp, Lierre, and Turnhout. " There 
 was a fine collection of Mechlin lace in the Paris Exhibition of 1867 from Turnhout, 
 and some other localities'' (Mrs Palliser, " History of Lace' : ). 
 
 >; See Chapter on Valenciennes. 
 
 In the Gruuthus collection, laces of this type which have "points d'esprit" 
 (small solid portions like the millet seed of Genoese lace) are invariably attributed 
 to Mechlin, while in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs at Brussels they are attributed 
 to Antwerp. 
 
 r 1741. u Une coiffure de nuit de Malines a raizeau campanee de deux pieces " 
 (" Inv. de Mademoiselle de Clermont"). 
 
 1761. "Une paire de manches de Malines bridee non campanee" ("Inv. de la 
 Duchesse de Modene'').
 
 5.2 OLD LACK. 
 
 of its design the characteristic winding ribbon and scattered sprays 
 of flowers,* but to the buttonhole-stitched cordonnct. In Mechlin a 
 coarse thread was applied to the edges of the design, which gives 
 higher relief than the flat cordonnet.^ The fillings are often, like 
 Alencon, of the trellis type. 
 
 The late eighteenth-century Mechlin has pieces quite undis- 
 tinguishable in design from Alengon of the Louis XVI. period, no 
 doubt owing to its large consumption in France, as a "summer lace." 
 The very characteristic pattern of a flower (sun-flower?) in full 
 blossom, and with closing petals, is often met with in Mechlin laces 
 of the end of the eighteenth century. This lace has a border with a 
 very shallow scallop or slightly waved. The pattern of repeated 
 sprigs of flowers, or of leaves, follows the edge. The remaining 
 ground is covered with small square spots, minute quatrefoils, or 
 leaflets. The flower is Flemish in treatment,* while the semes upon 
 the reseau show the French influence of the late eighteenth century 
 (Plate LVIII.). 
 
 Design in Mechlin is in general floral in character. But a curious 
 figured design is illustrated in Seguin's "La Dcntelle" ('plate xiv., 
 fig. i, and characterised by him as " une niaserie enfantine." This 
 piece, which dates from the last years of Louis XV., represents two 
 men in a carriage driving a horse. The men wear three-cornered 
 hats, long coats, ruffles ; two birds are flying in the air, and the group 
 is separated from its repeat by an ill-drawn tree. A piece in the 
 Victoria and Albert Museum, has a pattern of trees, buds, and scrolls, 
 with cupids blowing horns and shooting at winged and burning hearts. 
 A fragment of an altar cloth in the Gruuthus Museum shows a 
 medallion containing figures representing some scriptural scene. A 
 similar piece, including several similar medallions, is in the Musee des 
 Arts Decoratifs at Brussels Plate LVIA 
 
 * The sprigs in Mechlin are, however, clumpier in drawing. 
 
 ' No. 1297, 1872, in the Victoria and Albert Museum shows this thick twisted 
 thread stitched to the gimp of the flower or pattern. 
 
 '.. Some (if the designs of Mechlin show very careful naturalistic presentment 
 of flowers. 
 
 i No. 1400, 1874. 
 I.itt. n., No. 6.
 
 o ~ 
 
 X 
 
 X - 
 
 CD 
 
 g ,s 
 
 -- c
 
 ANTWERP LACE. 53 
 
 The ground and ornament of Mechlin, like Valenciennes, are 
 made in one piece on the pillo\v, and many and various experimental 
 fancy groundings were tried before adopting the hexagon-meshed 
 reseau made of two threads twisted t\vice on four sides, and four 
 threads plaited three times on the two other sides producing a 
 shorter plait and a smaller mesh than that of the Brussels reseau. 
 
 The earl\ T grounds are varieties of the " fond de neige," and the 
 fond-chant or six-pointed star mesh is met with. A reseau of inter- 
 laced double threads is also of frequent occurrence, and a reseau of 
 four threads plaited to form a very large mesh having the effect of 
 an enlarged fond-chant ground. 
 
 The most common form of ornamental filling is an arrangement 
 
 o o 
 
 of linked quatrefoils. 
 
 The toile is finer and less close in texture than Valenciennes, and 
 appears to be now dense and cloudy, now thin and almost transparent. 
 This unevenness of quality, together with the presence of the cordon- 
 net (which gives precision to the ornament), is responsible for the 
 old name of ' broderie de Malines." * 
 
 ANTWERP LACE. 
 
 Antwerp, though an old lace-making centre (p. 50), is remarkable 
 for only one type of peasant lace, the " potten kant," so called from 
 the representation of a pot of flowers with which it is almost always 
 decorated. Mrs Palliser considered the motif to be a survival from 
 an earlier design, including the figure of the Virgin and the 
 Annunciation, though it does not appear that any such composition 
 has been met with. x The motif of a vase of flowers, however, is a 
 
 * '' Unc paire de manchettes de dentelle de Malines brode'e '' \Inv. de deces de 
 Mademoiselle de Charollais, 1758;. 
 
 t ''The flower-pot was a symbol of the Annunciation. In the early representa- 
 tions of the appearance of the Angel (iabriel to the Virgin Mary, lilies are placed 
 either in his hand, or set as an accessory in a vase. As Romanism declined, the 
 angel disappeared, and the lily-pot became a vase of flowers : subsequently the 
 Virgin was omitted, and there only remained the vase of flowers '' (Mrs Palliser).
 
 54 OLD LACK. 
 
 common one among Flemish and Belgian laces ; and the flowers are 
 not restricted to the Annunciation lilies roses, pinks, sunflowers, and 
 other flowers being met with. 
 
 The ground varies from a coarse fond-chant* a six-pointed 
 star reseau, or, as it is better described, a diamond crossed by two 
 horizontal threads to various large meshed coarse and fancy grounds. 
 The laces are usually straight-edged. The pot, or vase, or basket is 
 not always part of the design ; a stiff group of flowers, throwing out 
 branches to right and left, is almost invariable. Sometimes pendant 
 festoons or garlands, or bunches of flowers are met with.f The 
 cordonnet of strong untwisted thread often appears too coarse for 
 the toilc, and outlines it with short loops. Antwerp lace appears in 
 a portrait of Anna Goos (1627 to 1691) in the Plantin Museum at 
 Antwerp. The date of the portrait is between 1665-70, and the lace, 
 which is straight-edged, has a thin scroll pattern upon a reseau 
 ground. 
 
 * The name chant is an abbreviation of Chantilly, in which lace the fond-chant 
 reseau is much used. 
 
 t No. 1570, 1872, Victoria and Albert Museum, is a border of Antwerp lace with 
 a loosely twisted sort of a'il dc perdrix ground, and pattern of flowers and leaves. 
 The outline to the pattern and the gimp of the leaves and flowers are like those 
 seen in some of the early eighteenth-century Mechlin laces.
 
 SI 
 
 c
 
 [ 55 ] 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 VALENCIENNES AND DUTCH LACE. 
 
 VALENCIENNES, part of the ancient province of Hainault, together 
 with Lille and Arras, is French by conquest and treat}-.* The lace 
 fabric was introduced there from Le Ouesnoy, one of the towns 
 mentioned in the ordinance of 5th August 1665, which founded on a 
 large scale the manufacture of point de France. Some years before, 
 in 1646, a certain Mile. Francoise Radar- 1 - had brought from Antwerp 
 some young girls, whom she intended to teach lace-making, and for 
 this purpose she took a house in the Rue cle Tournay (now Rue de 
 Lille). She afterwards undertook the direction of several manufactures, 
 among them that of Le Oucsnoy, which she left in a prosperous con- 
 dition on her death in 1677, the date that the town of Valenciennes 
 \vas taken by Louis XIV. 
 
 The lace of Le Ouesnoy is never mentioned after Louis XIV., and 
 after that reign Valenciennes comes into notice, but there is no record 
 of the transfer of the fabric. The fond de neige^ is supposed to be a 
 tradition derived from the workwomen of Le Ouesnoy. Valenciennes, 
 from its position as a commercial centre, was well fitted to carry on 
 
 * French Hainault, French Flanders, and Cambresis (the present De'p. du 
 Xord . with Artois. were conquests of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., confirmed to 
 France by the treaties of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668) and Ximeguen (1678). In 1656 
 the Spaniards under Conde made a successful defence against the French under 
 Turenne, but in 1677 Louis XIV. took the town, and it has always since belonged 
 to France. 
 
 t ''Vie de Mile. Francoise Badar," Liege, 1726. 
 
 1 " Les directrices du bureau du Quesnoy avaient, en effet, adopte un genre 
 special ce fond de neige qu'elles enseignerent aux ouvriercs Yalendennoises '" 
 (A. Carlier, "Les Valenciennes").
 
 56 OLD LACE. 
 
 the industry, and the fact that the town had its "brodeurs" and 
 " passementiers " * aided in its development. It reached its climax 
 from 1725 to 1/80, when there were from 3,000 to 4,000 lace-makers 
 in the city alone, and the art was largely practised in the country 
 round, to judge by the quantity of fausse Valenciennes. f 
 
 Existing specimens of the Louis XIV. period for we have not 
 the evidence of portraits as a corroboration, as Valenciennes was 
 never a " clentelle de grande toilette " appear closely to resemble the 
 designs of Venice a reseau. In specimens Xos. 416, 1872, and 913, 
 1901, of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the long rolling scroll 
 throwing out a number of small cut-up leaves, the large ornamental 
 fruit like a conventionalised pomegranate with leafy crest are 
 among the motifs of the fine type of late Venetian a reseau. but the 
 Italian lace, with its clear and even needle reseau, contrasts favourably 
 with the confused " neigeux " Valenciennes pillow ground of minute 
 solid circles, sometimes surrounded by other circles. 
 
 Valenciennes was used in negliges, the trimmings of sheets, pillow- 
 cases, nightgowns, nightcaps, for ruffles, for barbes, fichus, and " tours 
 dc gorge." In the " Etat d'un Trousseau," 1771, among the necessary 
 articles are enumerated, " Une coeffure, tour de gorge et le fichu plisse 
 de vraie Valenciennes"; and Madame clu Barry had lappets and pillow- 
 cases trimmed with Valenciennes. It was not used as a Church lace, 
 being fine and ineffective. 
 
 From 1780 downwards there was less demand for a lace of the 
 quality of Valenciennes, and with the Revolution this, with more 
 than thirty French fabrics, disappeared. In a manuscript of M. 
 Tordois's "coup d'ojil sur Valenciennes " (de Tan IX. a Tan XIII.), 
 we read that in the year IX. there was a cessation in the production 
 of lace-thread. Three ateliers were subsequently established, but this 
 
 * " I. 'Industrie des brodeurs ct des passementiers, qui etait pratiquee dans 
 cette ville a la mune epoque, contribuc a 1'epanouissement de la dentelle. Tel fut 
 d'ailleurs la raison de 1'article 21 de 1'e'dit de Tan 1653, confcrant aux maitres 
 passementiers le privilege exclusif de la fabrication des passemcnts aux fuscaux, 
 aux c'pinles, et sur 1'oreiller" (A. C.'arlier, " Les Valenciennes"). 
 
 f In the seventeenth century " L'hupital de Lille renfermait sept cent ouvrieres 
 faisant de la fausse valencienncs, tres rapprochante de la vraie ; on comptait tant 
 dans cette ville que dans les environs quin/e mille ouvrieres travaillant de la 
 dentelle batarde du fond Paris, et du fond clair" (A. Carlier, "Les Valenciennes").
 
 X -j 
 
 13 - 
 
 < -=
 
 ^ 
 
 OJ 
 
 :- 
 
 S.X -
 
 VALENCIENNES AND DUTCH LACE. 57 
 
 short artistic revival had no permanent result ; in 1800 there were 
 only a few hundred lace-workers within the walls; and in 1851, in 
 spite of the efforts of Napoleon III. to revive the industry, there were 
 only two lace-workers remaining, both upwards of eighty years of age. 
 
 Narrow straight-edged borders of pillow lace were probably made 
 in Valenciennes and in French Flanders in the early seventeenth 
 century consisting of running closely crowded and indefinite designs, 
 with a ground of a series of irregular or rounded holes between short 
 brides; but extant pieces of Valenciennes belong mainly to the reigns 
 of Louis XV. and XVI. 
 
 In the Louis XV. period and the late eighteenth century, the 
 Flemish character of Valenciennes re-asserts itself in its choice of 
 motifs such as tulips, carnations, and anemones, naturalistically treated 
 and occasionally heavy in outline ; the characteristic clear reseau 
 ground in the subsequent reign occupies much of the place originally 
 destined for the design, but towards 1780 little lace was made, and 
 the disappearance of ruffles from the masculine costume added greatly 
 to the depression. Among Empire pieces is a curious specimen once in 
 the possession of M. Dupont Auberville, representing Xapoleon I. as an 
 equestrian Caesar facing the Empress Josephine ; while the Imperial 
 arms, flanked at the base by cannons and flags, appear between the two. 
 
 In Valenciennes, unlike Brussels and Milanese pillow lace, the 
 ground is worked at the same time as the pattern, that is to say, 
 threads are brought out from the pattern to form the reseau and 
 carried back into the pattern, so that the threads do not follow the 
 lines of the ornament, as they do in all pillow laces where the ornament 
 or toile is made separately. The Valenciennes method thus requires 
 an enormous number of pins, because each thread must be kept in 
 place until the whole width of the pattern is worked. 
 
 Like Mechlin, the ground went through various modifications 
 including the fond de neige already noticed as accompanying early 
 scroll patterns before the reseau was finally fixed. Several of these 
 ornamental grounds are used in various portions of the design, in the 
 edging in Plate LXIL, where two or three varieties can be counted, 
 which are much thicker and closer in effect than the characteristic 
 Valenciennes reseau. In this ground each side of its mesh, which is 
 more diamond than hexagon in shape, is formed of four threads plaited
 
 58 OLD LACE. 
 
 together. The clearly marked hexagonal mesh of the Mechlin reseau 
 is also formed of four threads, but only two of its sides are plaited, 
 the other four being twisted. 
 
 Fancy grounds (Plate LXII.) were produced side by side with the 
 above-described mesh, as the accounts of Madame du Barry bear 
 witness, until late in the eighteenth century. When their grounds 
 were thus mixed and varied, such laces, although their patterns are 
 almost identically the same as those of Valenciennes with the pure 
 reseau, are termed " fausses Valenciennes." This has been taken to 
 mean that these laces were made in the neighbourhood of the town 
 of Valenciennes, in Hainault, and elsewhere, not in Valenciennes 
 itself, where the simple distinctive reseau alone was used. 
 
 A legend has arisen about vraie ' Valenciennes." In support of 
 the theory that the "true" lace was only made in the town itself, 
 M. Dieudonne, Prefet du Nord in 1804, wrote: "This beautiful manu- 
 facture is so inherent in the place that it is an established fact that if 
 a piece of lace were begun at Valenciennes and finished outside the 
 walls, the part which had not been made at Valenciennes would be 
 visibly less beautiful and less perfect than the other, though continued 
 by the same lace-maker with the same thread on the same pillow." 
 M. Dieudonne attributed it to the influence of the atmosphere. 
 
 " All by the same hand " we find entered in the bills of the lace- 
 sellers of the time. The superiority of the city-made lace no doubt 
 depended largely on the fact that it was made in underground 
 cellars, in which the dampness* of the air affected the " tension " of the 
 very fine thread in use. In a drier atmosphere outside the walls, a 
 different result would be obtained, even by the same workwoman, with 
 the same cushion and thread, though it is doubtful whether the 
 experiment has ever been actually tried.! The necessity for a humid 
 atmosphere was recognised earl)* in the eighteenth century. In an 
 
 ' Kn 1780 plusieurs milliers de dentellieres travaillaient dans 1'enceinte de la 
 villc, generalement dans des caves ou des chambres basses, (irace a 1'humidite le 
 lil t'-tait de retors, ou ne se detordait pas, et conservait toute sa force'' (A. Carlier, 
 " Les Valenciennes"). 
 
 t " Le fil employe pour quelques pieces fines etait d'une telle susceptibilite que 
 I'h.ileine de 1'ouvriere le modifiait et que sa teinte se trouvait inflnencee par lesoleil 
 et rimmidite" (A. Carlier, ''Les Valenciennes '').
 
 O c 
 
 h 2 
 a uj 
 
 ..g*^, z 
 
 V* 1 
 
 .- -
 
 VALENCIENNES AND DUTCH LACE. 59 
 
 extract from the " Proces Verbaux du Bureau du Commerce," 1727, it 
 is stated that in Holland or in England it would be impossible to 
 "conserver les filets dans le point de fraicheur et d'humidite convenables 
 pour faconner des toillettes." * 
 
 According to Peuchet the sole defect of Valenciennes was its 
 indifferent white ; only one quality of thread was used, the value of 
 which in Arthur Young's time ranged from 24 to 700 livres a pound, 
 but though expensive, the price of the flax was but one-thirtieth of 
 the selling price of the finished lace. This thread came from Flanders, 
 Hainault, and Cambresis. 
 
 The designs were pricked upon green parchment prepared at 
 Lille, and a favourite pattern remained in use as long as it was in 
 demand. 
 
 The design was the special property of the manufacturer, and it was 
 at the option of the worker to pay for its use and retain her work, if not 
 satisfied with the price she received. Valenciennes can be detected 
 no matter what its design, which is often derivative, imitative, or 
 directly borrowed from Mechlin, Brussels, or Alencon, by the absence 
 of cordonnet and by its peculiar mesh. Some rare experimental 
 specimens were made by the Valenciennes workers in which an 
 occasional cordonnet was introduced, but such works are very ex- 
 ceptional. Open a jours are of extremely rare occurrence ; their fill- 
 ings are very similar to those of Mechlin. 
 
 No lace was so expensive to make, the reason being the number 
 of bobbins required for fine lace of wide width. "While Lille lace- 
 workers could produce from three to five ells a clay, those of 
 Valenciennes could not complete more than an inch and a half in 
 the same time. It took ten months, working fifteen hours a clay, 
 to finish a pair of men's ruffles, hence the costliness of the lace." t 
 At the present day in the Valenciennes lace made in Brabant all the 
 bobbins which are employed in the " mats " or ornament do not 
 pass into the ground, which is a great economy ; the}' are removed 
 to the next motif. 
 
 After the French Revolution, when so many lace-makers fled to 
 
 * Quoted in Mine. Laurence de Laprade, "' Le Poinct de France,''' 1904. 
 t Mrs I'alliser, "History of Lace/' 
 
 M
 
 60 OLD LACK. 
 
 Belgium Ghent, Alost, Ypres,* Bruges, Menin, and Courtrait became 
 the centres of a new and inferior Valenciennes, each town having a 
 distinctive feature in the ground. These laces are as a rule less close 
 in workmanship, less solid, and cheaper. 
 
 At Ypres, which makes the best quality of Belgian Valenciennes, 
 the reseau is made of a plait of four threads, and forms a cliamond- 
 shaped mesh. In Courtrai and Menin the grounds are twisted three 
 and a half times ; and in Bruges, where the ground has a circular 
 mesh, the bobbins are twisted three times ; that made at Ghent, ^ in 
 East Flanders, is square-meshed, the bobbins being twisted two and a 
 half times. Valenciennes laces made outside the walls of Valenciennes 
 were designated as fausses Valenciennes, whether made in Belgium 
 or in the Department du Nord, at Lille, Bergues, Bailleul, Avesnes, 
 Cassel, and Armentieres. Of these latter centres Bailleul produced 
 the largest quantity: chiefly (before 1830) of a narrow straight-edged 
 type for the Normandy market. 
 
 At Dieppe, in Normandy, Valenciennes with the square ground 
 was introduced in 1826, by the sisters Fleury and Hubert from the 
 Convent of La Providence at Rouen, and took the place of the old 
 point de Dieppe, which is very like Valenciennes with small round 
 meshes. Of this lace Peuchet says that the designs were inferior, 
 but that an attempt was being made to introduce lighter, less crowded 
 designs. The thread came from Flanders, from Saint Ainant. Point 
 
 * As early as 1656 Ypres began to make lace. In 1684 it was already much 
 decayed. It rose again after the influx of Valenciennes workmen after the French 
 Revolution. In 1833 the wire ground was adopted. 
 
 + ' Courtrai makes the widest Valenciennes. Valenciennes of Courtrai was 
 much sought after in the eighteenth century both in F.ngland and France " ( Teuchet). 
 
 I Savary cites the fausses Valenciennes of C.hent, which he declares are 
 "moins sern'es, un pen moins solides, et un pen moins chcrcs." 
 
 '' Armentieres et Bailleul nc font que de la Valenciennes fausse dans tons les 
 pri\ '" Teuc het;. 
 
 The laces of Haillcul ''have neither the finish nor the lightness of the Belgian 
 products, are soft to touch, the mesh round, and the ground thick, but it is strong 
 and cheap, and in general use for trimming lace'" (Mrs I'alliser, "History of 
 Lace ").
 
 X 
 
 u o 
 
 H ^
 
 X 
 
 a 3 
 
 U c 
 
 3 I 
 
 - 
 
 O ~
 
 l^m^\ 
 
 m 
 
 "irOS^W 
 
 iMf&Mm 
 [mkMm 
 
 m 
 
 m 
 
 \ 5*^ 1 
 
 o
 
 DUTCH LACE. 6l 
 
 de Dieppe requires much fewer bobbins, and whereas Valenciennes 
 can only be made in lengths of eight inches without detaching the 
 lace from the pillow, the Dieppe point is not taken off, but rolled. 
 
 DUTCH LACE. 
 
 Holland, in spite of its proximity to Flanders, seems to have pro- 
 duced little lace during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. 
 In 1667, however, the Dutch themselves set up manufactures of lace, 
 to rival France, which had laid prohibitive duties upon foreign goods. 
 
 No trace is found of the manufacture of point lace set up at 
 Amsterdam by refugees from Alencon. The Dutch lace, as it appears 
 in portraits, is thick, strong, and bobbin made. A type of scalloped 
 lace, the pattern of each scallop repeating upon either side of a central 
 line, has a design of tape-like continuous scrolls arranged rather closely 
 together in leafy or fan forms, or some pendant blossom of conven- 
 tional form ;* this lace was in use from about 1630 to 1650. t Other 
 Dutch varieties of lace are pieces in design like early Valenciennes 
 with conventional rolling scroll with blossoms ; or a pattern of flowers 
 and fruit strictly copied from nature. The ground is generally of 
 small irregular meshes. 
 
 The thread used in Holland was the famous Haarlem thread, once 
 considered the best adapted for lace-makers in the world. " No place 
 bleaches flax like the meer of Haarlem." 
 
 * Among the Dutch laces in the Victoria and Albert Museum is a pillow-made 
 edging in the manner of early Italian pillow-laces, but of thicker design (No. 604, 
 1854). 
 
 t See in the Victoria and Albert Museum, No. 286, 1890; No. 861, 1853; 
 No. 153, 1885.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 ALENCON AND AKGENTAN. 
 
 A VERY full and accurate account of Alencon lace has been given by 
 Madame Despierres* in her " Histoire du Point d' Alencon," and the 
 revival of interest in the national lace industry, noticeable latterly in 
 France, is responsible for a new work on the subject, " Le Poinct de 
 France," of Madame Laurence de Laprade, which reproduces at length 
 many interesting documents. The history of no other lace centre has 
 been so exhaustively treated ; and any one interested in the historical 
 side of the subject will find all available material in these two histories. 
 The present account is concerned only with the development of the 
 design of Alencon, and the process of its manufacture. 
 
 Colbert's attention was directed to the immense amount of money 
 that was sent out of the kingdom ; nor must his personal inclinations 
 and tastes be overlooked. + 
 
 Alencon, in Xormandy, was chosen as one of the seats of the new 
 manufacture, because the lace industry was already widespread among 
 the peasants. Point coupe had been made there at an early date, 
 possibly introduced by Catherine cle Meclicis, to whom Charles IX. 
 
 * Mine. Ci. Despierres, ''Histoire du I'oint d'Alencon," 1886. 
 
 t " DCS 1650 Colbert s'initia, lui aussi, a la culture de ces beaux-arts qu'il devait 
 un jour prott'ger avec tant d'efficacite. Knvoye par Ma/arin a Rome, a Florence, 
 a (ienes, a Turin, s'il echoua parfois dans les missions diplomatiques . . . du 
 inoins ne negligea-t-il aucune occasion d'accroitre les richesses artistiques de celui 
 dont il representait et les gouts fastueux et la politique astucieuse" ("Les Manu- 
 factures Xationales ").
 
 X 
 1-1 
 
 o J
 
 PORTION OK A WIDE KLOl 
 Eighteen
 
 Plate LXVII. 
 
 'K OF POINT DE FRAXCK 
 
 .nturv.
 
 X 
 
 i- - *:-*. 
 
 'pi - ' 4 , * *. *. ' - ' ' ' - 
 
 $Ly "V f.,^^" l??"*^*^ ' ** ^^'T^lft ^ '" 
 
 : ;*?jt .-ftAw-^ ^-i'^* r ' ; ;.- . 3; V-* V ' ' '.f . -A- 

 
 ALENCON LACE. 63 
 
 had given the Duchy of Alenc_on. About 1650, according to Madame 
 Despierres, it appears from a letter of Favier-Duboulay, intendant of 
 Alencon, that points de Venise were successfully imitated and intro- 
 duced into Alencon by " une femme nommee La Perriere, fort habile 
 a ces ouvrages," * thus causing the gradual disappearance of point 
 coupe. More than eight thousand persons were employed in lace- 
 making in Alencon, Seez, Argentan, Falaise, and in the neighbouring 
 parishes. 
 
 It is no doubt to this long apprenticeship in lace-making that the 
 supremacy of Alencon among French laces is due. An ordinance of 
 i 5th August 1665 founded the manufacture of points de France, with 
 an exclusive privilege for ten years ; a company was formed, and the 
 manufacture realised enormous profits until 1675, when the monopoly 
 expired and was not renewed. The new manufactures had the advan- 
 tage of high-handed protection on the part of the Government. On 
 1 7th November 1667 appears a fresh prohibition of the selling or 
 wearing of passements, lace, and other works in thread of Venice, 
 Genoa, and other foreign countries ; and on I7th March 1668 itcrativcs 
 prohibitions to wear these, as injurious to a manufacture of point 
 which gives subsistence to a number of persons in this kingdom. In 
 1670 an Englishman travelling in France notices the efforts of the 
 French Government to protect the points de France. " They are so 
 set (he writes) in this country upon maintaining their own manu- 
 factures, that only two days ago there was publicly burnt by the 
 hangman a hundred thousand crowns worth of point de Venise, 
 Flanders lace, and other foreign commodities that are forbid." f Later, 
 in 1680, it is stated in " Britannia Languens " that the laces commonly 
 called points de Venise now come mostly from France, and amount 
 to a vast sum yearly. In 1687, again, the fourth Earl of Manchester 
 writes from Venice of the excessive dearness of the point made there, 
 but is confident, either in Paris or England, " one may have it as 
 cheape, and better patterns." 
 
 It is certain that the Italian style continued in vogue for the ten 
 
 * Letter from Favier-Duboulay, /th September 1665. " Correspondence 
 Administrative sous le Regne de Louis XIV.," vol. 3. 
 
 + R. Montagu to Lord Arlington. ''MSS. of the Duke of Buccleuch," vol. i. 
 Hist. MSS. Comm.
 
 64 OLD LACE. 
 
 years of the monopoly (1665-75). There were Venetian workwomen 
 to the number of twenty at Alengon in October 1665,* and in the 
 same month a letter to Colbert is sanguine enough to hope to produce 
 in a short time from the royal manufacture " des echantillons qui nc 
 cederont en rien au veritable Venise." In 1673 these hopes arc 
 apparently justified, and Colbert is able to write to the Comte d'Avaux, 
 who has sent him a point collar in high relief, that the French points 
 can bear comparison with the products of Venice, f 
 
 The Mercure, which gives detailed chronicles of the new points de 
 France, describes them in 1677 as having a floral design, brides a 
 picots, and with ''little flowers over the large, which might be styled 
 flying flowers, being only attached in the centre," the fine raised 
 work of flying loops, upon delicate rose points. The design, again, 
 is exactly that characteristic of Venetian scroll patterns. " The 
 flowers," the Mercure writes in 1678, "which are in higher relief in 
 the centre, and lower at the edge, are united by small stalks and 
 flowers." 
 
 The development of the new points was watched by Colbert, who 
 write-;, in 1682, that their principal defect is that the}- are not so firm 
 or so white as the rival points of Venice.* 
 
 Before the expiration of the privilege, the artists who furnished 
 designs for all works undertaken for the Court of Louis XIV., must 
 have supplied patterns for tlvj royal manufacture. In the account 
 of the King's buildings is the entry of a payment due to Bonnemer 
 and to Bailly, the painter, for several days' work with other painters 
 in making designs for embroideries and points d'Kspagne. These 
 
 * Lettre a Colbert, tome 132, t'o. 75 " Bibliothcque Xationale"). 
 
 t ' Kn Janvier, 1673, M. le Conitc d'Avaux ayant remplace Mr. de I>onxy 
 comine ambassadeur a Venise, Colbert lui e'crit : " J'ai bicn rec.ii le collet de point 
 rebr.)de en relief, que vous m'avc/ envoye, et quc j'ai trouve fort beau. Je le 
 confronterai avec ceux qui se font dans nos manufactures, inais je dois vous dire 
 a 1 avance que Ton en fait clans la royaume d'aussi beaux ''' (Lefcbure, " Hroderie et 
 Dentelles"). 
 
 A letter written, 2nd lanuary (6S2, by Colbert to M. de Montar^is, Intendant 
 at Alen< on. 
 
 j " Colbert char^ea les plus Brands artistes du temps, Le llrun, Herain, Bailly, 
 IJonnerner, de cre'er des modcles'' (Mine. Laurence de Laprade, ''Le 1'oinctde 
 France ").
 
 X 
 
 X 
 
 U .7;
 
 Plate I AX I. 
 
 CAP CROWN OF ALKNCON. 
 \Yith reseatl ground. Louis XIV. , early eighteenth century. 
 
 \\ itli "round of hexagonal brides. Louis XIV.. late seventeenth cer.tun
 
 ALENCOX LACE. 65 
 
 designs were jealously protected. Xone had permission to make the 
 fine point of the royal pattern, except those who worked for the 
 manufactory, and all girls had to show to the authorities the patterns 
 they intended working, " so that the King shall be satisfied, and the 
 people gain a livelihood."* That brides with picots, as well as brides 
 claires, were made in the royal fabric, is mentioned in the Mercnre 
 of July 1673.+ 
 
 After the expiration of the privilege (1675) the " fabricants " had 
 designs specially made for them, which became their exclusive pro- 
 perty. In 1680 they asked and obtained permission to prosecute 
 certain small manufacturers who copied their patterns,^ and in 1691 
 the} r speak of the " licence " of several manufacturers, who copy the 
 designs of others instead of using " tout leur esprit et tout leur Industrie 
 a inventer de nouveaux dessins et des modeles plus parfaits et plus 
 delicats." 
 
 It was in 1675 that the name of point de France began to be 
 confined to point d'Alencon, no doubt as the most important of the 
 French fabrics. Point d'Alencon is worked with a very fine 
 needle, upon a parchment pattern. The parchment was originally 
 used in its natural colour, but before 1769 green parchment had been 
 adopted, as it is mentioned in an inventory of that date.", The 
 
 * Mrs Palliser, " History of Lace/' edition 1902, p. 190. 
 
 + " On fait . . . des dentelles d'Espagne avec des brides claires sans picots ; 
 et Ton fait aux nouveaux points de France des brides qui en sont remplies d'un 
 nombre infini.'' 
 
 1 "Gabriel Gence, Charles Guitton, et Louis Marescot, marchands trafiquant 
 des ouvrages de velin et point de France . . . vous remontrent que depuis trois ou 
 quatre ans ils ont ete obligez de faire de nouveaux dessings . . . lesquels revien- 
 nent a grand prix aux supplyants. Cependent quantite de personnes inalveillantes 
 derobent les dits dessins. . . . Toutes lesquelles choses meritent un chastiment 
 exemplaire, a 1'encontre de ceux qui se trouvent coupables et dont il est presque 
 impossible d'avoir revelation, si ce n ; est par censures eclesiastiques ''' (''Archives de 
 la Prefecture de L'Orne "). 
 
 Mine. Laurence de Laprade, k! Le Poinct de France.''" 
 
 ; "Apres la dissolution de cette societe (1675; le ncm de point de France fut 
 donne au point d'Alencon. Ce nom etait aussi souvent usite dans les actes que 
 ceux de velin ct de point d'Alencon, et ces trois noms ont etc employe's concurre- 
 ment jusqira nos jours" (" Histoire clu Point d'Alengon "). 
 
 *~ The Inventory of Simon Geslin, I3th April i/f'9 (Ibiii-
 
 66 OLD LACK. 
 
 worker is better able to detect any faults in her work upon a coloured 
 ground than upon white. The paper pattern is laid upon the strip 
 of parchment, which rests on a pillow, and the outlines of the ornament 
 are pricked with a needle. After pricking, the parchment is given to 
 a (raceuse, who first sews it to a piece of very coarse linen folded 
 double, then forms the outline of the pattern by two threads,* which 
 are guided along the edge by the thumb of the left hand, and fixed 
 by minute stitches passed with another needle and thread through the 
 holes of the parchment. The "picage" and the "trace" date in Alencon 
 from the first imitation of points de Venise. The next process, the 
 making of the "fond" or "entoilage,"f employs exactly the same stitch 
 which was used for the mat of point coupe and for the " flowers " of 
 point de Venise. The worker works the button-hole stitch (point 
 boucle or de boutonniere, not, as is stated in so many authors, point 
 noue) from left to right, and when arrived at the end of the row, the 
 thread is thrown back to the point of departure, and she works again 
 from left to right over the thread. Occasionally small pin-holes 
 (portes) or a diaper pattern of pin-holes (quadrilles) were let into the 
 fond. A more open variety of the fond is the rempli, \ formed by 
 twisting the thread before making the loop, and these two processes 
 were at first executed by the same worker. 
 
 The brides of Alengon are of three sorts the bride a picots, the 
 bride bouclee, and the bride tortillee. The first the bride a picots 
 had, in later point de Venise, shown a tendency to approximate to a 
 regular, generally hexagonal, mesh. These brides in Alencon were 
 not marked upon the parchment until the reign of Louis XVI., and 
 were made at sight, and towards the middle of the reign of 
 
 * " D'abord on se servit de deux fils doubles ce qui arrive quelquefois obtenir 
 une trace solide" (''Histoire du Point d'Alengon"). 
 
 + " Les brides etants presque nulles, on comtnencait ordinairement un morceau 
 par les motifs. C'est pour cette raison que ce point porta des 1'origine le nom de 
 fond, nom qui aurait du appartenir aux brides et plus tard au reseau. II conserva 
 rependant ce nom de fond, et de nos jours il sert encore a designer le mat des 
 fleurcs, feuilles, ou autres ornements reserves a cet effet" (//>ii/.). 
 
 i The rempli is found in point coupe, and used as contrast to the fond, 
 employed for closer effect.
 
 X! 
 
 'sal 
 
 c_ X 
 
 < '5 
 
 h-3
 
 ALKXCOX LACE. 6/ 
 
 Louis XIV. the meshes show an exact hexagonal form. It will be 
 remembered that in 1673 the " nouveau point de Paris" is described 
 in the Mercure as covered with " an infinite number of small picots." 
 The bride bouclee sans nez, also an hexagonal mesh, has no picots, 
 and was invented about i/oo. In the bride tortillee the mesh is 
 covered with a thread twisted round it, and held in place by a button- 
 hole stitch at each angle.* 
 
 The reseau is worked from left to right, an point boucle et tortille, 
 with the thread attached to the outline of the flowers and ornaments> 
 It began to be made at Alencon about i/oo, as Madame Despierres 
 proves from various inventories, J and not as Mrs Palliser and 
 M. Seguin assert, in 1/41 at the earliest. The modes are made, like 
 reticella, upon skeleton foundations of thread, which are afterwards 
 covered with button-hole stitches, and were introduced, when the 
 reseau was used, to give an open and clear effect to certain portions 
 of the design. The first modes were varieties of the brides a picots 
 and zigzag bars picoted (Les Yenises). The modes of Alencon, though 
 very light, open, and effective, are not so rich and varied as those 
 in Venise a reseau, or Brussels lace. Indeed, in 1/61, a writer, 
 describing the point de France, says that it does not arrive at the 
 taste and delicacy of Brussels, and that the modes are inferior, and 
 consequently much point is sent from Alencon to Brussels to have the 
 modes added ; but connoisseurs, he adds, easily detect the difference.^ 
 A favourite mode is the square trellis foundation, ornamented with 
 squares and circles at the points of intersection. Zigzag lines finely 
 picoted are also used with effect. One of the modes, which consists 
 of a button-hole stitched solid hexagon within a skeleton hexagon, 
 
 * " On placait autrefois une epingle au haut de chaque hexagone, afin d'obtenir 
 une tension pour la forme reguliere de la maille, lorsque Ton se servait d epingles. 
 elle s'appelait bride epinglee" (' ; Histoire du Point d'Alencon "). 
 
 t There are several varieties of reseau le reseau ordinaire, le petit reseau, 
 le reseau mouche, le reseau avec bobine, le grand reseau. 
 
 i " Le reseau se fait dans le sens du pied de la dentelle a son bord, par rangs 
 de gauche a droite, au point boucle et tortille peu serre. Lorsque le rang est fini 
 on revient en passant trois fois son aiguille dans chaque maille. et Ton recommence 
 la deuxieme rang de la meme maniere" ('' Histoire du Point d'Alencon''). 
 
 ^ " Dictionnaire du Citoyen." Paris, 1761. 
 It is sometimes set within a square.
 
 68 OLD LACE. 
 
 and connected with the .surrounding figure by means of six small ties 
 or brides, is sometimes used extensively to form a groundwork, when it 
 has been named by AT. Dupont Auberville, "reseau rosace" (Argentella). 
 This " Argentella" was supposed by Mrs Palliser to be of Genoese* 
 workmanship, but it has no affinities with the type of lace made in 
 Genoa, while its character and the style of the floral patterns arc those 
 of Alencon. Its cordonnet+ is worked in button-hole stitches 
 closely cast over a thread, which outlines various forms in the design 
 a distinctive mark of point d' Alencon. In general the laces 
 distinguished as point d'Alencon, point d'Argentan, and Argentella 
 have so many characteristics in common that it would be preferable 
 to call them Alencon a reseau, Alencon a grandes brides, and Alencon 
 a reseau rosace. 
 
 La brode, ^ the next process, is worked in button-hole stitch, and 
 gives relief to the design in the veining of the leaves, the stalks of the 
 flowers, &c. The brode is borrowed by Alencon from raised Venetian 
 point, but the relief is much lower in the French brode. To obtain 
 the raised effect, a pad of coarse thread was laid down, and upon 
 these very close button-hole stitches were worked. When this is 
 completed, the threads which unite lace, parchment, and linen are 
 cut by a sharp ra/or passed between the two folds of linen ; the loose 
 threads are removed (enlevage and eboutage), the regaleuse 
 repairs any small defects, and there remains one last process, that 
 of uniting all the segments of lace imperceptibly together, or the 
 "assemblage." The seam follows as much as possible the outlines of 
 
 * " Formerly much of it was to be met with in the curiosity shops of that city'' 
 Mrs Palliser, 1864;. 
 
 t The cordonnet is sometimes of stout thread. 
 
 t ' La brodeuse . . . attache a sa ceintiue un til appele menu ou fil conducteur, 
 puis elle attache un autre fil a la trace. Kile fait sur le menu trois ou quatres 
 points boucles, fiche son aiguille dans la trace en faisant le qua tri erne ou le 
 cinquieme point, et continue, en proccdant toujours de la mcme maniere '' (" I listoire 
 du Point d Alencon "). 
 
 " I. 'assemblage consiste a raccorder les dessins, a les unir par line cousure 
 <|uand c'est line fleur. Lorsqinl s'agit du champ, soit de bride, soil de reseau, on 
 re fa it les maillcs, afin que 1'assemblage ne paraisse pas. ("est toujours une 
 ouvriere habile cjue 1'on choisit pour ce tra\'ail. L assembleuse doit connaitre tons 
 les points.' 1
 
 X 
 X 
 
 c
 
 X
 
 ALENCON LACE. 69 
 
 the pattern. When finished, a steel instrument, the aficot, was passed 
 into each flower to polish it and remove any inequalities on its 
 surface. There are therefore twelve processes, including the design. 
 These can be subdivided into twenty or twenty-two. 
 
 In point d'Alencon horsehair was introduced to give firmness and 
 consistency to the cordonnet in the later period of Louis XV"., and 
 during the reign of Louis XVI. It has been objected* that this 
 cordonnet thickens when put into water, and that the horsehair edge 
 draws up the flower from the ground, and makes it rigid and heavy. 
 It was this solidity of Alencon, and of the still heavier Argentan 
 which caused them to be known as " dentelles d'hiver."t According 
 to Peuchet, it was only worn in the winter, though at that date it was 
 sufficiently light in design. 
 
 In 1836 Baron Mercier, thinking by producing it at a lower price 
 to procure a more favourable sale, set up a lace school, and caused 
 the girls to work the patterns on bobbin net, as bearing some resem- 
 blance to the old point de bride, but fashion did not favour point de 
 bride, so the plan failed. The only important modern innovator in 
 workmanship was the introduction of " shading " on the flowers by 
 M. Beaume in 1855. Shaded tints were brought in tentatively 
 by M. Larnaz Triboult, and in a book of patterns for point made 
 between 1811 and 1814, certain leaves were marked to be shaded. 
 This effect is made by varying the application of the two stitches 
 used in making the flowers the toile, which forms the closer tissue, 
 and the grille, the more open part of the pattern. This system has 
 been adopted in France, Belgium, and England, but with most success 
 in France. The thread from which Alencon was made was spun at 
 Lille, * and also at Mechlin and Xouvion. 
 
 * "Dictionnaire du Citoyen," Paris, 1761. 
 
 + " Deja, sous Louis XV., le point d' Alencon et le point d'Argentan etaient 
 designes par 1'etiquette come 'dentelles d'hiver'" (C. Blanc, "L'Art dans la Parure"). 
 
 + " La fabrique de Lille fournit les fils pour le travail du point. Us sont plus fins 
 et plus retors que les fils destines a la plus fine dentelle' ; ("Dictionnaire Universel 
 de la Geographic Commercante," 1789).
 
 70 OLD LACE. 
 
 ARGENTAN LACE. 
 
 Of all the point de France centres, Alencon, with its neighbour 
 Argentan (the two towns are separated by some ten miles), produced 
 the most brilliant and the most permanent results ; and at Argentan, 
 which has been mentioned in 1664 as having long learned the art of 
 imitating points de Venice, a bureau for the manufactures of points 
 de France was established at the same time as the bureau of Alencon. 
 Early Argentan no doubt produced point of the same type as that of 
 Alencon, and the two laces only began to be distinguished when 
 Alencon adopted the reseau ground. 
 
 "Argentan" is the term given to lace (whether made at Alencon or 
 Argentan) with large bride ground, which consists of a six-sided mesh, 
 worked over with button-hole stitches. "It was always printed on 
 the parchment pattern, and the upper angle of the hexagon was 
 pricked ; the average side of a diagonal taken from angle to angle, 
 in a so-called Argentan hexagon, was about one-sixth of an inch, 
 and each side of the hexagon was about one-tenth of an inch. 
 An idea of the minuteness of the work can be formed from the fact 
 that a side of a hexagon would be overcast with some nine or ten 
 button-hole stitches." 
 
 In other details, the workmanship of the laces styled Alencon and 
 Argentan is identical ; the large bride ground, however, could support 
 a flower bolder and larger in pattern, in higher and heavier relief, than 
 the reseau ground. 
 
 I'euchct writes in the late eighteenth century that the bride ground 
 of Argentan was preferred in France, and that the workmanship of 
 .Argentan was superior to that of Alencon : " Idles out de beaux 
 dessins pour le fond, et pour la regularite des yeux, de la bride et du 
 reseau." I le adds that lace was sent from Alencon to Argentan to 
 have the modes made and also the fond and the bride ground. 
 
 "The two towns had communications as frequent as those which 
 passed between Alencon and the little village of Yimoutier, eighteen 
 miles distant, where one workman in particular produced what is 
 known as the true Alencon lace."* As Peiichet writes, the "fabricants" 
 
 * A. S. Cole.
 
 X 
 X! 
 
 W
 
 ARGENT AX LACE. J I 
 
 of Alencon* could have the fond and the bride bouclee made by the 
 workwoman employed by the " fabricants " of Argentan. At Alencon 
 all the varieties of bride and reseau were made, while at Argentan a 
 speciality was made of the bride ground. f 
 
 The bride picotee a survival of the early Venetian teaching 
 was also a speciality in Argentan point. It consists of the hexagonal 
 button-holed bride, ornamented with three or four picots. The secret 
 of making it was entirely lost by 1869.^ 
 
 Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century, when the 
 manufacture had fallen into decay, it was raised in 1/08 by one 
 Sieur Mathieu Guyard, a merchant mercer, who states that "his 
 ancestors and himself had more than one hundred and twenty years 
 been occupied in fabricating black silk and white thread lace in the 
 environs of Paris." 
 
 In 1729, Monthulay, another manufacturer, presented the controleur 
 general, M. Lepeltier des Forts, with a piece of point without any 
 raised icork, representing the controleur's arms a novel departure 
 in the fabric. The fabric was checked by the Revolution, and died 
 out after a short revival in 1810. In 1858 Argentan point had become 
 rare, and the introduction of cotton about 1830, instead of the linen 
 thread from Lille, Mechlin, and Xouvion debased its quality. 
 
 The design for Alencon and Argentan is identical, though its 
 
 * "On vient meme d'Alencon faire faire des brides et des fonds a Argentan et 
 on y acheve des modes." 
 
 t " Les trois sortes de brides comme champ sont executees dans les deux 
 fabriques, et les points ont etc et sont encore faits par les memes precedes de 
 fabrication, et avec les memes matieres textiles" (" Histoire du Point d'Alencon "). 
 
 \ In January 1874, with the assistance of the Mayor, M. Lefebure made a 
 search in the greniers of the Hotel Dieu, and discovered three specimens of point 
 d'Argentan in progress on the parchment patterns. " One was of bold pattern 
 with the grande bride ground, evidently a man's ruffle : the other had the barette 
 or bride ground of point de France ; the third picoted, showing that the three 
 descriptions of lace were made contemporaneously at Argentan'' (Mrs Palliser, 
 " History of Lace"). 
 
 ^ "Histoire du Point d'Alencon."
 
 72 OLD LACE. 
 
 sequence is more easily studied in the more important manufacture of 
 Alencon. 
 
 As M. Paul Lecroix has observed, France never failed to put her 
 own stamp on whatever she adopted, thus making any fashion essen- 
 tially French, even though she had only just borrowed it from Spain, 
 England, Germany, or Italy. 
 
 This is especially true of French needlepoint lace, of which the 
 technicalities and design were borrowed en blocfaum Italy. Gradually, 
 however, the French taste superseded the Italian treatment, and 
 produced a style which, no doubt, owed much of its perfection and 
 consistency to the State patronage it enjoyed and to the position of 
 artistic design in I"' ranee, a fact which was noticed early in the 
 eighteenth century by Bishop Berkeley. "How," he asks, "could 
 France and Flanders have drawn so much money from other countries 
 for figured silk, lace, and tapestry if the)' had not had their academies 
 of design ? " 
 
 During the Louis XIV. period, until the last fifteen years of the 
 reign, points de France were made with the bride ground, and to 
 judge by the evidence of portraits, preserved in general the rolling 
 scroll of Venetian rose points. Some specimens, however, show a 
 French influence in the composition of the design, a tendency which 
 fas when expressed in textiles, or metal led to a stvle of symmetrical 
 composition, with fantastic shapes. A certain " architectural " arrange- 
 ment, and the use of canopies, with scroll devices on either side of 
 them which Berain uses, is certainlv met with in lace. An ornament 
 consisting of two S's, addorscd, and surmounted by a miniature canopy, 
 is of not uncommon occurrence, and also a somewhat grotesque cock, 
 and a small fleur-de-lys or trefoil. The king's monogram, the inter- 
 laced E's, and the flammc d\unonr arising from t\vo hearts arc also 
 met with, a compliment of the royal manufacture to its royal patron. 
 
 There are some good specimens of point de France in the Alusee 
 des Arts Decoratifs at Paris. Two very interesting specimens of point 
 de France are in the collection of Madame Purges, and were exhibited 
 at the Exposition Internationale of 1900 at Paris. The first, a frag- 
 ment, has as central motif the sun in splendour surmounted by a 
 dome or dome-shaped canopy, flanked bv two trophies of crossed 
 swords and flags. Another piece in the same collection has a young
 
 X 
 X 
 
 <u 
 
 J3 
 PL,
 
 ARGENTAN LACE. 73 
 
 man attired as an antique warrior wearing a huge helmet with the 
 double eagle as a crest. Above his head is the closed crown of a 
 royal prince, supported by two angels. Above this crown again is 
 a small Bacchus astride a wine-cask. The motif of two dolphins 
 suggests that the piece represents the Dauphin, the son of Louis XIV. 
 Two Indians, with the conventional kilt and upstanding crown of 
 feathers, offer the warrior flowers. Below are the Dauphin's two sons, 
 the Due de Burgogne and the Due d'Anjou, as young warriors, 
 crowned by flying genii. The Dauphin treads upon a characteristic 
 trophy of arms, cannon, and standards. 
 
 In a Swiss collection there is a somewhat later piece, a square 
 cravat end, in the centre of which is a lady seated at an organ ; 
 beneath an ornate canopy various figures play various musical instru- 
 ments a lyre, a violin, a violoncello, castanets while two figures 
 sing, holding a music-book. Light, fantastic, short scrolls fill up the 
 ground. Two somewhat similar cravats in the Victoria and Albert 
 Museum (Bolckow Bequest) have, among various motifs, a draped 
 and scalloped canopy above the figure of a lady in full toilette seated 
 upon a bird with displayed plumage. Below her is a fantastic 
 pedestal with balanced rococo and leafy shapes on each side of it ; 
 immediately above the flanking shapes are small figures in Oriental 
 costume. On the upper right and left of this central group is the 
 half-figure of a lady with a cockatoo in one piece, and the half-figure 
 of a lady with a little dog under her arm in the other. Below, to 
 right and left of the large central group, is a smaller vertical group of 
 a flower vase on stand with blossoms radiating from it, and beneath 
 this is a gentleman playing a violoncello and a lady playing a musical 
 instrument. All these objects are held together by small bars or 
 brides a picots (Plate LXVL). 
 
 In Venetian rose-point laces of the same period, probably owing to 
 French influence, design became more frequently vertical and balanced 
 upon either side of an imaginary central line. At the end of Louis 
 XIV. 's reign lace in cravats, ruffles, and flounces was worn fuller* or 
 in folds, a hanging pattern, or one in which the arrangement of details 
 
 * "A la fin du rognc de Louis XIV. les rabats ne se portaient plus a plat mais 
 fronces sous le nom de cravates" i Lefebure).
 
 74 OLD LACE. 
 
 was conspicuously vertical,* was found more appropriate than horizontal 
 arrangements of ornament which require to lie flat. This symmetrical 
 tendency owes something to the personal taste of Louis XIV. 
 Madame de Maintenon writes in one of her letters that the king was 
 so fond of symmetry in his architecture that he would have people 
 " perish in his symmetry"; for he caused his doors and windows to 
 be constructed in pairs opposite to one another, " which gave every- 
 body who lived in his palaces their death of cold from draughts." 
 
 A specimen of earl}- point de France of this period, where the 
 vertical arrangement is most noticeable, is No. 747, 1870, in the 
 Victoria and Albert Museum, a tablier of needlepoint lace scalloped 
 with patterns of pine-apples, flowers, leaves, and conventional forms 
 upon a hexagonal ground of bride a picots. Another very early 
 piece is No. 552, 1868, of the same collection, a large scrolling design 
 upon a hexagonal bride ground. 
 
 The former specimen shows a tendency, which later distinguishes 
 French design, to the planning of the lines of the design upon a 
 conventional basis, while treating the detail somewhat naturalistically.f 
 Lace, which is largely influenced by contemporary textiles and em- 
 broider}-, was not without its influence upon certain brocades and silks 
 of the Louis XIV. period, where small trellisings and spots like the 
 a jours s > generally introduced in the larger pieces of lace, are 
 met with.": 
 
 * This vertical arrangement may be noticed in certain French portraits, as, for 
 example, in the point lace in the portrait of the Duchesse de Nemours, by 
 I lyacinthe Riga ml. 
 
 + In French brocades of the seventeenth century the shapes of the flowers and 
 leaves are more detached from one another and dis:inctly depicted than those of 
 contemporary Italian patterns. 
 
 " In a piece of satin and coloured silk brocade, period Louis XIV., French, 
 1 ite seventeenth century, the bands forming the ogees are broad and elaborated with 
 small trellisings and spots, which lace fanciers will recognise as being very similar 
 to the a jours so frequently introduced into the large point de France, point 
 d'Alencon, and point d'Argentan of the later years of the seventeenth and earlier 
 years of the eighteenth centuries. A greater variety of effects arising from this
 
 X 
 
 X 
 
 f-1 
 
 M oj 
 
 O g 
 
 to 
 O "> 
 
 o E? 
 
 a js 
 
 i- 1 C 
 
 PH W 

 
 ARGENTAN LACE. 75 
 
 The reseau ground, introduced about 1700, naturally introduced a 
 finer, more minute floral genre of design, and a new style began to 
 declare itself, associated with the reign of Louis XV. Here, as in 
 furniture and decoration generally, the symmetrical tendency was 
 overthrown and oblique and slanted motifs were the fashion. The 
 impoverishment of the kingdom towards the end of the reign had 
 had its effect upon trade. Many manufactures had disappeared, and 
 those remaining lost two-thirds of their custom. A more simple and 
 saleable genre of lace was substituted for the important pieces of 
 Louis XIV.'s reign. As the design became thinner the reseau ground 
 filled up its deficiencies, while to give it " interest " enclosures of a 
 finer ground were introduced and a jours filled with light and open 
 patterns. 
 
 The floral patterns of the period no doubt result from the fact that 
 French designers had from very early times peculiar encouragement 
 to draw and paint from plant forms of great variety, which were 
 cultivated in public gardens. French textile patterns of the seven- 
 teenth century are full of effects derived from a close adherence to 
 natural forms, the expression of which pervades their art in a more 
 lively and dainty manner than in the corresponding Italian patterns. 
 Yet another motif introduced into lace from textiles is the Louis XV. 
 wavy ribbon pattern, generally enclosing a rich variety of grounds. 
 The twining ribbon patterns encircling flowers within their spiral 
 volutions were amongst the most popular products of the Lyons 
 factories at the close of the seventeenth century. Tocque's portrait of 
 Marie Lec/dnska (1740) shows that a pattern of sprays of flowers 
 entwined in a double serpentine ribbon or ribbon-like convolution 
 was fashionable at that date. 
 
 The ribbon motif may often be seen in its usual form of undulating 
 lines, dividing the ground into oval compartments, from which a spray 
 or flower springs. The introduction of military "trophies" is not 
 unusual. Cannons and flags are sometimes skilfully combined with 
 floral ornament. 
 
 Certain exotic features and "chinoiseries" are to be noted in lace as 
 
 characteristically French adaptation of lace devices is given in the embellishment 
 of the leaves and flowers of a piece of olive-green satin damask \voven in white 
 silk" (A. S. Cole, "Ornament in European Silks''').
 
 76 OLD LACK. 
 
 in the decoration of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. 
 The appearance of Indian figures in lace is a curious reflection of the 
 taste of the time. Such figures invariably show the odd kilt-like skirt 
 reaching to the knees, and on the head a circlet of upstanding feathers 
 of the conventional savage of the period ; sometimes a hunting imple- 
 ment is slung across the shoulder. Other figures of a pseudo- 
 Oriental character are also to be found a pendant to the taste which 
 demanded negro attendants, Oriental lacquer plaques inlaid upon 
 furniture, and Indian gods in the boudoirs. 
 
 In textiles design towards the latter part of the eighteenth 
 century became still more simplified.* Alternating straight stripes 
 and bands running vertically up and down the pattern are mingled 
 with small bunches of flowers, sometimes with tiny detached sprays 
 and spots. " C'est le ligne droite qui domine ! " t These straight 
 stripes, which appeared towards the last year of Louis XVI., were 
 retained during the Republic and the Consulate. It is interesting to 
 note that the output of examples of this type coincides in point of 
 time with the period when the finances of France were suffering con- 
 siderably from the extravagances both of the Government and of 
 individuals during the reigns of Louis XIV. and XV.* Lace follows 
 closely the developments of textiles. (See lappet in Plate LXXII.) 
 
 In lace, instead of wreaths, ribbons, or festoons undulating from 
 one side of the border to another, we have a stiff rectilinear border of 
 purely conventional design, the reflection of the dominant straight 
 line of decoration. In textiles also, as in lace, semes become more 
 widely separated. 
 
 In lace, under Louis XVI., it became the fashion to multiply the 
 number of flounces to dresses and to gather them into pleats, so that 
 ornamental motifs, more or less broken up or partially concealed by 
 the pleats, lost their significance and jloic. The general ornamental 
 
 * M. Dupont-Auberville, " L'Ornement des Tissus." 
 
 + Rouai.x, " Les Styles.''' 
 
 i A. S. Cole, "Ornament in European Silks. " 
 
 The straight line in furniture was the result of the revival of "classic"' taste 
 and imitation of classic models.
 
 ARGENTAN LACE. 77 
 
 effect of the lace of the period depended upon the orderly repetition 
 and arrangement of the same details over and over again. The 
 spaces between the motifs widened more and more until the design 
 deteriorated into semes of small devices, detached flowers, pois, 
 larmes, fleurons, rosettes. The design usually only ran along the 
 edge of a piece of lace, the upper portion was reseau, little disguised * 
 (Plate LXXIV.). 
 
 The prevalent fashion in costume of the period did not exact such 
 ornamental elaboration of laces as had distinguished even the pre- 
 ceding reign. f An illustration of the diminishing use of lace is a 
 portrait by Drouais, of Turgot (1778), showing but a small ruffle or 
 edging to his shirt front instead of the full folds of a deep cravat. 
 A great deal of lace of this date is straight-edged, and shows 
 two grounds, the finer reseau as a border, and a coarser variety 
 for the upper portion covered with a very simple design or 
 seme. The minute picots on the condonnets of the little sprays 
 of flowers and ornament of the lace of this period should be noticed. 
 The sharp, thin appearance of the work is chiefly due to the use 
 of fine horsehair used as the foundation line of the cordonnet 
 of every ornament, upon which the fine threads have been cast. 
 In earlier Alencon the horsehair was used along the border of the 
 piece only. 
 
 The Empire style follows with its decided phase of heavy classi- 
 calism. At first the small seme was used, but instead of the rose 
 and tulip leaves, laurel and olive leaves were substituted. In lace, 
 Roman emblems and attributes were introduced, and the Napoleonic 
 bee appears on some pieces of Alencon specially made for Marie 
 Louise. A triangular piece of Brussels vrai reseau of this set with 
 bees of Alencon point is shown in the illustration (Plate LXXV.). 
 
 * Compare the last lace bill of Madame du Barry, 1773: " Une paire de 
 barbes plattes longues de 3 4 en blonde fine a fleurs fond d'Alencon. Une blonde 
 grande hauteur a bouquets detaches et a bordure riche. 6 au de blonde de grande 
 hauteur facon d'Alencon a coquilles a mille poix." 
 
 + According to Wraxall ("Memoirs," ed. 1815, i. 138), the total abolition of 
 buckles and ruffles was not made till the era of Jacobinism and of equality in 1793 
 and 1794. Sir P. J. Clerk, though a strong Whig, wore t: very rich lace.i ruffles" 
 as late as 1781. 
 
 I'
 
 78 OLD LACE. 
 
 Large spaces of reseau with semes and a straight-edged border 
 continued in fashion (Plate LXXIV.). 
 
 In the Forges Collection are one or two Empire pieces showing 
 coats-of-arms, garlands, and draperies held up by cords and tassels, 
 and the foliage of the oak and laurel ornament, the lace destined for 
 the wives of the Chevaliers of the Legion of Honour. 
 
 The laces of the Restoration are heavy and tasteless.
 
 [ 79 ] 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 LILLE AND ARRAS. 
 LILLE. 
 
 LACE was made at Lille,* the ancient capital of Flanders, in 1582, 
 but as it has been a French town since the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle 
 in i668,f and Nimeguen (1678), its productions are included among 
 French laces, though in character and design they are more closely 
 allied to those of Flanders. 
 
 Peuchet mentions the products of Lille in the " genre " of Mechlin 
 and Valenciennes, and says that much " fausse Valenciennes," very 
 like the " vraie " type, was fabricated in the hospital at Lille. 
 
 The design in Lille of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth 
 centuries resembles Mechlin, the special difference between the two 
 laces lying in the make of the reseau. The Lille ground, fine, light, 
 and transparent, has a hexagonal mesh, and is called " fond clair," or 
 " fond simple." " Four sides of the mesh are formed by twisting two 
 threads round each other, and the remaining two sides by simple 
 crossing of the threads over each other." Square dots (" points 
 d'esprit") are one of the characteristics of Lille, as are also the straight 
 edge, and light, formal pattern, outlined by a coarse, flat, untwisted 
 linen thread, which shows up against the very transparent fond clair, 
 
 * " Cette villa possedait autrefois plusieurs industries d'art trcs prosperes : la 
 dentelle, la tapisserie, 1'impression sur tissus. Les traditions artistiques flamandes 
 leur avaient conserve une grande originalite" (Marias Yachon, " Les Industries 
 d ; Art," Nancy, 1897). 
 
 t At this time a number of lace-workers withdrew from Lille to Ghent.
 
 8o OLD LACK. 
 
 and the oval openings left near the edge of the lace, and filled in with 
 simple a jours. 
 
 In 1803 the price of thread having risen 30 per cent., the lace- 
 makers, unwilling to raise the prices of their lace, adopted a larger 
 mesh, in order to diminish the quantity of thread required. 
 
 ARRAS. 
 
 " Arras, from the earliest ages, has been a working city ; the nuns 
 of the convent excelled in all kinds of needlework," and lace-making 
 was in 1602 the principal occupation of the institution of the Filles 
 de Sainte-Agnes. M. cle Cardevacque, in his " Histoire de la Dentelle 
 d'Arras," gives some curious details of the methods of teaching lace- 
 making in these conventual establishments, the pupils beginning with 
 bobbin lace in which only four bobbins were employed. 
 
 Owing to its early repute as a centre of bobbin lace, Arras was 
 chosen as an establishment of the points de France, and Valenciennes 
 were copied there with some success in 1713.* 
 
 In the later eighteenth century, Arras, like Lille, made a quantity 
 of narrow light lace, which went by the name of " mignonette," which 
 was very popular during the Empire (1804-12), since which period it 
 lias declined. In 1800, the laces of Lille and Arras were the only 
 "dentelles communes" in vogue, and their strength, whiteness, and low 
 
 Cz> O 
 
 price assured them a market. 
 
 * " Les dentelles qui se fabriquent a Arras dans la inaison de la Providence et 
 qui passent pour etre assez belles, ne sont qinme copie dc celles cle Valenciennes, 
 et les ouvrieres les executent tres lentement " (" Letter of M. de Uerna^e, Intcndant 
 at Amiens to the Controleur-general," 3rd and 7th May 1713).
 
 Plate LXXIX. 
 
 EDGINGS OR BORDERS OF LILLE.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 CHANTILLY. 
 
 CIIANTILLY, in the department of Oise, is the centre of a district 
 long famous for its silk laces, in black and white, the manufacture 
 having been established in the seventeenth century by the Duchesse 
 de Longueville ; the name of a lace-maker, Charlotte Martin, is 
 mentioned in 1700, and about 1750 there were three houses of lace- 
 dealers, Moreau, Le Tellier, and Lionnet* 
 
 Chantilly black lace has always been made of silk, but from 
 its being a grenadine, not a shining silk, a common error prevails 
 that it is thread, whereas black thread lace has never been made 
 either at Chantilly or Bayeux. In the inventories of the eighteenth 
 century black lace and black silk lace appears fairly frequently. 
 A specimen illustrated in the "History of Lace" from an old 
 order-book of the time of Louis XVI. shows a straight-edged 
 lace with a flower-vase design, the flowers worked in grille or open 
 stitch, the pattern outlined with a cordonnet. In the Victoria and 
 Albert Museum, No. 868, 1853, is a piece of lace with a flower-pot 
 pattern, and the fond chant ground of the eighteenth century. A 
 piece in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, is exactly like that 
 illustrated from the old order-book of the time of Louis XVI. 
 The designs of this period were "vases" or "flowering" baskets, 
 small ornaments, small flowers, " pois " arranged like pearls on a 
 string. 
 
 Like other French fabrics, Chantilly suffered in the Revolution, and 
 had a short period of comparative prosperity under the Empire. In 
 
 * G. H. Quignon, " La Dentelle Chantilly.''
 
 82 OLD LACE. 
 
 1805, the Chantilly workwomen made white blonde, which was then 
 in fashion in Paris ; and large patterned blondes were also made for 
 exportation to Spain and her American colonies. 
 
 The lace industry has been driven away from Chantilly by the 
 increase in the price of labour consequent on its vicinity to the capital, 
 and by the competition of Calvados. 
 
 The grounds used in Chantilly were the Alencon ground, and the 
 fond chant (an abbreviation of Chantilly), or six-pointed star reseau.* 
 
 Chantilly, in the early nineteenth century, was exported to Holland, 
 Russia, Germany, Portugal, and England. After 1827, the trade con- 
 siderably declined, and its decadence was further accentuated from 
 1830-40. 
 
 Until 1840 Chantilly was made in bands from 10 to 12 centimetres 
 wide, which were afterwards invisibly joined. After 1840, in the reign 
 of Louis Philippe, Chantilly came into favour, and large pieces were 
 designed, often made in one piece, fichus, shawls, and later " barbes." 
 In the reign of Napoleon III. very ambitious and remarkable specimens 
 of Chantilly were produced, the ornament delicately "shaded." In 
 1870, the lace houses became bankrupt somewhat suddenly, many 
 parchments and unfinished pieces of lace were left in the hands of the 
 workers and never claimed, and a great deal of Chantilly was sold at 
 a loss to the Prussians during the siege of Paris. 
 
 Le Puy produced + from 1850 to 1870 lace like Chantilly, but with 
 the fond chant ground instead of the fond d'Alencon. ^ 
 
 To the collector looking for Chantilly, a few hints will be useful. 
 It is more difficult to distinguish between real and machine-made 
 lace in black than in white (as the colour and texture of linen thread 
 and cotton are very distinct in white). A fairly safe test is the edge. 
 In the case of real Chantilly, the loops on the ed-ge will be found 
 to be part of the lace, but in the machine-made lace, these will be 
 found to be sewn on, and can easily be pulled away. In general, the 
 weakest point of all machine-made lace is its edge. 
 
 1787, "Une paire de barbes cle dentelle noire Alenron a bordure longue :: 
 (" Livre Journal de Madame Kloffe," ed. the Comte de Keiset). 
 
 h Modern Chantilly lace is no longer made at Chantilly itself, but at Calvados, 
 Caen, and Bayeux. 
 
 I Chantilly was imitated in Belgium at Grammont, but the black lace is too 
 soft and without consistency ; the silk used for the ornament was too fine.
 
 H ' 
 
 2 S
 
 CHANTILLV. 83 
 
 With the better imitation this is always the case, especially 
 in the needle-run, which is the nearest to the genuine pillow-made 
 article ; in this the net and design are made on the machine, there 
 the gimp or outlining of the design is run in by hand hence the 
 term needle-run lace. 
 
 In the commoner makes the loops at the edge will often be found 
 to have been cut, owing to the carelessness of the operator in dividing 
 the strips when taken from the loom, settling at once that it is of 
 no value.* 
 
 * Note by a correspondent in the Connoisseur, November 1905.
 
 84 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 K X( JLISI I X KEI )LEPOI XT. 
 
 IT has been said that originality has never been a marked feature of 
 English needlework, and that at all times its patterns and stitches 
 have sho\vn \vell-defined traces of foreign influence; also skilful adapta- 
 tion rather than invention has distinguished its executants even when 
 the art has been at its highest' level in this country. This is entirely 
 true with regard to the English needlepoint laces of the earl} 7 seven- 
 teenth century, in which the design and the method of workmanship 
 is that of the contemporary Italian work. The fine flax for lace- 
 making was also not home-grown, but imported from Flanders* and 
 France. According to Fuller not a tenth part of the flax used in 
 England was home-grown.^ 
 
 * '' If the law made for sowing hemp and flax were executed and . . . provision 
 made for growing woad and madder in the realm, as by some men's diligence it is 
 already practised, which growth is here found better than that from beyond seas, 
 we should not need to seek into France for it. Besides Flanders hath enough ; no 
 country robbeth England so much as France "(" Considerations delivered to the 
 Parliament, 1559," "Calendar of Cecil MSS., ;; Part I., Hist. MSS. Comm.). 
 
 + Lydgate, in " Ballad of London Luckpenny," writes that Paris thread was the 
 most pri/.cd : 
 
 " Here is Paris thredde, the Finest in the land." 
 
 ''Our whole land (doth not) afford the tenth part of what is spent therein ; so 
 that we are fain to fetch it from Flanders, I-' ranee, yea as far as Egypt itself. It 
 may seem strange that our soil kindly for that seed, the use whereof and profit 
 hereby so great, yet so little care is taken for the planting thereof, which well 
 husbanded would find linen for the rich and living for the poor. Many would 
 never be indicted spinsters, were they spiiis/c>-s indeed. . . . Some thousands of 
 pound-; are sent yearly over out of England to buy that commodity'' 'Fuller, 
 " Worthies of England "
 
 Plate LXXXI. 
 
 PORTRAIT OF LADY ELIZABETH I'AULET. 
 
 (As/u/iolean Gal/cry, O.vfonf.)
 
 ENGLISH NEEDLEPOINT. 85 
 
 Cutwork, described as of Italian and Flemish manufacture, the 
 former being the more expensive, is of common occurrence in Queen 
 Elizabeth's Wardrobe Accounts, and an English version of Vinciolo * 
 was printed in 1591, in which we are told that cut\vork was "greatly 
 accepted of by ladies and gentlemen, and consequently by the common 
 people." An illustration from the Ashmolean Gallery, Oxford, shows 
 a fine apron f of cutwork, perhaps made by the wearer, Lady Elizabeth 
 Paulet, who holds in her left hand a small picture of the Magdalen, 
 probably in needlework. It is attributed to Daniel Mytens the elder 
 (d. 1656), who painted in England in the reigns of James I. and 
 Charles I. The English Connoisseur (ii. 80) mentions a " Lady Betty 
 Paulet, an ingenious lady of the Duke of Bolton's family in the reign 
 of James I., drmvn in a dress of her own work, full length," probably 
 the same " Lady Eliz. Paulet" whose gift of certain admirable needle- 
 work was accepted by the University of Oxford in convocation, Qth 
 July 1636} (Plate LXXXI.). 
 
 When needlepoint lace forsook purely geometrical lines, certain 
 English characteristics are noticeable. In the Victoria and Albert 
 Museum a pair of scallops of needlepoint lace contain within one 
 compartment a thistle, within the other a rose, and there are two of 
 similar design in Mr Sydney Vacher's collection (Plate LXXXV.). 
 In the interesting collar described as Italian in the Victoria and Albert 
 Museum, the design is of flowers arranged stiffly on an angular stem. 
 These flowers, Tudor roses and pinks, are more naturalistic than any 
 
 * " New and Singular Patternes and Workes of Linnen serving for Patternes 
 to make all sorts of Lace Edginges and Cutworkes," by Vincentio. Printed by 
 John Wolfe and Edward White, 1591. In the "Epistle to the Reader" we have 
 its foreign origin admitted : " It being my chance to lighten upon certaine paternes 
 of cutworke and others brought out of foreign countries which have bin greatly 
 accepted of by divers ladies and gentlewomen of sundrie nations, and consequently 
 of the common people," &c. 
 
 + A similar apron, composed almost entirely of geometrical lace, is seen in the 
 portrait of Anne, daughter of Sir Peter Yanlore, Kt., first wife of Sir Charles Qesar, 
 Kt. (about 1614), in the possession of Captain Cottrell-Dormer. This portrait is 
 the frontispiece of the " History of Lace," Mrs Palliser, ed. 1902. The lace is there 
 stated to be probably Flemish. 
 
 l Many of the verses written in her honour by Cartwright and others have 
 been preserved. In the Bodleian a volume of them is MS. Bodl. 22.
 
 86 OLD LACE. 
 
 in Italian lace, and the Tudor rose, with stiff opposite leaflets, is not 
 infrequently to be found in English samplers. The raised free petals 
 of the rose are also characteristic.* The design also is compact and 
 closely crowded, showing no feeling of the value of background so 
 characteristic in Italian lace. Somewhat similar qualities may be 
 seen in the collar of needlepoint in the picture of James Harrington 
 (author of " Oceana "), by Gerard Honthorst, in the National Portrait 
 Gallery, and various other portraits of the reign of Charles I. The 
 somewhat torn collar from the Isham Collection in the Victoria and 
 Albert Museum is of the same type, close, compact, and thick (Plate 
 LXXXII.). In the same collection is a boy's doublet of white linen, 
 quilted and embroidered with gold coloured silk, and edged with 
 needlepoint lace. 
 
 In 1635 a royal proclamation, having for its object the protection 
 of home fabrics, prohibited the use of foreign cutworks, and ordered 
 all "purles," + cutworks, and "bone laces" of English make to be 
 taken to a house " near the sign of the Red Hart, in Eore Street, 
 without Cripplegate, and then sealed by Thomas Smith or his 
 deputy." 
 
 Needlepoint lace representing some Bible story is occasionally to 
 be met with in samplers of the seventeenth century. A sachet in the 
 possession of Sir Hubert Jerningham shows Salome, with the head of 
 John the Baptist, before Herod. The dresses are picked out with 
 seed pearls, and the eyes indicated by small black beads. A similar 
 but larger specimen is in the possession of Mrs Head, and represents 
 the Judgment of Solomon. A third piece in the possession of Mrs 
 
 * In a coverlet, Xo. 348, 1901, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, some of the 
 petals of the floral sprays embroidered upon it have been separately worked, and 
 afterwards fixed to the satin, so as to stand away from the ground an attempt at 
 realism characteristic of English work. 
 
 + Purl is to form an edging on lace, to form an embroidered border. It is a 
 contraction of the old word pnrjle, to embroider on the edge. M.K. pitrfilcn, Old 
 l-'rench porfilc>\ later pourjilcr. " 1'ourfilcr <Cor, to purfle, tinsell, or overcast with 
 gold thread (Cotgrave)." 
 
 " I.ncc, a cord, tie, plaited string (F., L.), M.E. //is, /mis, King Alisaunder, 
 7098; Chaucer, C.T. 394 O.I 1 ', /as, /<w, a snare; cf. lags courant, a noose, 
 running knot Cot.) Lat. liiqucits, a noose, snare or knot" (Skeat).
 
 X I 
 X 
 
 Vv .2 
 
 2 "M
 
 o 5
 
 ENGLISH NEEDLEPOINT. 8/ 
 
 Croly, in which Salome and the head of John the Baptist are again 
 represented, shows the same crowded design and finely wrought 
 costume, and the same application of beads (Plate LXXXIII.). 
 
 The application of bugles, seed pearls, and spangles upon lace is a 
 detail that cannot fail to strike the reader of the Wardrobe Accounts 
 of Queen Elizabeth.* 
 
 The singular custom of representing religious subjects, both in 
 lace, cutwork, and embroidery, became prominent towards the end of 
 the reign of James I., and was a reflection of the Puritan taste.t " For 
 flowers " now are made " Church histories."* Stuart raised embroi- 
 deries, better known as stump work, have the costumes of the figures 
 and various accessories covered with the stitch used in needlepoint 
 lace. 
 
 Samplers carried on the tradition of cutwork, which was still made 
 for " seaming" lace, for linen sheets, shirts, cupboard cloths, cushion 
 cloths, &c., long after freer designs were in vogue for other uses. The 
 latest sampler which includes a band of cutwork bears the date 1/26.; 
 
 A quantity of coarse lace continued apparently to be made in 
 England until the eighteenth century, for the author of " Britannia 
 Languens " complains that " the manufacture of linen was once the 
 huswifery of English ladies, gentlewomen, and other women ; now 
 (1680) the huswifery women of England employ themselves in making 
 an ill sort of lace, which serves no national or natural necessity." 
 
 A kind of work formed of very fine needlepoint stitches, with the 
 pattern formed by a series of small pinholes, is the " hollie point," or 
 
 * In the Xe\v Year, 1559-60, the Countess of Worcester offers a ruff of lawn 
 cutwork set with twenty small knobs like mullets, garnished with small sparks of 
 rubies and pearls (Nichols, " Progresses of Queen Elizabeth'"). 
 
 t The linen of men and women was either so worked as to resemble lace, or 
 was ornamented by the needle into representations of fruit and flowers, passages 
 of history, &c. (Ben Jonson, "Every Alan out of his Humour"). 
 
 J "The City Match" (Jasper Mayne). 
 
 >j In Anne Hathaway's cottage in Shottery, Warwickshire, is shown the best 
 linen sheet, which has a narrow strip about an inch and a half wide of cutwork 
 joining the two breadths together, where there would otherwise be a seam. The 
 pattern is of a simple zigzag character. 
 
 II In the possession of Mrs C. J. Longman.
 
 88 OLD LACK. 
 
 holy point, which are so much used to ornament christening caps of 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A sampler in the posses- 
 sion of Mrs Head * in most places has the linen completely cut away, 
 and the round or square holes so formed filled up with " hollie point," 
 showing an initial or coronet, a small ornament like an acorn or a 
 fleur-de-lys, or a small diamond diaper pattern. Many of the small 
 designs are almost exactly reproduced in the crowns of some caps in 
 Mrs Head's collection. Some of the designs for hollie work are more 
 elaborate, and show a plant or an angular stem in a flower pot, or 
 t\vo doves alighting on a flower. 
 
 f This sampler is dated 1728. It is illustrated in "The Sampler, its Develop- 
 ment and Decay," by Mrs Head (The Reliquary and Illustrated Archceologisf).
 
 X 
 X 
 XI 
 
 H 
 
 21 
 
 OS 
 
 W 3 
 
 G _H 
 
 C4 ^ 
 
 9 3
 
 Plate LXXXV 
 
 ENGLISH NEEDLEPOIXT SCALLOPS. 
 
 Earlv seventeenth centurv. 
 
 ENGLISH NEEDLEPOINT SCALLOPS. 
 Early seventeenth century. (In tJie, possession of Mr Sydney
 
 89 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ENGLISH BOBBIN LACK. 
 HONITON. 
 
 Tin-: lace industry of Honiton is supposed to have been founded by 
 Flemish refugees escaping from the Alva persecutions (1568-77), and 
 names of undoubted Flemish origin occur at Honiton, at Colyton, 
 and at Ottery St Alary. An early reference to lace-making is to be 
 found in 15/7 in Hellowes' "Familiar Epistles of Sir Anthonie of 
 Gueuara," where he writes of seeing a woman " take her cushin for 
 bone-lace or her rocke to spinne." * Shortly before 1620 a complaint 
 was made by the London tradesmen of the influx of refugee artisans 
 " who keep their misteries to themselves, which hath made them 
 bould of late to device engines for workinge lace, and such wherein 
 one man doth more than seven Englishmen can doe,' ; which would 
 seem to point not only to the national jealousy of the industrious 
 immigrant but to the introduction of bobbin lace, which is more 
 rapidly worked than needlepoint. The Honiton bone-lace manu- 
 facture, however, is already mentioned in 1620 by YVestcote, and the 
 often quoted inscription upon the tombstone of James Rodge, "Bone- 
 lace siller" (d. 1617), in Honiton churchyard proves that the industry 
 was well established in James I.'s reign. 
 
 Such lace as was made must have been similar to the insertions and 
 vandyked edgings of twisted and plaited thread which had their 
 origin in Italy. Though there arc no authenticated specimens of 
 bone-lace, "some early seventeenth-century sculptured monuments 
 
 * "The Familiar Epistles of Sir Anthonie of C.ueuara. tr. out of the Spanish 
 tongue by E. Hellcnves," 1577.
 
 90 OLD LACK. 
 
 bear well-preserved indications of geometric lace, as upon the monu- 
 ment to Lad}- Pole in Colyton Church (1623), and upon another to 
 Lady Doddridge (1614) in Exeter Cathedral," which may represent 
 the local manufacture.* The patterns of these have been copied by 
 Mrs Treadwin, and specimens are shown in the Exeter Museum, 
 titled " patent vandykc point." 
 
 Pins were imported from Erancc till about 1626,^ when the manu- 
 facture was introduced into England, and facilitated the making of 
 lace. In 1636 the Countess of Leicester writes that "these bone- 
 laces, if they be good are dear," and in the following year that they 
 are " extremely clear." 
 
 From a petition sent to the House of Commons in 1698, when it 
 was proposed to repeal the last preceding prohibition of foreign lace, 
 we learn that " the English are now arrived to make as good lace in 
 fineness and all other respects as an}' that is wrought in Flanders." 
 Devonshire lace, indeed, must have followed much the same develop- 
 ment as did Flemish. It was, however, on a much smaller scale, 
 and far less was exported. The Flemish "send it to Holland, 
 German}-, Sweden, Denmark, France, Spain, Portugal, &c., whereas 
 we make it chiefly to serve our own country and plantations." 
 
 In the Diary of Celia Fiennes, who travelled through England in 
 the time of William and Mary, + Honiton is again compared with 
 Flemish laces. At Honiton, " they make the fine bone-lace in imita- 
 tion of the Antwerp and Flanders lace, and indeed I think it as fine; 
 it only will not wash so fine, which must be the fault in ye thread." 
 
 * A. S. Cole, Joiir/i<i/ cf the Society of Arts, 1st April 1904. 
 
 + In 14X3 the importation of pins into England was prohibited by statute. In 
 1 540 Queen Catherine received hers from France, and again in 1543 an Act was 
 passed providing tl at '' no person shall put to sale any pinnes but only such as 
 shall be double-headed, and have the heads soldered fast to the shank of the pinnes, 
 well smoothed, the shank well shapen, the points well and round filed, canted, and 
 sharpened." To a lar^e extent the supply of pins was received from France till 
 about \(i2(\ in which year the manufacture was introduced into Gloucestershire by 
 John I'ilsby. His business flourished so that he soon #ave employment to 1,500 
 persons. In if>y> the pinmakers of London formed a corporation, and the manu- 
 facture was subsequently established at Hristol and ISirmin^ham. 
 
 \ "Through Kn-hind on a Side Saddle in Time of William and Mary: The 
 I )iarv of Celia Fiennes.' 1
 
 X 
 X 
 X
 
 O -g 
 s. 
 
 2
 
 HONITON LACE. 91 
 
 In the late eighteenth century, in an old diary, the lace trimming the 
 wedding gown of Lady Harriet Strangways (1799) is described as 
 " Brussels Honiton." 
 
 In the early eighteenth century lace-making claimed, when resent- 
 ing a proposed tax, to be the second trade of the kingdom, but its 
 importance was much exaggerated. It was, however, widely spread, 
 and largely practised as a bye-industry. Later, in 1813, Vancouver 
 writes of Devonshire that " its chief manufactures are the different 
 kinds of woollen cloths, as also of bone-lace." 
 
 The English lace industry has always been hampered by the 
 inferior quality of native flax,* which could not compete with that 
 of Flanders. An attempt in the reign of Charles II. to induce Flemish 
 lace-makers to settle in England was unsuccessful, and the manu- 
 facturing of linen was in a very rudimentary state on his accession.^ 
 
 It is worth mentioning in this connection that Devon was formerly 
 famous for its spinning. " As fine as Kerton (Crediton) spinning " is a 
 proverb in the county. J 
 
 Early Devonshire lace is said to have had one peculiarity dis- 
 tinguishing it both from Brussels and from the later Honiton. This 
 is the use of an outlining cordonnet, formed by massing together the 
 
 * The Maidstone authorities in the early seventeenth century complained that 
 the thread-makers' trade was very much decayed by the importation of thread 
 from Flanders ("List of Foreign Protestants resident in England, 1618-88," 
 Camden Society). 
 
 "A body of Flemings who settled at Maidstone in 1567 carried on the thread 
 manufacture ; flax spun for the threadmen being still known there as Dutch work" 
 (Smiles, "The Huguenots in England and Ireland," 1868). 
 
 t " Perhaps," writes Strutt, " it was thought to be more greatly beneficial to 
 procure the article (linen) by exchange than to make it at home, especially when 
 the cultivation of hemp and flax was not conceived to be worth the attention of 
 our farmers." In the fifteenth year of Charles II.'s reign an act was passed for 
 the encouragement of the manufactures of all kinds of linen cloth and tapestry 
 made from hemp or flax, by the virtue of which every person either a native or 
 a foreigner might establish such manufactures in any place in England or Wales, 
 without paying any acknowledgment, fee, or gratuity for the same. 
 
 1 It is on record that one hundred and forty threads of woollen yarn spun in 
 that town were dra\vn through the eye of a tailor's needle which was long exhibited 
 there. 
 
 R
 
 92 OLD LACK. 
 
 bobbins, just as is done nowadays to obtain slight veins of relief 
 called brodes in Brussels applique.* But a piece of lace of the seven- 
 teenth or eighteenth century which can be assigned with certainty to 
 Devonshire has yet to be found. 
 
 Three specimens in the Victoria and Albert Museum are tenta- 
 tively attributed to old Honiton. The first twof are of rough workman- 
 ship and design (Plate LXXXVIL). In the third} (Plate LXXXVI.) 
 the close plaiting of the flowers and other ornament is thrown into 
 relief by occasional narrow margins, across which are threads linking 
 the various portions together. These thread links are rather irregular, 
 and group themselves into no series of definite meshes. This has 
 been considered an eighteenth-century specimen of Devonshire pillow 
 lace. It should be compared with a cap crown from the Musee des 
 Arts Decoratifs, Brussels, attributed to Honiton. A "cloudiness" in 
 the Victoria and Albert example, and a slightly coarser thread, 
 suggests that it is English work. 
 
 A broad flounce of lace, belonging to Mrs Trew, in the style of 
 Flemish lace towards the end of the seventeenth century, is attributed 
 to Honiton, as "some forms in the lower border are characteristic of 
 Honiton work. There is (it is said) also a marked absence of plan 
 in the arrangement of details as well as in their treatment.'' This 
 attribution appears doubtful. 
 
 When the reseau ground was in vogue, Honiton was made first on 
 the pillow by itself, and the reseau was then worked in round it, also 
 mi the pillow. "The plain pillow ground was very beautiful and 
 regular, but very expensive. It was made of the finest thread pro- 
 cured from Antwerp, the market price of which in 1790 was /</O 
 per pound." 
 
 * " Les guipures que vers hi nicnie rpoque ' />., early eighteenth century) on 
 faisait en Angleterre, t'taient du mcme genre, sauf c|ue les diffe'rentes parties de 
 1'ouvrage etaient reliees ensemble par des brides picotees et que, en outre, certaines 
 portions du dessin etaient rehaussees de reliefs produits par une sorte de cordonnet 
 que Ton obtenait en massant tons les fuseaux comme nervures a relief appek'es 
 brodes dans Fapplication de ISruxelles, on les rattachait ensuite par un crochetage" 
 (Mine. Laurence de Laprade, ' Le I'oinct de France''). 
 
 + Nos. 874, 1853; 804, 1853. 
 Xo. i 368, 1855. 
 
 ? Catalogue of the I^iily Mail Kxhibition of british Lace, March 1908.
 
 J>'-^ 
 
 &
 
 HONITON LACE. 93 
 
 With the introduction of machine-made net in the early part of 
 the nineteenth century, the principle of applique work was also 
 adopted in England, and the cheaper and inferior material was sub- 
 stituted for the hand-made ground. It is said that Queen Charlotte 
 introduced the applique on net to encourage the new machine net.* 
 
 Honiton applique was most commonly of white thread sprigs 
 mounted on thread net, but black silk sprigs were also made. These 
 were made on the pillow with black silk, and were transferred to a 
 fine machine-made silk net. No black laces have been made in 
 Honiton for the last quarter of a century ; they went out of fashion 
 on account of the expense of the silk, which cost just double the 
 price of linen thread. 
 
 The design of Honiton was derived from Flanders, partly no doubt 
 because there was frequent intercommunication between the two 
 countries. From i/oo downwards, though the edicts prohibiting the 
 entry of Flanders lace were repealed, the points of France and Venice 
 were still contraband. 
 
 The invention of machinery for lace-making was the greatest 
 blow administered to the hand-made fabric. Heathcoat,- 1 - after his 
 machinery at Loughborough had been destroyed by the Luddites, 
 in i Si i, established a factory at Tiverton for bobbin lace (so called 
 because made of coarse thread by means of long bobbins), greatly to 
 the injury of the bobbin-made lace for the next twenty years. The 
 lace-makers have employed 2,400 hands in the town and neighbour- 
 hood, writes Lysons, but now (1822) not above 300 are employed. 
 
 " From about 1820 the Honiton workers introduced a most hideous 
 set of patterns, designed," they said, "out of their own heads. 
 ' Turkey tails,' ' frying pans,' ' bullocks' hearts,' and the most senseless 
 sprigs and borderings took the place of the graceful compositions of 
 the old school."^ Airs Bury Palliser tried to provide some families 
 
 * It took because it was so much cheaper. Designs upon old pillow net cost 
 more than four times those upon the machine net. 
 
 t In 1809 Heathcoat took a patent for his bobbin-net machine. 
 
 + With regard to the design of Honiton M. Charles Blanc writes: "Un 
 principe de gout a observer dans le dessin des dentelles, c'est de n'y pas mettre 
 des objets trop nettement definis, tels qu'un vase, une corbeille, une couronne, un 
 cujur de bcuuf, une queue de dindon. Plus ces objets sont fidclement imites, plus 
 ils sont malseants dans le dentelle '' ('' L'Art dans la I'arure et le Vetement").
 
 94 OLD LACE. 
 
 \vith ne\v patterns of roses and leaves instead of the old " Duchess of 
 Kents," " Brunswicks," and " Snowballs," but with little success. To 
 this succeeded a period of floral patterns, directly copied from nature, 
 which may be studied in the sprigs preserved at the Exeter Museum 
 made for the Paris Exhibition of 1867. Later, the design again 
 relapsed. 
 
 In a Parliamentary Report upon the lace industry of England, 
 Mr Alan Cole writes of Honiton (1888) : " A lace-worker at Beer says, 
 ' Sometimes we see a new wall-paper and prick a pattern off it, 
 changing a bit here, or leave a little, or add a little.' Another 
 adapted her patterns from wall-paper, table-cloths, or anything." The 
 sprigs thus derived out of cottage wall-papers were made separately, 
 and sold to some other worker to join together in one confused patch- 
 work. If patterns of a different character were chosen the workers 
 declared " the gentlefolks called it machine." 
 
 About 1845 the application of Honiton sprigs was superseded by 
 " guipure," i.e., the sprigs, when made, were united on the pillow, or 
 else joined by the needle, like the kindred " Duchesse " of Belgium. 
 As a class, the details in foreign guipures are far better drawn, shaped, 
 and arranged together than the English, and the execution is more 
 finished and delicate. 
 
 Gimp* is the coarse glazed thread which is sometimes seen inside 
 the edges of leaves and flowers. It gives stability to the lace, and is 
 often used as a substitute for the raised work, being much more 
 quickly made. The close portions of the toile are worked in close 
 stitch, or whole stitch. 
 
 The open lighter parts of the sprays are worked in lace-stitch or 
 half stitch, the principle of which is that only one bobbin works across 
 the leaf each time. You treat the bobbins in pairs, but the working 
 pair is constantly changing ; therefore one thread runs straight across, 
 and the others slant down the work crosswise. 
 
 The raised work is the distinguishing mark of Honiton. In no 
 other English lace is it introduced, and the value of a piece is estimated 
 
 * " Gimp is the shiny and coarse glazed thread used in Honiton and other pillow 
 laces to mark out and slightly raise certain edges of the design, as a substitute for 
 raised work " (" Caulfield and Saward's Dictionary," 1882).
 
 X 
 X 
 
 .- 
 o ^ 
 
 ~ 
 
 s i 
 
 O ,c a> 
 
 53 g ^ 
 
 n ^ b 
 
 ^^ ~Cl 
 
 en ' S ^ 
 
 'c ^ 
 
 W *- ^ 
 
 = - 
 
 u % ^ 
 
 W .is 
 
 FH .- ^3 
 
 2 S
 
 DEVONSHIRE TROLLY. 95 
 
 according to the raised work in it. The fillings of the flowers are 
 done with plaitings which are largely used in Maltese and other laces. 
 
 The Honiton pillows run rather smaller than the Buckinghamshire 
 ones, and do not have the numberless starched coverings only three 
 pill cloths over the top, and another each side of the lace in progress; 
 two pieces of horn called sliders go between to take the weight of the 
 bobbins from dragging the stitches in progress ; a small square pin- 
 cushion is on one side, and stuck into the pillow, the " needlepin," a 
 large sewing needle in a wooden handle used for picking up loops. 
 The bobbins are of neatly turned boxwood, small and light.* 
 
 The trade of lace-making remained for several generations in some 
 families ; thus (in 1871) an old lace-maker was discovered at Honiton, 
 whose "turn," or wheel for winding cotton, had the date 1678 rudely 
 carved on its foot. 
 
 DEVONSHIRE TROLLY. 
 
 Devonshire trolly, which has no affinity with Honiton, is very 
 like the laces made in the Midlands, but of coarser thread, and not 
 so well made. Lappets and scarves were made of trolly lace in the 
 eighteenth century, and a trolly "head" is mentioned in 1756. "It 
 was made," writes Mrs Palliser, " of coarse British thread with heavier 
 and larger bobbins, worked straight on round and round the pillow. 
 The name is said to be derived from the Flemish " trolle kant." It 
 is quite extinct. An informant, writing from East Budleigh in 1896, 
 says : " Some of the very old women here make beautiful trolly lace, 
 but no young person. This is partly owing to there being no 
 prickings left, for one of the old workers told me that when the 
 lace trade was bad they used up their prickings as stiffenings for their 
 waist belts, thinking they should never need them again." The 
 
 * "The bobbins used in Devonshire are always made of wood, and are perfectly 
 plain and smooth in outline, and very light of weight. The custom of ornamenting 
 bobbins does not appear f o have been general in the West of England, and when 
 any decoration is found, it is confined to simple incised patterns, coloured red, 
 blue, or black, or a curious tortoise-shell mottling" ("A Xote on Lace-Bobbins," 
 Airs Head, The Connoisseur, vol. x.).
 
 96 OLD LACE. 
 
 specimens described as Devonshire trolly in the Kxeter Museum 
 cannot be distinguished from the Midland.* The specimen illustrated 
 in Plate LXXXVIII. was bought in Somerset, and was recognised by 
 a woman at Kxmouth as " thirteen-hole trolly," such as was made 
 about Kxmouth, the last maker dying only a few years ago. Heavy 
 bobbins compared with Honiton, were used, and no gingles. Some 
 old troll\- prickings leave the net unpacked as in one class of 
 Valenciennes lace. 
 
 * Kjth August 1708. ''Last Thursday Mrs IJedingfield was married in white 
 damask with silver troley on the petticoat' 1 ("MSS. of the Karl of Dartmouth," 
 Hist. MSS. Comm., vol. iii.).
 
 Plate XC. 
 
 15EER. IJRANSCOMHE, AND TROLLY BOISIHXS.
 
 [ 97 
 
 7 "1 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ENGLISH BOBBIN LACES. 
 MIDLAND AND OTHER ENGLISH LACES. 
 
 LACE-MAKING was formerly practised to a small extent in Hertford- 
 shire, Derbyshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Hampshire, besides in 
 the better-known centres of Devonshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedford- 
 shire, and Northamptonshire. Lace was made in Wales at Swansea, 
 Pontardawe, Llanwrtyd, Dufynock, and Brecon, but never of any 
 beauty.* It was formerly made at Ripon in Yorkshire, and in 
 1862 one old woman still continued working at a narrow edging with 
 a small lozenge-shaped pattern known in local parlance by the name 
 of " four-penny spot." This lozenge torchon-like pattern is the 
 simplest type of lace, and was also made in Scotland, where it was 
 known as " Hamilton " from its patroness, the Duchess of Hamilton, 
 who introduced the manufacture at Hamilton in 1/52. The edgings 
 made there " were of a coarse thread, always of the lozenge pattern." 
 Being strong and firm, it was used for night-caps, never for dresses, 
 and justified the description of a lady who described it as of little 
 account and spoke of it as "only Hamilton." The three specimens 
 illustrated may be of this or of the similar Ripon manufacture 
 (Plate XCL). 
 
 The lace industry in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire has been 
 attributed to Flemish immigrants, who fled from Alva's persecutions. 
 A good quality of lace to judge from its price was made in 
 
 * Mrs Palliser, " History of Lace."
 
 98 OLD LACE. 
 
 Buckinghamshire* in 1678, the highest prices ranging above thirty 
 shillings a yard, while in Dorset and Devon more important centres 
 six pounds per yard was occasionally reached. In the eighteenth 
 century Buckinghamshire lace is declared to be "not much inferior 
 to those from Flanders," t and occupied an important place in the 
 trade of the counties. J But the only influence to be detected in 
 Buckinghamshire laces is that of Lille, which is closely copied, 
 probably after the advent of the settlers from the French provinces 
 bordering on Flanders after the Revocation of the Edict of Xantes. 
 There was a later influx of " ingenious French emigrants" at the time 
 of the French Revolution, which was expected to improve the native 
 manufacture. 
 
 The chief centres in the lace industry in Buckinghamshire were 
 at Great Marlow, Olney, Stony Stratford, X T ewport Pagnell," and 
 High Wycombe. There the lace was collected from the workers, for 
 the industry itself was very widely spread in most of the villages in 
 the county. In Bedfordshire, both Bedford and \Yoburn were 
 important centres in the eighteenth century, and as late as 1863 the 
 lace schools of Bedfordshire were more considerable than those in 
 Devonshire. 
 
 "The duties of a lace schoolmistress were to insist on a certain 
 amount of work being done, and if moral suasion was not sufficient, a 
 cane was ready for use. The other duties of the mistress were to 
 
 1 In 1623, the bone-lace trade was already " much decayed " in Buckingham- 
 shire (State Papers, Dom. Jac. I., vol. 142, I'.R.O.). 
 
 t " Magna Britannia." 
 
 :!; 1st October 1786.- The Marquis of Buckingham to YV. W. Grenville : 
 " Your doubts upon the thread lace have alarmed me extremely. . . . When I 
 look to the numbers employed and to the effects which a revolution in that trade 
 may bring upon the property of this country. For God's sake ! let me hear from 
 you as soon as you can upon it ; but remember how deeply I am pledged to our 
 manufactory by the importance of it to our own land" (" MSS. of J. 15. Fortescue, 
 Ksq.," Hist. AISS. Comm., Thirteenth Report, appendix, part iii.). 
 
 Hence Bucks laces have been called " English Lille.'''' Lille was very popular 
 in Kngland. One-third of the lace manufactured in the Dep. du Nord was 
 smuggled into England in i/So. 
 Aiuniiil Ay^'/.v/tv, 1794. 
 
 "This town is a sort of staple for bone-lace, of which more is thought to be 
 made here than any town in England" (Lysons, " Magna Britannia").
 
 Plate XCI. 
 
 INSERTIONS AND EDGING OF ENGLISH 1SOBF.IN LACE. 
 About beginning of nineteenth century.
 
 u 
 
 X
 
 MIDLAND AND OTHER ENGLISH LACES. 99 
 
 prick the parchment (on which the pattern had been previously- 
 designed), also to buy the material for the work, to wind the bobbins 
 by means of a small wheel and strap, and finally, to sell the lace to 
 the lace-buyer, deducting a small sum for the house-room, firing, 
 candles, &c."* 
 
 Fuller in his "Worthies" (1662) notes that in respect of manu- 
 factures, Northamptonshire "can boast of none worth the naming"; 
 and in the eighteenth century its lace is not mentioned so frequently 
 as that of Bedfordshire and Bucks. Anderson mentions that Ket- 
 tering had " a considerable trade in lace," and fine lace was made 
 at Middleton Cheney ; Spratton, Paulerspury, and Towcester t were 
 also centres of the trade. At the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century, Wellingborough and the villages on the south-west side 
 of the county appear to have had the largest number of lace- 
 workers. 
 
 In connection with the lace industry, it is of interest to note that 
 pin-making was also carried on in the county. 
 
 While the laces of Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, and Northamp- 
 tonshire may be classed together, there are certain differences in the 
 productions of each county differences in quality rather than type. 
 The finest and widest lace was, without doubt, made in North 
 Buckinghamshire ; it is made in narrow strips, afterwards invisibly 
 joined ; in that district the bobbins are small, and have very orna- 
 mental gingles. In South Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, and 
 in Oxfordshire the bobbins are larger, the work not so refined. In 
 Bedfordshire there is more gimp and less cloth (toile) used, and in 
 Buckinghamshire more cloth and less gimp. 
 
 In 1778, according to M'Culloch,^ was introduced the "point 
 ground," as it is locally termed the reseau ground, like that of Lille, 
 composed of two threads twisted, and simply crossed not plaited, at 
 their junction. " The mesh varies a little in shape from a four-sided 
 
 * ' Victoria History of the County of Northampton," vol. ii. 
 
 t "This place is remarkable for a manufactory of lace and silk stockings which 
 employs most of the meaner inhabitants " (" A Northern Tour from St Albans," 
 1768, MSS. of the Earl of Verulam, Hist. MSS. Comm.). 
 
 1 " Diet, of Commerce."
 
 IOO OLD LACE. 
 
 diamond to a hexagon, according as the threads at crossing are drawn 
 tighter or left loose and long." " 
 
 The untwisted outline thread is called locally the trolly. In 
 design the oval-shaped openings filled with light, open modes are 
 closely copied from Lille, as are also the square dots ; arranged in 
 groups of three and four the " points d'esprit " of Lille which are to 
 be found especially in the narrow " baby " laces. 
 
 In some specimens of trolly lace in the Victoria and Albert Museum 
 the design resembles that of some Mechlin laces made early in the 
 eighteenth century. The reseau is composed of six-pointed star- 
 meshes, which was often made in Buckinghamshire. Another piece of 
 trolly has four varieties of fillings-in, which almost suggest that it is 
 part of a sampler lace exhibited by lace-makers to encourage their 
 patrons to select groundings to their particular taste. 
 
 The ground sometimes known as " wire ground," " cat stitch," and 
 " French ground," was introduced about the time of the Regency, and 
 although in many cases effective, has to be most skilfully arranged and 
 interwoven with the pattern, otherwise a heavy-looking lace is the 
 result. 
 
 During the Regency a point lace, as it was called, with the toile on 
 the edge, was for many years in fashion, and was named Regency 
 point. It is illustrated in Fig. 145 in Mrs Palliser's "History of Lace," 
 edition 1902. 
 
 After the Fxhibition of 1851 were introduced Maltese guipures or 
 plaited laces, a variety grafted on to the Maltese type. The ground is 
 composed of a trellis of the characteristic Maltese oval enlargement, 
 and the pattern is like that of the Buckinghamshire lace, but heavier. 
 A very coarse cordonnet is used (Plate XCIV.). 
 
 Run laces were laces in which the pattern, light and generally 
 floral, was run in with the needle upon a pillow-made ground. 
 
 " On the breaking out of the war with France, the closing of our 
 ports to French goods gave an impetus to trade, and the manufacturers 
 undertook to supply the English market with lace similar to that 
 of Normandy"; hence a sort of English Valenciennes. In the 
 specimen illustrated this net is probably made as for trolly lace, 
 without pins, and a gimp is given instead of the Valenciennes edge. 
 * A. M. S., " Point and Pillow Lace."
 
 Plate XCIII. 
 
 EDGING OF "ENGLISH MECHLIN." 
 Made in North Buckinghamshire. 
 
 EDGING OF 
 
 ISLE OF WIGHT" 
 Run lace. 
 
 LACE. 
 
 EDGING OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LACE. 
 
 Coarse quality.
 
 Plate XC1V. 
 
 SPECIMENS OF BEDFORD MALTESE. 
 
 Called " Plaited Lace" (dr. 1851). 
 
 ['.IK ;i\(i OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LACE. 
 
 EDGING OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE LACE.
 
 MIDLAND AND OTHER ENGLISH LACES. IOI 
 
 "English Mechlin" was made in North Bucks. The design is an 
 exact copy of late Mechlin, where the pattern consists of a series of 
 stiff sprigs or flowers with small leaflets, and perhaps a further orna- 
 mentation of spots upon the ground near the pattern. The net in 
 the English Mechlin differs from the Mechlin reseau, and is not so 
 regular (Plate XCIII.). 
 
 In Buckinghamshire lace "the shape of the pillow varies in the 
 different parts of the county, in the North Bucks workers use a round, 
 hardly stuffed straw cushion, while in Central and Mid Bucks the 
 pillow used is longer and thinner.* 
 
 The larger bobbins are called gimps ; these hold the coarser or 
 silky-looking linen thread which marks the outline and accentuates 
 the pattern, and which is one of the characteristics of Buckinghamshire 
 lace. The " tallies" are four bobbins used to make the small square 
 dots; these have metal bands twisted round them, to distinguish them 
 from the ordinary lace bobbins. 
 
 The number of bobbins necessary varies according to the width 
 of the lace, a narrow edging requiring from two to three do/en, and 
 a wider one several hundred ; even so man}- as a thousand are re- 
 quired for a very wide pattern, but in this case it is necessary to have 
 an extremely large pillow, otherwise the bobbins would fall over the 
 sides and become entangled. 
 
 A special kind of oak chest is a relic of the prosperous days of 
 lace-making in Buckinghamshire. + The upper part was intended to 
 hold the lace pillow, while the two shallow drawers below were for 
 the bobbins and patterns. 
 
 Of the Wiltshire lace manufacturers in the past we know little. 
 Lady Arundel in the seventeenth century alludes incidentally to the 
 "bone lace" of North Wiltshire,^ and there were lace schools in the 
 
 * M. E. Burrowes, " Buckinghamshire Lace, :; Art Workers' Outv'ter/y, Janu- 
 ary 1904. 
 
 t One of these chests, dated 1702, is illustrated in " Point and IMllow Lace," by 
 A. M. S., p. 178. 
 
 1 Describing the destruction of the leaden pipes at \Yardour by the soldiers 
 she says, "They cut up the pipe and sold it, as these men's wives in North \\ ilt- 
 shire do bone lace, at sixpence a yard."
 
 102 OLD LACE. 
 
 county at the time of the Great Plague.* A little later, Aubrey, the 
 Wiltshire historian and antiquary, complains that the "shepherdesses 
 of Salisbury Plain " of late years (1680) do begin to work point 
 whereas before they did only knitt coarse stockings.'' Malmesbury 
 was one of the Wiltshire centres, and also Downton near Salisbury. 
 The better Downton lace is very like the narrow and coarser Bucking- 
 hamshire,! and the ground is like that of Buckinghamshire, only 
 worked without a pin in each mesh. The net is worked down from 
 the head to the foot, and only pinned at the foot and the head. The 
 workers call the net "bar-work." Other patterns are exactly like 
 those illustrated as characteristic of Suffolk. The " French ground " 
 is also used, which is the same as the Buckinghamshire " cat-stitch " 
 or " French ground," and is made with pins. 
 
 In Dorset the lace manufacture was already extinct about the 
 early years of the nineteenth century, and no trace is left of its 
 character, though Lyme Regis, Blandford, and Sherborne all made 
 expensive laces of good quality. A few workers remained in Char- 
 mouth in 1891. Blandford in especial, according to Defoe, made 
 ' the finest bone lace in England . . . and which, they said, they 
 rated above ^30 a yard." 
 
 Some bobbin lace used to be made in the Isle of Wight, but what 
 is known as " Isle of Wight " lace was made on machine net, the 
 pattern outlined with a run thread, filled in with needlepoint stitches. 
 The late Mechlin designs were chiefly copied. In 1900 there were 
 only t\vo or three old women workers left. 
 
 Suffolk has produced bobbin lace of little merit. The make of 
 lace resembles that of Buckinghamshire and Downton lace, and that 
 of Norman laces of the present time. In a number of specimens in 
 the Victoria and Albert Museum the entire collection displays varied 
 combinations of six ways of twisting and plaiting threads. The 
 mesh is very large and open ; a coarse outlining thread is used to give 
 definition to the simple pattern (Plate XCV.). 
 
 At Coggeshall in Essex tambour lace was worked, and a specimen 
 in the Victoria and Albert Museum was made by a survivor late in 
 the nineteenth century. This town was the first, and is now the only, 
 
 * \Vaylem, " History of Marlborou^h." 
 
 + Many of the old patterns are the same as the Buckinghamshire ones.

 
 MIDLAND AND OTHER ENGLISH LACES. 103 
 
 place where tambour is produced in England. " The pattern is worked 
 in chain-stitch upon a foundation of bobbin net by means of a fine 
 crochet hook screwed into a bone handle. The net is first stretched 
 evenly upon a frame. Originally this frame was round, like the head 
 of a drum or tambourine hence its name. Now, however, the frame 
 is composed usually of two long parallel pieces of wood, with movable 
 cross-bars. The thread, which is first wound by the worker upon a 
 spool revolving on a spindle affixed to the frame, is passed through 
 her left hand beneath the net, caught by a needle rapidly, and 
 dexterously manipulated by the right hand above." Open work 
 may be introduced. " So far as can be ascertained in the absence 
 of any written record, the tambour lace industry was first introduced 
 into England by a French emigre, Dragoor Draygo, who, accompanied 
 by his daughters, settled in Coggeshall in the nineteenth ceutury. 
 The exact date is not known, but may be assumed to have been 
 between 1810 and 1823."* In the latter year Heathcoat's patent 
 for a bobbin-net machine, invented in 1809, expired, and lace frames 
 were set up by hundreds, with the result that the price fell in a few 
 years from $ per square yard to 8d. or less. In Pigot's Directory 
 of 1832, three names appear in Coggeshall as " lace manufacturers." 
 About 185 if the industry was at its height, but after 1859 a decline 
 was observable. After a revival in 1866 the industry sank again, 
 until in 1901 there were but 222 workers. 
 
 * " The Victoria County History of Essex/' vol. ii. 
 
 t Some fine specimens were shown at the Great Exhibition, but unfortunately 
 under the head of Nottingham Lace.
 
 [ 104 ] 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 IRISH LACES. 
 CAKRICKMACROSS AND LIMKKICK. 
 
 TllK two characteristic Irish laces are more nearly allied to embroidery 
 than to lace proper, and are of comparatively late introduction. Of 
 these, the first, Carrickmacross, dating from the year 1820, consists 
 of a pattern cut in cambric and applied to a net ground. The second, 
 Limerick tambour lace, was first introduced in 1829 A class of 
 English silk tambour* or chain-stitch embroidery with coloured 
 silks or cotton, which was made during the later seventeenth and 
 early eighteenth centuries, shows strong traces of Indian influence, but 
 the application of chain-stitch to a net ground docs not seem to have 
 been known in England until about 1820. 
 
 Charles Walker, a native of Oxfordshire, who had married a 
 " lad}' who was mistress of an extensive lace manufactory in Essex," 
 established a fabric at Mount Kennct, Limerick, in 1829. The design 
 and workmanship of the lace produced before his death in 1842, are 
 much superior to those of later specimens. He brought with him 
 to Ireland twenty-four young women skilled in the art of lace 
 embroider}' as teachers, of whom several came from Coggeshall. 
 
 * On a frame is stretched a piece of net. A floss thread or cotton is then 
 drawn by a hooked or tambour needle through the meshes of the net. In run 
 lace, finer and lighter than tambour, the pattern is formed with finer thread 
 which is not drawn in with the tambour, but run in with the point needle.
 
 C d
 
 105 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 BLONDES. 
 
 BLONDE* laces were first introduced in 1/45+ and were known as 
 nankins or blondes ; their name of " blond " comes from their 
 original Venetian name, " merletti biondi," pale laces. De Gheltof 
 informs us that it was given by the authority of the magistrates of 
 Mercanzia, in 1759. The first silk used for the new production was 
 of its natural unbleached colour, afterwards a brilliant white silk took 
 its place. 
 
 The blonde of the time of Louis XVI. was a very light fabric 
 with spots, the ground is sometimes specified as " fond d'Alencon." 
 
 The " Livre-Journal de Madame Eloffe " notes blonde fond 
 noisette, blonde a bouquets, blonde fond Alencon a poix. " There 
 are but few details of close work (mat), the ornament being principally 
 in outline wrought sinuously with a single thread, thereby producing 
 a diversity of interlacing open forms," * and this style was revived 
 at Caen about 1840, when quantities of such work was produced. 
 At various periods, but especially during the eighteenth century, 
 blondes were produced with a cordonnet of chenille, or of gold thread, 
 and sometimes the "mats" were of coloured silks ; the patterns are 
 
 * Heck's " Draper's Dictionary." 
 
 t " A vandyke in frize your neck must surround. 
 
 Turn your lawns into gauze, let your Brussels be blond." 
 
 (Universal Magazine, 1754.) 
 I E. Lefebure, " Broderie et Dentelles." 
 
 S "On y adjoignait, vers la fin du XVI II e siecle des perles tallies dont les 
 facettes recevaient et renvoyaient la lumiere"(M. Charles et L. Pages, "Les 
 Broderies et les Dentelles"). 
 
 T
 
 IO6 OLD LACE. 
 
 similar to Alencon of that date, floral or ornamented with detached 
 bouquets or flowers, or with spots (poix). In 1787, it is noted that 
 the taste for Alencon and Argentan has given way to a taste for 
 blondes. According to the Duchesse d'Abrantes, they were a 
 "summer" lace.* And it was during her later years that Marie 
 Antoinette wore considerable quantities of the light patterned blonde 
 laces. 
 
 The classical motifs of the Empire followed ; a robe of Marie Louise 
 with a heavy border of oval motifs, the ovals outlined with a fine 
 silver thread, was exhibited at the Musee Galliera in 1904. Since the 
 Empire, f and especially during the Second Empire, the floral and 
 florid Spanish taste in blondes has prevailed; with big motifs worked 
 in close work, standing out in contrast to the delicate ground. 
 
 Blondes were made at Chantilly, Caen, Bayeux, * and Le Puy, 
 and there were besides several smaller manufactures which have dis- 
 appeared leaving no trace. 
 
 At Chantilly, noted for its black silk lace, white blondes, which 
 were fashionable in Paris in 1805, were much made until 1835, when 
 black lace again came into vogue. 
 
 At Bayeux the fabric of silk blonde, which had died out, was 
 revived in 1827, and "blondes mates " were made there with great 
 success until 1870, when machine-made blondes replaced the hand- 
 made lace. 
 
 At Le Puy, which suffered from over-production in the early 
 eighteenth century, a manufacture of blondes and silk lace was 
 introduced in 1761 to employ the people in a more lucrative way. A 
 report written in 1771 states that this fabric occupies all the inhabitants 
 
 * The Duchesse d'Abrantes, who married in the year 1800, describing her 
 trousseau, mentions " garnitures de robes en blonde pour 1'ete." 
 
 t A manufacture of blonde at Bourg-Argental, which dated from 1758, applied 
 in 1778 for aid to the Government. Manufactures were established at Nonancourt 
 (near Dreux) in 1770, and at Orbic in 1793. Sassenage, in Dauphine, petitioned 
 for a grant for its manufacture of blondes in 17/2. 
 
 ;. Blondes were very popular from 1825 to 1845 Caen, Bayeux, and Chantilly 
 employed half their lace-workers at making it. 
 
 ^ A report written in 1771 by De Fage, Commissaire Principal du Roi a 1'Assiette 
 du 1'uy. Ouoted by Mine. Laurence de Laprade in " Le Poinct de France/''
 
 BLONDE LACE. IO/ 
 
 of Le Puy and the entire diocese. The silk came from the merchants 
 of Lyons, who imported the white from Pekin and Nankin, the black 
 from Provence and Valencia ; but they mixed it with an inferior 
 quality of silk from Nimes. It was sold very cheaply, and was little 
 esteemed owing to the inferior quality of silk introduced. 
 
 Anderson writes that up to 1780 much blonde, both black and 
 white, and of various colours, was made at Sherborne in Dorset, of 
 which a supply was sent to all markets. From the later years of the 
 eighteenth century the lace trade of Sherborne declined and gradually 
 died out. In 17/3 the Annual Register mentions an institution under 
 royal patronage for " usefully employing female infants, especially 
 those of the poor, in the blond black silk lace, and thread lace 
 manufactures at No. 14 l\Iary-]a-bone Lane." 
 
 A manufacture imitating French blondes was set up in Venice 
 towards the close of the eighteenth century, and about the same 
 period, black blonde in imitation of Chantilly was made at Genoa. 
 
 Spanish blondes do not equal in workmanship those of Bayeux 
 and Chantilly, either in the firmness of the ground or regularity of the 
 pattern. Of specimens bearing date from 1810 to 1840, "some have 
 much resemblance to the fabric of Lille clear hexagonal ground, with 
 the pattern worked in one coarse thread others of a double ground, 
 the designs flowers." Barcelona, near which is a silk-throwing 
 manufactory, is the centre of the Spanish manufacture of blondes.
 
 GLOSSARY OF TERMS. 
 
 APPLIQUE. Lace where the ornament is made separately, and then fixed and 
 sewn by hand to a ground of bobbin or machine made net. 
 
 ARGENTELLA. See Reseau Rosace, p. 68. 
 
 BARS. See Brides. 
 
 BOBBIN LACE. See Pillow Lace. 
 
 BOBBINS. Small elongated wooden or bone reels on which the thread is 
 wound for the purpose of pillow-lace making. They are frequently 
 ornamented with patterns pricked or stained, and polished. They 
 are weighted with "gingles" or "jingles," i.e., beads, coins, seals, 
 seeds, or various other small articles. 
 
 BONE LACK. A term applied in England, during the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries, to bobbin-made lace. 
 
 BRIDES. A small strip or connection, linking the details of ornament in lace. 
 It may consist of (i) threads overcast with button-hole stitches, or 
 (2) of twisted or plaited threads. The word is French, the English 
 equivalent being pearl-tie. The French word is chiefly employed. 
 
 BRIDES PICOTEES. Brides ornamented with small picots, or minute loops. 
 
 BURATTO. Darned net in which the twisted network was made bypassing the 
 foundation threads forwards and backwards in a frame. The name 
 Buratto comes from the sieves made in this way in Italy for sifting 
 grain and meal* 
 
 BUTTON-HOLE STITCH. The chief stitch in needle-made lace, also known as 
 point de boutonniere (not point noue, as it is described in many books 
 on lace). 
 
 Mrs John Ilungerford Pollen, ''Seven Centuries of Lace," 1908.
 
 I 10 GLOSSARY OF TERMS. 
 
 C \RTISANE. A strip of parchment or vellum covered with silk or metal 
 thread, used to form a pattern. 
 
 CHAMP. See Fond. 
 
 CORDON NET. The outline to ornamental forms. The cordonnet consists 
 (i) of a single thread, or (2) of several threads worked together to 
 give the appearance of one large thread, or (3) of a thread or horse- 
 hair overcast with button-hole stitches. 
 
 COXCOMBS. Old English term for bars (brides). 
 
 1 )ENTEI.E. Scalloped edge. 
 
 DROSCHEI.. Flemish word used for net ground made with bobbins. 
 
 ENGRKLURK. Footing or heading, to the upper end to a lace which is used 
 to sew the lace on to the material it is to decorate. 
 
 FNTOILAC.E. See Fond. 
 
 FILET BRODE. See Lacis, Chapter II. 
 
 FILLINGS. A word occasionally used for modes or jours ; fancy openwork 
 stitches employed to fill in enclosed spaces in both needle-made and 
 bobbin-made laces. 
 
 FOND. Identical with champ, entoilage, and ireille. The groundwork of 
 needle-made or bobbin lace, as distinct from the toile or pattern which 
 it surrounds. 
 
 FOND CHANT. See Chantilly chapter, p. 82. 
 
 FOND SIMPLE. Sometimes called fond de Lille. The sides of the meshes 
 are not partly plaited as in Brussels or Mechlin, nor wholly plaited as 
 in Valenciennes : but four of the sides are formed by twisting two 
 threads round each other, and the remaining two sides by simply- 
 crossing over each other. 
 
 FOOTINI ;. See Engrelure. 
 
 CIMP. -The pattern which rests on the ground or is held together by brides. 
 In Honiton and the Midlands, the word denotes the coarse gla/ed 
 thread used like a cordonnet to emphasise the edges of the design. 
 
 ( iiM ;I.ES.-- -See under Bobbins. 
 
 CREEK LACE. Trade name for cutwork, or reticella. 
 
 CRN. I.E. The openwork on the toile of bobbin lace, as contrasted with 
 the mat.
 
 GLOSSARY OF TERMS. Ill 
 
 GROPPO [Ital.]. A knot or tie. 
 
 GROUNDS. The grounds of lace are divided into two classes, one being called 
 the bride, the other the rcseau. The bride ground is formed with plain 
 or ornamental bars, in order to connect the ornaments forming the 
 pattern. The rcseau ground is a net made with the needle, or with 
 bobbins, to connect the ornaments forming the pattern. 
 
 HEADING. See Engrelure. 
 
 HOLLIE POINT. See English Needlepoint, p. 87. 
 
 JOURS. See Fillings. 
 
 LACIS. See Chapter Lacis. 
 
 LEGS. Bars. 
 
 MACRAMK. A hand-made knotted fringe. See Knotted Fringes, Chapter IV. 
 
 MAT. The close-work of bobbin lace, as opposed to the grille. 
 
 MERLETTI A PIOMBINI. Bobbin lace (piombini = small leaden bobbins). 
 
 MERLETTO [Ital.]. Lace. 
 
 MEZZO PUNTO. Lace in which the pattern is formed by braid or tape, and 
 
 in which the brides and fillings are of needlepoint. 
 MODANO. A general name in Italy for square-meshed laces. 
 MODES. Jours, fillings. 
 PASSKMENT. Until the seventeenth century lace in France was called passe- 
 
 ment, a word originally used of embroideries to lay flat over garments, 
 
 to ornament them. The word passement continued to be used till 
 
 the middle of the seventeenth century. 
 
 PEARL EDGE. A narrow thread edge of projecting loops used to sew en to 
 
 lace as a finish to its edge. 
 PEARLS or PURLS. Bars. 
 PICOT. Minute loops worked on to the edge of a bride or cordonnet, or 
 
 added as an enrichment to the ornament, as in rose point. 
 
 PILLOW LACE (or BOBBIN LACE). Lace made on the pillow by twisting and 
 
 plaiting threads. Fr. Dentelle au fuseau. 
 Pizzo [Ital.]. Lace. 
 PLY. Single untwisted thread. 
 POINT COUPE. French term for cutwork. 
 
 POINT DE NEIGE. A name given to a fine quality of Italian rose point, with 
 many small raised flowers, enriched with clusters of picots.
 
 112 GLOSSARY OF TERMS. 
 
 POINT DE PARIS. The designation of the reseau also known as the fond 
 chant. It has been claimed that a special kind of lace was known by 
 this name. Manufacture of simple kind of lace was certainly carried 
 on during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the He de France 
 and in Paris itself. 
 
 POINT DE RACCROC. A stitch used by lace-makers to join reseau ground. 
 
 POINT LACE. -Lace made with the needle (point a 1'aiguille). The term 
 point has been misused to describe varieties of lace, such as point 
 d'Angleterre, de Malines, de Milan, which are laces bobbin-made, and 
 not made with the needle. 
 
 POINT PLAT. A French term for needle-made lace, without any raised work. 
 
 POTTEN KANT. See Antwerp Lace, p. 53. 
 
 PRICKED. A term used in bobbin-lace making to denote the special 
 marking out of the pattern upon parchment. 
 
 PRICKER. An instrument used in bobbin-lace making to prick holes in the 
 pattern to receive the pins. 
 
 PUNTO [Ital.] A stitch. 
 
 PUNTO IN ARIA. Lit. "stitch in air," used (i) of an embroidery stitch; 
 (2) of all Italian needlepoint laces, made without any foundation of net 
 or linen : thus strictly speaking including rose point, and point de 
 Venese a reseau. 
 
 PUNTO TIRATO. Drawn thread-work. 
 
 PURLIXGS. A stitch used in Honiton guipure to unite the bobbin-made 
 sprigs. 
 
 PURLS. Brides. 
 
 RESEAU. Aground of small regular meshes (i) either made on the pillow 
 in various manners, or (2) by the needle in less elaborate manners. 
 
 RKSEAU ROSACE, OR ARGENTELLA. See Chapter on Alencon and Argentan, 
 p. 68. 
 
 RKZEL or RESEUIL. See Lacis, Chapter II., p. 7 et se<j. 
 
 ROSE POINT. Needlepoint lace with raised work upon it. 
 
 RUNNERS. The name by which the bobbins which work across a pattern 
 in bobbin lace are known. 
 
 SEMES. Powderings of small ornamental details, such as spots, sprigs, &c., 
 upon the ground. 
 
 TELA TAC.LIATA. Cut linen, edged by button-hole stitch and joined by brides. 
 
 TOILE. The pattern or work of closer texture on both needlepoint and bobbin- 
 made laces. Toile is so called because it resembles toile or linen. 
 
 TRINA [Ital. ]. Lace.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 NOTK. References in Roman figures are to Plates. 
 
 ALKXCON, Chapter XII., pages 62-69 
 
 Alencon, assemblage in, 68 ; brides in, 
 
 66, 67 ; bride ;\ picots in, 66 ; bride 
 
 bouclee sans nez in, 67 ; bride 
 
 epinglee, 67, note ; bride tortillee in, 
 
 67 ; brode in, 68 ; collection of Mine. 
 Forges, "8 ; compared with point cle 
 Venise a reseau, 28 ; cordonnet in, 
 
 68 ; eboutage in, 68 ; Empire, early 
 nineteenth century, LXXIII., LXXiv. ; 
 Empire, said to have belonged to the 
 Empress Marie- Louise, LXXV. ; enlev- 
 age in, 68 : fancy grounds, eighteenth 
 century, LXix. ; ground of hexagonal 
 brides, Louis XIV., late seventeenth 
 century, LXXI. ; " Histoire du Foint 
 d'," 62 ; horsehair used in, 69, 77 ; 
 lace industry early established at, 
 62; Louis XV., first half of eigh- 
 teenth century, I. XX. ; Louis XV., 
 eighteenth century, LXXH. ; Louis 
 XVI., late eighteenth century, LXXH., 
 LXXIII.; method of working, 65-69 ; 
 modes in, 67 ; picage in, 66; refugees 
 from, in Holland, 61 ; reseau of, 67, 
 75 ; reseau ground, Louis XIV., early 
 eighteenth century, LXXI. ; reseau 
 rosace in (Argentella), 67, 68 ; shad- 
 
 ing of flowers in, introduced by 
 M. Beaume, 69; thread used in, 69; 
 trace in, 66 ; worked upon ground 
 of bobbin net, 69 
 
 Alen9on and Argentan, "chinoiseries" or 
 Oriental influence in, 75, 76; Empire 
 style in, 77, 78; influence of classical 
 design in, 77; Louis XV., 75, 76; 
 Louis XVI., 76, 77; Restoration 
 period, 78 
 
 Alva, persecutions of, 89, 97 
 
 Antwerp lace, 53, 54; Fotten Kant, l.ix. ; 
 thread used in Honiton, 92 
 
 Applique work in Carrickmacross, 104; 
 in Honiton, 93 
 
 Argentan, 70, 71 ; sec also Alencon and 
 Argentan; bride ground of, 70, 71; 
 bride picotee in, 71; decay of in- 
 dustry of, 71; design in, 71-78; en- 
 larged, showing toile and cordonnet, 
 LXXVIII. ; Louis XV., eighteenth 
 century, LXXVU. ; Louis XVI., late 
 eighteenth century, LXXII. ; mesh of, 
 70; mesh compared with Venetian 
 bride ground, 26 ; mesh enlarged, 
 LXXVIII. ; with reseau rosace ground, 
 LXXVI. 
 
 Argentella, see Alencon, reseau rosace 
 
 Arras, 80; fabric of points de France 
 established at, So
 
 INDEX. 
 
 B 
 
 Bayeux, blondes made at, 106 
 
 Beaume, M., introduces "shading" in 
 Alencon flowers, 69 
 
 Bedford Maltese (plaited lace), xciv. 
 
 Bedfordshire, lace centres in, 98 ; lace- 
 making in, 97, 98 ; lace compared 
 with Buckinghamshire, 99 
 
 Beer, Branscombe, and trolly bobbins, 
 xc 
 
 " Bele 1'rerie contenant divers caracters, 
 et differentes sortes de lettres alpha- 
 betiques . . . pour appliquer sur Ic 
 reseuil ou lassis,'' 7 
 
 Belgian lace, sec Bruges and Brussels; 
 Belgian or Flemish lace, known as 
 " Bruges/' XLV. 
 
 Binche, 40, 41 
 
 Blandford, lace of. 102 
 
 BLONDKS, Chapter XIX., pages 105- 
 107 
 
 Blondes, derivation of name, 105 ; Empire, 
 106: Louis X\"I., 105: made at 
 Bayeux, 106; made at Caen, 105; 
 made at Chantilly, 82 ; made in 
 Dorset, 107; silk employed in, 105; 
 Spanish, 107; where manufactured, 
 1 06 ; white, 82 
 
 Bobbin lace, sec Chapter IV., pages 18- 
 21, if /so Milanese and Genoese, 
 Flemish, Belgian laces, Honiton, 
 Fnglish Midland laces, &c. ; Genoese, 
 XVIII.; German, xiv.: early, xiv. ; 
 early compared with needlepoint, 18 ; 
 early Italian, Chapter IV., pages 
 18-21; Italian, coverlet of, XV.; 
 Northern Italian, 35; Italian, seven- 
 teenth century, xvn.; Italian, seven 
 teenth century, with plaited threads, 
 XVII. 
 
 Bobbins, Beer, Branscombe, and trolly, 
 XC. 
 
 Bolckow Bequest, lace in. ,v<v Victoria 
 
 and Albert Museum, Bolckow Be- 
 quest 
 Branscombe, Beer, and trolly bobbins, 
 
 xc. 
 
 Brides, see under heading of each lace 
 Brocades, French, of Louis XIV. period, 
 
 74 
 
 " Broderie de Malines" (Mechlin lace), 53 
 
 " Bruges " lace, 42 ; Flemish or Belgian, 
 XLV. 
 
 Brussels lace, 43-49 ; date of manufacture 
 of, 43; dated 1720, I,. ; designs of, 
 45-48 ; fineness of thread used in, 46 ; 
 French influence upon, 47 ; French 
 influence in design of, I, III.; grounds 
 of, 44 ; eighteenth century, l.n. ; eigh- 
 teenth century, a cravat end of, 1. 1. ; 
 early eighteenth century, I. III., LIV., 
 XI, IX. ; at the Exposition Internation- 
 ale, Paris, 47 ; at the Musee des Arts 
 Decoratifs, Brussels, 46, 47; needle- 
 point, 44 ; Oriental influence on, 47 ; 
 and point de Yenise a rescau, 28 ; 
 specialisation of workers in, 43, 45 ; 
 toile of, 44 ; reseaux of, 44 ; working 
 of, compared with other Flemish and 
 Belgian laces, 43 
 
 Buckinghamshire lace, xcii., xcill., 
 xciv.; bobbins in, 101 ; compared 
 with Bedfordshire, 99 ; gimps in, 101 ; 
 eighteenth century, xcn. : influence 
 of Lille upon, 98, 100; pillow in, 101 ; 
 mesh of, 99, 100; North, 99; point 
 ground in, 99; reseau of, 99, 100; 
 South, 99; "tallies'" in, 101 ; trolly 
 in, 100 
 
 Buckinghamshire, lace-making in, 97,98; 
 lace centres in, 98: influence of 
 French emigrants into, 98 
 
 Bugles, &c., used upon English lace, 87 
 
 Burano lace, 29-31; revival of, 31, note; 
 quality of thread used in, 30, note 
 
 Bury 1'alliser, Mrs, provides designs for 
 Honiton lace-workers, 93
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Carrickmacross, 104 
 
 Cat stitch, 100 
 
 Chantilly, blonde made at, 82 
 
 CHAXTILLY LACK, Chapter XIV., pages 
 
 81-83 
 Chantilly lace, decay of, 82 ; design in, 
 
 8 1 ; industry founded, 81 ; at Le Puy, 
 82; Louis XVI., Si; Napoleon III., 
 
 82 ; nineteenth century, l.xxx. ; 
 reseaux of, 82; silk used in, Si; 
 test for, 82, 83 
 
 " Chinoiseries," 75 
 
 Coggeshall lace, 102, 103 
 
 Colbert, 2 ; his support of the points de 
 
 France, 62, 64 
 Cole, .Mr A. S., his Report upon Honiton 
 
 lace, 94 
 Collar, of cut linen, imitating rose point, 
 
 XXVII.; of rose point, Venetian, 
 
 xxiv., I (frontispiece] 
 Coraline point, 26, 27, xxxiv. ; transi- 
 tional piece, xxxiv. 
 " Corona delle nobili et virtuose donne, ; ' 
 
 22 and note 
 Coverlet in the Victoria and Albert 
 
 Museum, 19, 20 
 Cravat, introduction into England and 
 
 ranee, 20 and note 
 CRKTAX LACK, Chapter VII., page 36 
 Croly. Mrs, English needlepoint in the 
 
 possession of, 86, 87 
 Cut-linen collar to imitate rose point, 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 CUTNVORK. (RKTICKLLA , Chapter III., 
 pages 12-17, v -j * cc < { / St ' Reticella 
 
 Cutwork, design in, 14 ; design for, 
 from Vinciolo, " Les Smguliers et 
 Nouveaux Portraicts," iv. ; English, 
 upon samplers, 87 ; foreign, pro- 
 hibited in England, 86 ; and punto 
 in Liriii, 14: in Queen Elizabeth's 
 Wardrobe Accounts, 85 : of Southern 
 Italy and Sicily, 14 
 
 Darning on canvas or net, 17; sec also 
 Lacis 
 
 De Gheltof, Urbani, account of lace- 
 making in Venice, 30, 31 
 
 De Glen, Jean, pattern-book of, u, note 
 
 De Laprade, Mine. Laurence," Le Poinct 
 de France/' 62 
 
 Derbyshire, lace-making in, 97 
 
 Despierres, Mine, "Histoire du Point 
 d'Alencon," 62 
 
 Detail in fresco in the Palazzo Pubblico, 
 Siena, vn. 
 
 Devonshire lace, see Honiton and Trolly, 
 Devonshire 
 
 Dorset, lace-making in, 98, 102, 107 
 
 Downton lace, 102 
 
 Drawn work, 7, 17, vi. 
 
 Dutch lace, 61 ; early seventeenth cen- 
 tury, LXIII. ; late seventeenth century, 
 i.xv. ; seventeenth or eighteenth cen- 
 tury, i. xiv. ; Valenciennes type, i.xv. ; 
 thread used in, 61 
 
 Embroidery, English, characteristics of, 
 
 84 ; at Milan, 32 
 Empire style in lace, 77, 78 
 ENGLISH Boiunx LACK, Chapters XVI. 
 
 and XML, pages 89-103 
 English bobbin lace, early nineteenth 
 
 century, xci. ; cutwork and punto 
 
 in ttn'ti, collar of, i.xxxn. 
 English flax, quality of, 91 
 English lace, flax thread used in, 84; 
 
 protected by Government, 86 
 "English Mechlin," 101 : made in North 
 
 Buckinghamshire, xciil. 
 English Midland laces, stv Midland laces, 
 
 English 
 English needlepoint, seventeenth century 
 
 copy, contemporary Italian lace, 84;
 
 n6 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 design in, 85 ; Scriptural subjects in, 
 86 
 
 English needlepoint scallops, early seven- 
 teenth century, I. XXIV., l.xxxv. 
 
 " Esemplario di Lavori," by G. A. Vavas- 
 sore, 1 6 
 
 Exeter Museum, Honiton in, 93, 94 ; trolly 
 in, 96 
 
 Exposition Internationale, 1900, Brussels 
 lace at, 47 
 
 " Fausse \"alenciennes, :) see Valenciennes, 
 
 fausse 
 
 Filatorium, probably a name for lacis, 6 
 Flanders, lace in, i, see Flemish lace 
 Flat needlepoint, xxxin. 
 " Flat Spanish" (point de Flandres), 40 
 Flat Venetian, 27, xxm. 
 Flax, English, sec English flax : Flemish, 
 
 38; foreign, imported into England, 
 
 84, 9 1 
 FI.KMISII LACK, Chapter VIII., pages 
 
 37-41 
 Flemish lace, date of, 37 ; design in, 37, 
 
 38; early eighteenth century, XI.YII.; 
 
 known as '' Mechlin '' before 1665, 50 ; 
 
 late seventeenth century, xi.vi.; 
 
 Flemish (?) seventeenth century, 
 
 xiA'lil.: with figures, XIAIII. 
 Flemish or Belgian lace, known as 
 
 "Bruges," seventeenth century, l.xv. 
 Flemish pillow-made tape guipures, 39 
 Fond chant, 52, 82 
 France, design in, encouraged by State 
 
 patronage, 72 ; laces of, sec French 
 
 laces 
 French ground 'wire ground or cat stitch), 
 
 100, 102 
 French influence upon Brussels lace, 47: 
 
 upon Mechlin. 51 : upon point de 
 
 Venise a rescau, 28 ; upon Venetian 
 
 rose point. 7 , 
 
 French lace, sec Alencon, Argentan, Chan- 
 tilly, Lille, Arras, Points de France, 
 &c. ; characteristics of design in, 
 72 
 
 Fresco in the 1'alazxo 1'ubblico, Siena, 
 detail of, vn. 
 
 Fringes, knotted, 18 
 
 Genoa, blondes made at, 107 
 
 Genoese lace, 20, 21, 35; seventeenth 
 
 century, xvm. 
 Genoese or Milanese lace, eighteenth 
 
 century, XI. II., xuv. 
 Geometric-patterned lace (cutwork) upon 
 
 monuments in the West of England, 
 
 89, 90 
 
 Geometrical lace, sec Reticella 
 Germany, lace-making, 2 
 Gimp, in Honiton, 94 
 Gimps, in Buckinghamshire lace, 101 
 Greek lace, 13 
 Gros point de Venise, 26 
 Guipure, de Flandres, 39: Honiton, 94 
 
 H 
 
 Half-stitch, in Honiton, 94 
 
 Hamilton, 97 
 
 Hampshire, lace-making in, 97 
 
 Head, Mrs, collection of, 86, 88 
 
 Heathcoat, 3, 93, 103 
 
 Hertfordshire, lace-making in, 97 
 
 Holland, lace of, sec Dutch lace 
 
 ' Hollie point," 87, 88 
 
 Honiton, 89-95; applique, 93: bobbins 
 used in, 95 : compared with Flemish 
 laces, 90 : degeneration of, since 
 1820, 93, 94: design of, 93, 94; eigh- 
 teenth or early nineteenth century, 
 i.xxxvni. : Honiton ?) early eigh- 
 teenth centurv, i.xxxvu.: in the
 
 INDEX. 
 
 117 
 
 Exeter Museum, 94; fillings in, 95; 
 Flemish influence upon, 93 ; gimp in, 
 94 ; guipure, 94 ; industry, early date 
 of, 89; lace pillows of, 95; nine- 
 teenth century, LXXXIX. ; " patent 
 Vandyke point, "90; raised work in, 
 94, 95; relief in, 91, 92; reseau of, 
 92 ; Honiton (?) seventeenth or 
 eighteenth century, LXXXVI. ; thread 
 used in, 92 ; lace in the possession 
 of Mrs Trew, 92 ; in the Victoria 
 and Albert Museum, 92. 
 Horsehair, use of, in Alencon lace, 69, 77 
 Hungerford Pollen, Mrs, collection of, 
 
 I 
 
 IRISH LACKS, Chapter XVIII., page 104 
 
 I sham Collection, sec Victoria and Albert 
 Museum, Isham Collection 
 
 Isle of Wight lace, 102, xcni. 
 
 Italian laces, see Bobbin laces, Italian; 
 Reticella and Punto in aria ; Vene- 
 tian, Milanese, and Genoese laces 
 
 Jerningham, Sir Hubert, sachet in pos- 
 session of, 86 
 Jewels, used upon English lace, 87, note 
 
 K 
 
 Knotted fringes, or macrame, 18 
 
 Lace, definition of, i : derivation of, 86, 
 note ; diminishing use of, in costume 
 in late eighteenth century, 77 ; evi- 
 dence for early use of, 15; real and 
 machine-made, 3, 4, 5 ; influenced by 
 textiles, 76 ; influence upon textiles 
 
 and embroidery, 73; origin of, i, 12; 
 
 lace-chests, 101 ; schools for, 98, 
 
 99 
 
 Lace-stitch (half stitch) in Honiton, 94 
 LACIS, Chapter II., pages 7-11, in. 
 Lacis, Cretan, 1 1 ; date of, 9 ; designs of, 
 
 9-11; French, 11; German, 10; 
 
 Italian, 10, 11; Sicilian, 11; Skel- 
 
 ton's mention of, 9 ; Vinciolo's de- 
 signs for, 9 
 Layard, Lady, her translation of Urban i 
 
 de Gheltof, 31 
 
 Le Puy, blonde made at, 106, 107 
 Le Quesnoy, lace fabric at, 55 
 Lille, fausse Valenciennes produced at, 
 
 79; lace, 79, 80, i.xxix. ; reseau of, 
 
 79, 80 
 
 Limerick lace, 104, xcvi. 
 Linen, weaving of, encouraged in the 
 
 reign of Charles II., 91 
 Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, fresco in the Public 
 
 Palace of Siena, 16 
 Louis XIV., style of, in lace, 72, 74 
 Louis XV., style of, in lace, 75, 76 
 Louis XVI., style of, in lace, 76, 77 
 
 M 
 
 Machine-made net, introduction of, 93 
 Macrame, or knotted fringes, 18: modern, 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Maltese guipures or plaited laces made in 
 
 the Midlands, 100; lace, 20, note 
 MECHI.IN LACE, Chapter X., pages 50- 
 
 54 
 
 Mechlin lace, Alencon influence on, i.vn. ; 
 dated 1757, LV. ; design in, 51, 52; 
 English, 101 : English, made in 
 North Bucks, XCIII.; late eighteenth 
 century, i.vi., LVIII. : enlarged, II. ; 
 French influence upon, 51, 52; 
 grounds of, 53; imitation, 4: imita- 
 tion, enlarged, II. : with medallions
 
 INDEX. 
 
 of Scriptural subjects, I. VI. ; reseau 
 
 of, 53 ; quatrefoil fillings in, i.v. 
 Mercier, Haron, his introduction of 
 
 bobbin net into Alencon, 69 
 Merletti a piombini, 19 
 Merli, Cav. A., his theory of the date of 
 
 origin of lace-making, 16 
 Mi i >i. AND LACKS, ENGLISH, Chapter 
 
 XVII., pages 97-103 
 Midland laces compared, 99 
 Mignerak, Matthias, pattern-book of, 7 
 " Mignonette''' made at Arras and Lille, 
 
 80 
 
 Milan, embroideries of, 32 
 MILANKSK LACK, Chapter VI., pages 
 
 32-35 
 
 Milanese lace with brides, XXXYII.; 
 bride grounds in, 33; dated 1733, 
 xi. in.; decay of, in the eighteenth 
 century, 33; design in, 34; with 
 reseau ground, \.\xix., XL., XI. I.; 
 reseau of, 33, 34 ; date of reseau, 33 ; 
 1650-60, xxxvm. 
 
 Milanese or (ienoese lace, late eighteenth 
 century, Xl.n., xi.iv. 
 
 Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Brussels, 
 Brussels lace at, 47 : Honiton lace (?) 
 in, 92; I'aris, point de France in, 72 
 
 N 
 
 National Art Library, anonymous pattern- 
 book of the- seventeenth century in, 
 10 
 
 Needlepoint, see a/so Venetian lace, 
 Italian lace, I' unto in nn',i, Keti- 
 cella, Cutwork, English needlepoint, 
 Brussels, Points de France, Alencon 
 and Argentan ; flat, \\xni.; Hat 
 Venetian, \\lii.; edging of, VI. ; in- 
 sertion of, \xii. ; modern, after a 
 design of Vecellio, \\iil.; partially 
 worked, on parchment pattern, 
 x\\i i. : patterns for edgings and in- 
 
 sertions for, from Vecellio, vi. ; punto 
 in aria, X.; Venetian, IX., XXII. ; 
 unfinished, made in Germany, xxx. ; 
 vandyked edging of, v. 
 
 " New and Singular Patternes and Workes 
 of Linnen serving for Patternes to 
 make all sorts of Lace Edginges and 
 Cutworkes," by Vincentio, 85 
 
 Northamptonshire, lace centres in, 99; 
 lace-making in, 97, 99; pin-making 
 carried on in, 99; lace, xciv. 
 
 Northern Italian bobbin laces, 35 
 
 o 
 
 Oriental influence upon Brussels lace, 47 ; 
 (" chinoiscries ") on French lace, 75, 
 76; upon Venetian needlepoint, 12, 
 
 '3, ^3 
 Oxfordshire, lace-making in, 97 
 
 Pagannino, Alessandro, pattern-book of, 
 1 6 
 
 Parasole, Elisabetta Catanea, 10; types 
 of lace in her pattern-book, 17; de- 
 sign from the pattern-book " Teatro 
 delle Nobili et Virtuose Donne," for 
 fiiinto in itriti, xn., xx., xxi. 
 
 Parchment pattern showing needlepoint 
 lace partially worked, xxxil. 
 
 I'aris, Exposition Internationale, 1900, 
 lace at, 47 
 
 Parliamentary Report upon the English 
 lace industry, 94 
 
 " Patent vandyke point," .SYV Honiton 
 
 Pattern-books, u Bele Prerie contenant 
 divers caracters et differentes sortes 
 de lettres alphabetiques . . . pour 
 applic|iier sur le rcseuil ou lassis," 7; 
 for lacis, anonymous, seventeenth 
 century, in the National Art Gallery,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 10 : Jean de Glen, 11, note; of 
 Matthias Mignerak, 7; of Ales- 
 sandro Pagannino, 16; of Parasole, 
 see Parasole; Le Pompe, 19; of P. 
 Ouentell, 8; by R. M., 2; Taglienti, 
 " Opera nuova che insigna a le Done 
 a cuscire," 14, note; of Vavassore, 16 
 
 Paulet, Lady Elizabeth, 85 ; portrait of, 
 Ashmolean Gallery, Oxford, LXXXI. 
 
 Peasant laces, Italian, 35 
 
 Pin-making in England, 90 
 
 Pizzo, 19, note 
 
 Plaited lace made in the Midlands, 100; 
 Bedford Maltese, xciv. 
 
 " Poinct de France (Le), " by Mine. Laur- 
 ence de Laprade, 65 
 
 Point d'Alencjon, see Alenqon 
 
 k ' Point d'Angleterre," 39, 48, 49 
 
 Point d'Espagne, 27 
 
 Point de Flandres. see Flat Spanish and 
 Guipure de Flandres 
 
 Point de France, LXVin. ; in collection of 
 Mine. Porges, 72 ; a company formed 
 for, 63 ; compared with Venetian 
 lace, 72; design in, 63-65; designs 
 for, protected, 65 ; eighteenth century, 
 L xvii.; established at Argentan, 70; 
 established at Arras, 80; with ground 
 of irregular hexagons, I, XX. ; Louis 
 XIV., 72, 74; manufacture of, 63; in 
 the Musee desArts Decoratifs, Paris, 
 72, 73 ; name of, confined to Alenc_on 
 after 1675,65; pseudo-Oriental char- 
 acter, end of seventeenth century, 
 LXVI. ; in Victoria and Albert 
 Museum, 73, 74 
 
 Point de Genes frise, 21 
 
 Point de neige (punto neve), 26 
 
 Point de Venise a reseau, 27-29; com- 
 pared with Alencon, 28 ; compared 
 with Brussels, 28 ; eighteenth century, 
 xxxvi. ; French influence on, 28 
 
 " Point ground " in Buckinghamshire, 99 
 
 Point plat de Venise (flat Venetian), 27 
 
 Porges, Mine., collection of, 72 
 
 Portrait of Lady Elizabeth Paulet, Ash- 
 molean Gallery, Oxford, LXXXI.; of 
 a man, showing collar of rose point, 
 French school, xxv. ; of Henri, Due 
 de Montmorency, by Lenain, xvi. 
 
 Potten Kant, 53, 54, LIX. 
 
 Punto in acre (or in aria), an embroidery 
 stitch, 1 6 and note, 23 
 
 Punto in Aria, Chapter III., pages 12-17, 
 x. 
 
 Punto in aria compared with reticella 
 (cutwork), 14; rose point, 23, 24; 
 design in, 17; design for, from the 
 pattern-book of Elisabetta Catanea 
 Parasole, the "Teatro delle Nobili et 
 Virtuose Donne/' xx., xxi. ; Oriental 
 influence upon, 23 
 
 Punto neve, sec Point de niege 
 
 I 'unto tagliato, 17 
 
 Purl, derivation of, 86, note 
 
 Quentell, I'., pattern-book, 8 
 
 R 
 
 Reseuil, sec Rezel 
 
 Restoration (French) laces, design in, 78 
 
 RKTICELI.A (CUTWORK), Chapter III., 
 pages 12-17 
 
 Reticella (cutwork), v., vin.; compared 
 with punto in aria, 14; date of 
 making, in Italy, 15: design in, 14; 
 insertion of, vin.: modern, xi. ; 
 pattern for, with border of needle- 
 point, from the pattern-book of 
 Elisabetta Catanea Parasole, the 
 "Teatro delle Xobili et Virtuose 
 Donne," xn.: of Southern Italy and 
 Sicily, 14; in Venice, 22: Venetian, 
 X., XI.
 
 I2O 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 " Revoke cles Passemens," 20 
 
 Rezel, rezeuil, 7 
 
 Ripon, lace-making in, 97 
 
 Rose point, I. ; collar of Venetian, late 
 seventeenth century, xxiv. ; com- 
 pared with pnnto in aria, 23, 24 ; 
 with few brides, XXXII. ; figures in- 
 troduced into, 24; fine flounce of, 
 eighteenth century, XXIX. ; flounce 
 of, xxvni. ; pieced, xxvi. ; piecing 
 of, 5, 6; Spanish (?), xxxi. ; square 
 or pale, seventeenth century, xxxm. ; 
 seventeenth or early eighteenth cen- 
 tury, xxxi. ; transitional piece, 
 xxxiv. ; varieties of brides in, 25, 
 26 
 
 Ruff, date of introduction of, 17 
 
 Ruffles, decay of, 77 
 
 Run laces, 100, 104, note; Isle of Wight 
 lace, xcm. 
 
 Samplers, English, 86, 87 ; in the collec- 
 tion of Mrs Head, 88 
 Seed pearls used upon English lace, 87 
 Sforxa Y'isronti Inventory, 32 and note 
 Shading of flowers in lace, 69, 82 
 Siena, Palazzo Pubblico, fresco in, vn. 
 Silk lace made at Chantilly, 81-83; made 
 
 at 1 loniton, 93 
 " Singuliers et Xouveaux Pourtraicts et 
 
 < Hivrages de Lingerie," 9 
 "Singuliers et nouveaux pourtraits pour 
 
 toutes sortes de lingerie," Jean de 
 
 ( lien, ii, note 
 
 Somerset, lace-making in, 97 
 Spangles used upon English lace, 87 
 Spanish point ''point d'Espagne), 27 
 Spinning, improvement in, in Europe in 
 
 the middle of the sixteenth century. 
 
 38 am/ nott' 
 
 Stump work, English, 87 
 Suffolk lace, 102, xcv. 
 
 Taglienti, 16; pattern-book of, "Opera 
 nuova che insegna a le Done a 
 cuscire," 14 
 
 "Tallies" in Buckinghamshire lace, 101 
 
 Tambour lace, 102-104 
 
 Tape, date of weaving of, in Flanders, 40; 
 guipures, pillow-made, Flemish or 
 Italian, 39, 40; lace, Italian, xix. ; 
 lace, Italian, with needlepoint fillings, 
 
 XIX. 
 
 "Teatro delle Nobili et Virtuose Donne," 
 by Elisabetta Catanea Parasole, de- 
 sign for pitnto in aria from, XX I. 
 
 Textiles and embroidery influenced by 
 lace, 73; French, designs in, 75; 
 French, Louis XVI., 76; influence 
 upon lace, 76 
 
 Thirteen-hole trolly, see Trolly, thtrteen- 
 hole 
 
 Trendwin, Mrs, 90 
 
 Trew, Mrs, Honiton(?) in the possession 
 of, 92 
 
 Trina (Italian), use of the term for braid 
 or " passement," 32 
 
 Trolly, Buckinghamshire, 100; Devon- 
 shire, 95, 96; Devonshire, bobbins 
 used in, 96; Beer and, bobbins, xc. ; 
 lace, thirteen-hole, 96, i.xxxvm. ; 
 lace in the Victoria and Albert 
 Museum, 100 
 
 V 
 
 Vacher, Mr Sydney, collection of. 24, 85 
 
 VALKXCIKXNKS, Chapter XL, pages 55-61 
 
 Valenciennes, attempts at revival of, 57, 
 
 86: made in Armentieres, 60; made 
 
 in Avesnes, 60; made in Bailleul, 60; 
 
 made in Belgium, 60; made in 
 
 Bergues, 60; bobbins used in, 59; 
 
 made in Cassel, 60; citv-made lace,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 121 
 
 58, 59 ; decline of industry after 
 1780, 56; design in, 57; made in 
 Dieppe, 60,61 ; distinguishingfeatures 
 of, 59 ; early, with neigeux ground, 
 LX ; early, late seventeenth or early 
 eighteenth century, LXI. ; fancy 
 grounds, LXII. ; fausse, 56, 58 ; the 
 ground in, 55; grounds of, 57; 
 lappet, wire ground, LXII. ; made in 
 Lille, 60, 79 ; method of working, 57 ; 
 modern, made in Brabant, 59 ; made 
 in Normandy, 60; reseau of, 57, 58; 
 thread end in, 59; vraie, 58 
 
 Vandyke point, LXXXIX. 
 
 Vavassore, pattern-books of, 16. 
 
 Vecellio, designs of, 15, 22; patterns for 
 needlepoint from, vi. 
 
 VENETIAN LACE, Chapter V., pages 22- 
 3i; I- 
 
 Venetian Lace, see Point de Venise, 
 Rose point, &c. ; punto in aria, 
 Oriental influence upon, 23 ; com- 
 
 pared with point de France, 72 ; 
 
 French influence upon, 73; Oriental 
 
 influence upon, 12, 13 
 Venetian, flat, 25, 27, xxm. 
 Venice, decline of lace industry in, 29 
 Victoria and Albert Museum, Bolckow 
 
 Bequest, point de France in, 73, 74 ; 
 
 English needlepoint in, 85, 86; 
 
 Honiton(?) in, 92; Isham Collection, 
 
 lace and costumes in, 86 
 Vinciolo, 9-11 ; English edition of, 85 
 Vraie Valenciennes, see Valenciennes, 
 
 vraie 
 
 w 
 
 Wales, lace-making in, 97 
 Wiltshire, lace industry in, 101, 102 
 Wire ground (cat stitch or French 
 ground), 100 
 
 Yorkshire, lace-making in, 97 
 
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