Venice was an important trading centre, and it was there that the first known lace pattern books were printed Le Pompe in the s and in the early years the city certainly acted as a hub for the spread of lace knowledge. By high quality lace was being made in many centres across Europe including Flanders, Spain, France and England — women who were practised at other textile crafts seem to have picked up the new skills with relative ease.
Travelling noblemen and intermarriage between royal families ensured that new fashion ideas were disseminated widely: lace was traded and smuggled across borders. Lacemakers displaced by political upheavals often arrived as refugees in areas where there was already a lacemaking tradition and were able to enhance this with their own skills.
And enterprising manufacturers of fashion for the affluent were constantly seeking innovations to secure and extend their position in the market.
Fashion has always driven lace production. Towards the end of the sixteenth century ruffs and standing collars demanded bold geometric needlelace. Through the early years of the s these were gradually replaced by softer collars requiring many yards of relatively narrow linen bobbin lace. At the same time there was increasing demand for gold and silver lace to edge gloves, shoe roses, jackets and sashes, and also to provide surface decoration for other garments. By the middle of the seventeenth century linen lace was again worn flat, and both needle and bobbin lace makers had refined their skills to produce some extremely intricate work, with the raised needlelace known as Gros Point and the flowing forms of Milanese bobbin lace being among the greatest achievements of the period.
Through the eighteenth century lace became increasingly delicate, often worked in extremely fine linen thread with increasing use of mesh grounds. The industrial revolution in Britain brought with it a profound change in lacemaking. The first machine lace was made towards the end of the eighteenth century, but it was not until that John Heathcoat was able to produce a wide net fabric that did not unravel when cut.
Decorated nets have existed for thousands of years, but the rapid development of needle and bobbin lace started in earnest in the early 16th century in the Venice and Milan areas of current Italy and in the Flanders area in northern Europe.
The very fine linen threads from Flanders, imported silk threads from China as well as gold and silver threads were used to make the fine laces. Cotton was not used for making lace until approximately Handmade lace was expensive and highly sought after; the trade in lace always had an aura of mystique and intrigue. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the handmade lace industry played an important part in the economies of many European countries.
Members of royalty, the aristocracy, and the Catholic Church were the main consumers for fine laces. Men and women competed to display the most exquisite lace on their fashionable clothes—King Charles I of Great Britain, for example, bought yards of lace to ornament his shirts. Sumptuary rules restricting extravagance in consumer goods were in effect very early. Queen Elizabeth I of England passed a law dictating the maximum width of the fashionable ruffs in and a law in the Massachusetts Bay Colony prohibited settlers from wearing gold, silver, or thread laces.
These laws were mostly ignored, as the ones in power were the ones demanding lace. However, the sumptuary laws and other bans made smuggling very lucrative. Stories are told about bodies being replaced by lace in coffins before being shipped across borders, dogs being wrapped in lace and covered with a larger hide; hollowed out loaves of bread filled with lace, and many other ingenious ways of getting laces to the rich and powerful. The result was an elegant needle lace called Point de France.
Lace merchants grew very wealthy from the upper classes spending enormous sums on lace. Lacemaking was mostly a cottage industry with individual lacemakers working in their homes for a lace dealer, who would supply the threads and patterns and collect the finished lace from the maker.
The lacemakers were mostly women and therefore not allowed to form guilds that would protect their livelihood. Children were taught to make lace in orphanages and convents to help them earn a living, and workhouses for the poor and prisons benefitted from incarcerating lacemakers, enabling the prison to sell their lace.
A painting by Dirck Santvoort from shows lace made by prison inmates being evaluated and sold by the Regentesses and Matrons of the prison.
Producing a piece of lace by hand is very time consuming, making the delicate fabric a very expensive and desirable fashion accessory. In a cravat collar would cost four and a half times the annual salary of a servant8. The extremely fine linen thread used for Valenciennes bobbin lace in the early eighteenth century made it a very expensive lace.
In a lace worker would have worked hour days for a full year to make one meter a little over one yard of a Valenciennes sleeve ruffle or engageante. A pair of sleeve ruffles would require at least 4 meters, and more for women of higher social standing. At that time the annual wage of the lace maker was less than the customer would pay for one of those meters, or less than a quarter of the cost of a single pair of sleeve ruffles. Even though the lacemakers were very poorly paid, lacemaking still helped thousands of peasant lacemakers support their families in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
By the end of the eighteenth century men had stopped wearing lace, and fashion also changed to a much simpler, unadorned styles for women. This effectively spelled the end to much of the handmade lace industry.
Lacemaking in America came mostly with European immigrants, who practiced their craft in communities all over the country. The only well documented large scale handmade lacemaking industry in the US was in Ipswich, Massachusetts in the late 18th century. However, that also came to an end with the change in fashion and development of the lace machines in the early nineteenth century. Currently lacemaking traditions are being kept alive by modern lace makers who research and create lace as a hobby.
Skip to main content. Lace Collection. The overall design has fine naturalistic floral motifs with a few sections of the common bold, tightly buttonholed wheels. It shows a very fine overall pattern and execution.
It was made in Belgium of fine cotton thread in about the 's Location Currently not on view date made maker unknown ID Number The flounce is made of cream colored silk thread in three sizes. The ground is point ground, with the motifs made in dense linen stitches and lighter half stitches outlined with a heavy gimp thread.
Honeycomb ground is used as decorative fillings. The flounce is edged with a narrow machine made picot edge on both sides. Location Currently not on view date made maker unknown ID Number The stitches and manner of working in Honiton and Duchesse are alike.
The best known kind was an imitation of Mechlin lace. It is a kind of cheap Valenciennes. Dutch lace is inferior in design and workmanship to those of France and Belgium. English Point. Some writers, however, assert its English origin. Owing to the protection formerly given by law to English laces, large quantities of Belgium laces are believed to have been smuggled into England under the name of "Point d'Angleterre," so as to evade the customs duties.
See Application lace, also Point d'Angleterre. The patterns are outlined with a lustrous thread or cord. The thread used in making this lace is spun from the fiber of the leaves of the aloe , a plant resembling somewhat the century plant. Great skill is necessary in the manufacture, which is restricted to a comparatively few women of the island, who have been trained to this work from childhood.
The lace is marketed in France, chiefly in Paris, at a very high price, and it is very difficult for outside purchasers to buy it at any cost. The patterns are extremely elegant and original in design. Notwithstanding the delicacy of this fabric, it is remarkably durable. False Valenciennes. Flat Point. Sometimes the footing is worked with the rest of the design. It is used also in making lace handkerchiefs and for quilling effects. It was anciently made of gold or silver gilt wire.
It is now used chiefly to decorate uniforms, liveries and some church costumes, and occasionally for millinery. The metal is drawn through a wire, and, after being flattened between steel rollers, several strands of the flattened wire are passed around the silk simultaneously by means of a complex machine having a wheel and iron bobbins.
The history of gold lace is interesting, as illustrating the oldest form of the lacemaker's art. From the days of Egypt and Rome down to medieval Venice, Italy and Spain, gold and silver gilt wire were used in making this kind of lace. The Jews in Spain were accomplished workers in this art, and in Sweden and Russia gold lace was the first lace made.
In France gold lacemaking was a prosperous manufacture at Aurrillac and Arras, at which latter place it flourished up to the end of the eighteenth century. Gold lace was imported into England at an early date, and King James I established a monopoly in it. Its importation was prohibited by Queen Anne, on account of the extravagant uses of ornamentation to which it was put, and it was also prohibited in the reign of George II, to correct the prevalent taste for the foreign manufactured lace.
The attempt was unsuccessful, for we are told that smuggling greatly increased. It became a "war to the knife between the revenue officer and society at large, all classes combined, town ladies of high degree, with waiting-maids, and the common sailor, to avoid the obnoxious duties and cheat the government.
These laces are made for flounces and shawls, and were used both in America and Europe. As compared with Chantilly, the ground is coarser and the patterns are not so clear-cut and elegant as the real Chantilly. It was formerly an article of extensive consumption in France, but, after the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was little used, except by the poorer classes.
It was formerly called "Beggars' lace. The name was afterward applied to heavy lace made with thin wires whipped around the silk, and with cotton thread. The word guipure is no longer commonly used to denote such work as this, but has become a term of variable designation, and it is so extensively applied that it is difficult to give a limit to its meaning. It may be used to define a lace where the flowers are either joined by brides, or large coarse stitches, or lace that has no ground.
The modern Honiton and Maltese are guipures, and so is Venetian point. But as the word has also been applied to large, flowing pattern laces, worked with coarse net grounds, it is impossible to lay down any hard and fast rule about it. Hollie Point. It was popular in the middle ages for church decoration, but was adapted to different purposes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and various makes of lace have since been called by this name. The manufacture is still carried on at that town, where there is a lace school, but a similar lace is made in the leading Continental centers of the industry.
At present it is customary to use machine-made net upon which hand-made sprays are sewn. Honiton braid is a narrow, machine-made fabric, the variety in most general use being composed of a series of oval-shaped figures united by narrow bars. It is of different widths, in linen, cotton and silk, and is much used in the manufacture of handkerchiefs, collars, and some varieties of lace.
The history of Honiton lace is more than ordinarily interesting, partly by reason of the doubt as to whether it really was a lace of English invention, or brought by the Flemish workmen to England. Some writers assert the former, but the stronger probability is that the art was brought from Flanders by Protestant immigrants, who fled from persecution.
Honiton, if it was brought from Flanders originally, afterward repaid the debt by the beauty and celebrity of its designs, which served as examples for Continental lacemakers. The very attempt to protect its manufacture in England, by imposing prohibitive duties, only increased the desire to receive foreign suggestions, and to smuggle foreign laces into England, while the ingenuity of Continental manufacturers succeeded in copying the best Honiton designs, and even in improving upon them.
The English lacemakers at Honiton were, however, at first unsuccessful in their attempts to rival the best laces of the Continent, especially Brussels. Although they had royal patronage, and the whims and lavish expenditure of the court of Charles II were at their service, together with protective duties, it was not until the reign of George II and George III that English lace substantially improved.
The patterns were also formed of detached flower sprays, and soon the Honiton product became almost unrivaled. This superiority continued until about , when machine-made net was introduced, and the old exquisite net ground, made of the finest Antwerp thread, went out of fashion by reason of the commercial demand for an inferior product.
Honiton guipure is now the chief form of lace made at that town. As regards composition of the patterns of Honiton laces, as well as finish and delicacy of execution, much improvement has been manifested during the last twenty years by reason of better schools for design, and the rivalry promoted by international exhibitions.
It often rivals real lace in fineness, but necessarily its mechanical regularity of pattern detracts somewhat from the artistic character of the result.
If it were asked how the imitation lace can be distinguished from needle-point, the answer is that it is not made with looped stitches like the latter, nor has it the effect of plaited threads, as in pillow lace. In the invention of substitutes for hand-made lace stitches Switzerland has been the leader, and by hundreds of machines, perfected from the invention of a native of St.
Gall, were turning out a close imitation of the hand-made work. But, notwithstanding the marvelous results attained in machine-made lace, they are the triumphs of mechanism which cannot displace the superiority, and charm, and rarity, of the finest hand-made work.
In the latter the personal equation, the skill and the loving, workmanlike fidelity of the individual toiler to his task impart a quality which dead mechanism can neither create nor supersede. Machine-made lace may be predominantly the lace of commerce, but hand-made lace is the natural expression and embodiment of a delicate and difficult art, and thus it will ever remain. It is made with the edges on both sides alike, and often a plain portion of the material outside the work, so that it may be sewn on one side to the garment for which it is intended and to the plain part of the lace or border on the other.
Other varieties, which are imitations of foreign laces, are Irish point, resembling Brussels lace; black and white Maltese; silver, black and white blondes.
The Limerick embroideries, for they cannot be strictly called lace, are an imitation of Indian tambour work, and consist of fine embroidery in chain-stitches upon a Nottingham net.
Carrick-ma-cross, or Irish guipure, is a kind of so-called Irish point lace, made at the town of that name, but which is really nothing more than a species of embroidery, from which part of the cloth is cut away, leaving a guipure ground. It is not a very durable lace. The most popular patterns are the rose and the shamrock. Irish crochet is an imitation of the needle-point laces of Spain and Venice; that is to say, it resembles these laces in general effect. There is also a needle-point lace made of rather coarse thread, and used exclusively in Ireland and England.
The manufacture of laces in Ireland is carried on by the cottagers, by the nuns in the convents, and in several industrial schools founded for that purpose. It has only become a popular industry within the last twenty-five years, as the costumes of the people in earlier times did not require lace ornamentation, and there was a widespread and deep-rooted aversion to the adoption of English fashions in clothing so long as certain sumptuary laws were unrepealed.
Afterward, under slightly more liberal conditions, English fashions were gradually adopted, and with them came the demand for a cheap Irish lace, as the foreign laces were too expensive.
Not until was there any official attempt to encourage the industry, but in that year the Royal Dublin Society established prizes for excellence in lacemaking.
This attempt lasted until The Irish have never made a lace that can in any sense be called national, but great skill has been developed in the imitations of the foreign fabrics, and the Irish name has been so closely associated with some of them that they are popularly considered a native Irish product.
The exhibition of Irish laces at the Mansion House in London in added materially to the reputation of these fabrics. Irish Trimming.
It is commonly called Knotting in all English-speaking countries. It is a lace of simple design, consisting of a thick run thread, enclosing cloth-stitch for thick parts, and plaitings for open parts.
The old Lille lace is always made with a stiff and formal pattern, with a thick, straight edge, and with a square instead of the usual round dots worked over the ground. Lille was distinguished as a lacemaking city as far back as , and from that year until the industry was successful, but since the latter year there has been a steady decline, as more remunerative occupations have gradually drawn away the younger workers from lacemaking.
They are stout, heavy laces, mostly made with the use of braid, and are much used for curtains and draperies. It is useful in decorating light upholstery. This necessitates the forming of simple patterns. This lace is really a revival of the old Italian knotted points, which were much used three centuries ago in Spain and Italy for ecclesiastical garments.
It appears in some of the paintings of the early masters, notably Paul Veronese. The art has been taught during all the nineteenth century in the schools and convents along the Riviera. It is developed in great perfection at Chiavari, and also at Genoa.
Specimens of elaborate workmanship were in the Paris Exhibition of It is made both in white silk and thread, and also in black Barcelona silk. There is also a cotton machine-made variety, used chiefly in trimming muslin underwear. The history of Maltese lace is interesting from the fact that the kind originally made in that island by the natives, which was a coarse variety of Mechlin or Valenciennes, of an arabesque pattern, was in superseded by the manufacture of the white and black silk guipures now so widely known as Maltese lace.
This improvement was due to Lady Hamilton Chichester, who brought laceworkers over from Genoa to teach their craft in the island.
Some of the patterns from that time showed the influence of the Genoese instruction. Maltese lace is made not only in Malta, but in Auvergne and Lepuy in France; in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, in England, and also in the Irish lace schools. Ceylon and Madras lace also resembles Maltese.
Formerly shawls and veils of much beauty and value were made of this lace, but the manufacture is now confined chiefly to narrow trimmings. Sometimes the mesh is circular. The net ground is made of two threads twisted twice on four sides and four threads plaited three times on the two other sides. In this it differs from Brussels lace, whose plait is longer and whose mesh is larger.
The lace is made in one piece upon the pillow, the ground being formed with the pattern. The very finest thread is used, and a high degree of skill is necessary, so that the resulting fabric is very costly. It is a filmy, beautiful and highly transparent lace, and preserves for a very long time its distinguishing peculiarity of a shiny thread or band surrounding the outlines of the sprigs and dots of the design.
The earliest Mechlin designs were very like those of Brussels lace, though not so original and graceful; but in this respect later Mechlin laces showed marked improvement. The manufacture of Mechlin has long been on the decline, the French Revolution seriously injuring the industry; and when the trade was revived and encouraged under Napoleon, the exquisite patterns of former times had been partly forgotten or were too expensive for popular demand.
Mechlin sometimes had an ornamental net ground called Fond du Neige, and also a ground of six-pointed Fond Champ, but these kinds were rare. It has always been a very great favorite with the English, and appears in most of their family collections of laces. There was a fine collection of this lace at the Paris Exhibition of from Turnhout, Belgium, as well as from other lace manufacturing centers.
The Medici design is also characterized by plain, close-woven work, the close work alternating in equal amount with the openwork, the contrast between them heightening the effect. The edge is usually plain and straight, but is sometimes ornamented with a fine silk fringe. It was one of the earliest of pillow laces, and flourished greatly during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
It was made of Lille thread, and the chief places of its manufacture were Arras, Lille and Paris, in France, and in Switzerland. In the seventeenth century it was a French guipure lace of more delicate texture and varied design than other guipures. Mirecourt, in the Department of the Vosges, and its environs, were the center of the industry.
The manufacture was begun at an early date, and for centuries only hempen thread was used, the result being a coarse guipure; but during the early part of the seventeenth century a finer lace of more delicate pattern was produced, and it began to be exported in considerable quantities. Before the union of Lorraine with France, in , there was less than laceworkers in Mirecourt, but in the number had increased to 25, During the last century the French demand for this lace increased far beyond the foreign demand, and it became desirable to produce a greater variety of pattern.
This was done with great success by imitating the best designs. Another recent improvement at Mirecourt is the making of application flowers, and though these are not yet as finished as the Brussels sprigs, they bid fair to supply the French market, so as to make it to that extent independent of Belgium.
The lace made at Mirecourt is mostly white. The work is similar in process and equal in quality to that of Lille and Arras. It is made in silk or thread by a needle on a cardboard pattern. In Peru and Ecuador it is also needle-made in the form of small squares and united together. The distinction between needle-point and bobbin-made, or pillow lace, is also illustrated by the solid part of the pattern, and also the ground of the former. The "brides" in needle-point consist of one or two threads fastened across from one part of the pattern to another, and then closely buttonholed over; it will be found, also, that true needle-point is made with only one kind of stitch, the looped or buttonhole stitch already mentioned, and that this is constant amid all varieties of design in this kind of lace.
In all kinds of pillow lace the net groundwork is made by twisting and plaiting the threads, sometimes in twos and sometimes in fours. Briefly speaking, the fundamental difference between needle-point and pillow lace is that the former is made with looped stitches throughout, while the latter is made with twisted or plaited threads, which last is really weaving, though it is done with bobbins and the hand instead of with the loom.
The action of the Schiffli machine somewhat resembles that of a sewing-machine, and the product is more properly called embroidery than lace. The openwork effects are produced either by the action of chemicals upon the foundation material, or by the use of the scissors. The threadwork results from the combined action of the shuttle and needles. Gall, Switzerland, and Plauen, Saxony, are the chief manufacturing centers for these laces, which include trimming and border laces, curtains, bed sets, shams, and the like.
In the broad historical sense, Oriental laces and embroideries refer to the products of the East, especially to the Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Persian and Turkish.
All these were remarkable for the labor expended upon them, their great cost, and the originality and boldness of idea and coloring which marked their design. The pattern is often elaborate, and in silks of many colors, representing flowers, foliage, etc.
It is sometimes in relief. In old accounts of laces, the term was often applied to those made on the pillow to distinguish them from needle-point laces, and it was derived from the pattern on which pillow laces were worked.
This designation was in use until the middle of the seventeenth century. The word is now applied to a decorative edging or trimming, especially a gimp or braid. It is an old French word, and in the country of its origin included in its meaning both lace and embroideries. It has an interesting literary association, having figured, under the slightly altered form of "passemens," in a satirical poem published at Paris in The various laces are supposed to revolt against the law excluding them from France, and especially from their place in the exalted society of the court.
Mesdames les Broderies—. One of them hotly demands what punishment shall be meted out to the court for such treatment—. Various laces speak their mind freely in reply, but most of them are gloomy as to the future, while a few try to take a philosophical view of the situation, and resign themselves to an humbler though still useful fate.
An English lace, "une Grande Dentelle d'Angleterre" answers. The laces of Flanders are not so submissive as that, being too vain and ambitious for renunciation of the world and life in a convent, and their angry opposition starts a little tempest of debate, fierce resolution alternating with despair.
A black lace in hopeless mood hires herself out with a game merchant, for nets to catch snipe and woodcock. An old gold lace, in grandmotherly style, tries to comfort the younger ones, by reminding them of the vanity of the world.
She knows all about it—she, who has dwelt in king's houses. The Flanders laces cry out that rather than give in they would sooner be sewn to the bottom of a petticoat. The point laces, with the exception of Aurillac, then resolve to go each to his own country, when suddenly the humble but plucky Gueuse lace, the lace of the common people, arrives from a village near Paris and encourages the others to fight it out.
The next morning they all assemble and agree upon a plan of campaign, but before doing so take stock of their qualifications and prospects.
Finally open war is declared, and the laces all assemble at the fair of St. Germain to be reviewed by General Luxe. The muster roll is called by Colonel Sotte Depense, and the various regiments and battalions march forth to victory or death.
But they got neither, for at the first approach of the royal artillery they take to their heels, are captured and condemned to various punishments. The gold and silver laces, the leaders of the rebellion, are sentenced to the fate of Jeanne D'Arc, to be burned alive; the points are condemned to be made into tinder for the sole use of the King's Musketeers; others are to be made into cordage or sent to the galleys.
But pardon is obtained through the good offices of cunning little Cupid—"Le petit dieu plein de finesse," and the rebels are restored to their former position. But all these efforts were fruitless to discourage the growth of lacemaking. The passion for beauty in personal adornment would not down. The engravings of Abraham Bosse, which portray the dress and manners of that time, humorously depict the despair of the fashionable lady over the prospect of giving up her laces.
She is represented as attired in plain hemmed linen cuffs, collar and cap of Puritanical severity, bemoaning her sad fate, in heartbreaking strains, as she sorrowfully packs away her rich lace-trimmed costumes.
Her sadness was not unduly prolonged. Colbert, the great French statesman, saw that laces would be smuggled if they were legally prohibited, that the rich would have them at any cost, so he encouraged foreign lacemakers to come to France, and the manufacture was thus promoted.
See Needle-point lace. The pattern, besides being geometrical in design, is open, and has no grounds. For ordinary purposes tinsel is used instead of real gold, and the lace is then employed for theatrical purposes. Historically considered, the plaited laces made of gold, silver or silk thread, took the place of the Italian knotted laces of the sixteenth century.
Those produced at Genoa and in Spain were the best, and they are made in Spain to-day, chiefly for church uses. The thread plaited laces of the seventeenth century were used to trim ruffs and falling collars, but went out of fashion when flowing wigs came in, as the latter hid the collar and would not allow ruffs to be worn. At the present time plaited laces have become known under the name of Maltese and Cluny, and are made at Auvergne, in France, Malta, and in the English counties of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
Plauen led in the manufacture of this kind of lace, having begun it in , from which year dates the importance of that city as a lace market. The manufacture was gradually developed.
Only the tulle variety of embroidery lace was produced until The distinguishing feature of this was that the hollow effects were made by opening the tulle meshes by hand.
Then, in , an openwork process was invented by which chemical action was employed to remove a woolen or silk foundation from the cotton-embroidered pattern, or a cotton foundation from a silk embroidery that had been worked on it. This made it possible to form the pattern by the embroidery machine in the same way as in the case of ordinary embroidery.
The wool foundation, which is necessary to be removed in finishing the goods, is dissolved by the action of certain chemicals without changing the cotton or silk pattern. In this way the most difficult and complicated patterns of real lace can be imitated.
Plauen manufacturers have for the most part taken the old and costly hand-made laces of former times for their models; but they have also originated new and tasteful designs from time to time. At the present time the net ground is usually machine-made. See Application lace. Point de Gaze. Point de Gaze is the result of an attempt of the Brussels lacemakers to return to the best early traditions of needle-point. Point de Gaze differs, however, from the finest old needle-point in certain respects, partly necessitated by modern taste in design, and partly from the need of great economy in labor costs.
For example, the execution is much more open and delicate than in the early lace of this description, but this very delicacy and slightness are made use of to produce a very elegant effect. Part of the toile, or substance of the pattern, is made in close and part in open stitch, giving an appearance of shading, and the open parts are very tastefully ornamented with dots.
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