Part 18

The many varieties of needlepoint and pillow laces will be touched on under the heading allotted to each of these methods of making lace. Here, however, the general circumstances of their genesis may be briefly alluded to. The activity in cord and braid-making and in the particular sorts of ornamental needlework already mentioned clearly postulated such special labour as was capable of being converted into lace-making. And from the 16th century onwards the stimulus to the industry in Europe was afforded by regular trade demand, coupled with the exertions of those who encouraged their dependents or protegés to give their spare time to remunerative home occupations. Thus the origin and perpetuation of the industry have come to be associated with the women folk of peasants and fishermen in circumstances which present little dissimilarity whether in regard to needle lace workers now making lace in whitewashed cottages and cabins at Youghal and Kenmare in the south of Ireland, or those who produced their "punti in aria" during the 16th century about the lagoons of Venice, or Frenchwomen who made the sumptuous "Points de France" at Alençon and elsewhere in the 17th and 18th centuries; or pillow lace workers to be seen at the present day at little seaside villages tucked away in Devonshire dells, or those who were engaged more than four hundred years ago in "merletti a piombini" in Italian villages or on "Dentelles au fuseau" in Flemish lowlands. The ornamental character, however, of these several laces would be found to differ much; but methods, materials, appliances and opportunities of work would in the main be alike. As fashion in wearing laces extended, so workers came to be drawn together into groups by employers who acted as channels for general trade.[2] Nuns in the past as in the present have also devoted attention to the industry, often providing in the convent precincts workrooms not only for peasant women to carry out commissions in the service of the church or for the trade, but also for the purpose of training children in the art. Elsewhere lace schools have been founded by benefactors or organized by some leading local lace-maker[3] as much for trading as for education. In all this variety of circumstance, development of finer work has depended upon the abilities of the workers being exercised under sound direction, whether derived through their own intuitions, or supplied by intelligent and tasteful employers. Where any such direction has been absent the industry viewed commercially has suffered, its productions being devoid of artistic effect or adaptability to the changing tastes of demand.

It is noteworthy that the two widely distant regions of Europe where pictorial art first flourished and attained high perfection, north Italy and Flanders, were precisely the localities where lace-making first became an industry of importance both from an artistic and from a commercial point of view. Notwithstanding more convincing evidence as to the earlier development of pillow lace making in Italy the invention of pillow lace is often credited to the Flemings; but there is no distinct trace of the time or the locality. In a picture said to exist in the church of St Gomar at Lierre, and sometimes attributed to Quentin Matsys (1495), is introduced a girl apparently working at some sort of lace with pillow, bobbins, &c., which are somewhat similar to the implements in use in more recent times.[4] From the very infancy of Flemish art an active intercourse was maintained between the Low Countries and the great centres of Italian art; and it is therefore only what might be expected that the wonderful examples of the art and handiwork of Venice in lace-making should soon have come to be known to and rivalled among the equally industrious, thriving and artistic Flemings. At the end of the 16th century pattern-books were issued in Flanders having the same general character as those published for the guidance of the Venetian and other Italian lace-makers.

[Illustration: PLATE I.

FIG. 1.--PORTION OF A COVERLET COMPOSED OF SQUARES OF "LACIS" OR DARNED NETTING, DIVIDED BY LINEN CUT-WORK BANDS.

The squares are worked with groups representing the twelve months, and with scenes from the old Spanish dramatic story "Celestina." Spanish or Portuguese. 16th century. (Victoria and Albert Museum.)

FIG. 2.--CORNER OF A BED-COVER OF PILLOW-MADE LACE OF A TAPE-LIKE TEXTURE WITH CHARACTERISTICS IN THE TWISTED AND PLAITED THREADS RELATING THE WORK TO ITALIAN "MERLETTI A PIOMBINI" OR EARLY ENGLISH "BONE LACE."

Possibly made in Flanders or Italy during the early part of the 17th or at the end of the 16th century. The design includes the Imperial double-headed eagle of Austria with the ancient crown of the German Empire. (Victoria and Albert Museum.)]

[Illustration: PLATE II.

FIG. 3.--THREE VANDYKE OR DENTATED BORDERS OF ITALIAN LACE OF THE LATE 16TH CENTURY.

Style usually called "Reticella" on account of the patterns being based on repeated squares or reticulations. The two first borders are of needlepoint work; the lower border is of such pillow lace as was known in Italy as "merletti a piombini."

FIG. 4.--CATHERINE DE MEDICI, WEARING A LINEN UPTURNED COLLAR OF CUT WORK AND NEEDLEPOINT LACE.

Louvre. About 1540.

FIG. 5.--CORNER OF A NAPKIN OR HANDKERCHIEF BORDERED WITH "RETICELLA" NEEDLEPOINT LACE IN THE DESIGN OF WHICH ACORNS AND CARNATIONS ARE MINGLED WITH GEOMETRIC RADIATIONS.

Probably of English early 17th century.

FIG. 6.--AMELIE ELISABETH, COMTESSE DE HAINAULT, WEARING A RUFF OF NEEDLEPOINT RETICELLA LACE.

By Morcelse. The Hague. About 1600.

FIG. 7.--BORDER OF FLAT NEEDLEPOINT LACE OF FULLER TEXTURE THAN THAT OF FIG. 3, AND FROM A FREER STYLE OF DESIGN IN WHICH CONVENTIONALIZED FLORAL FORMS HELD TOGETHER BY SMALL BARS OR TYES ARE USED.

Style called "Punto in Aria," chiefly on account of its independence of squares or reticulations. Italian. Early 17th century.

(_Figs._ 4 _and_ 6 _by permission of Messrs Braun, Clement & Co., Dornach (Alsace), and Paris_.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 24.--Portion of a Flounce of Needlepoint Lace, French, early 18th century, "Point de France." The honeycomb ground is considered to be a peculiarity of "Point d'Argentan": some of the fillings are made in the manner of the "Point d'Alençon" _réseau_.]

France and England were not far behind Venice and Flanders in making needle and pillow lace. Henry III. of France (1574-1589) appointed a Venetian, Frederic Vinciolo, pattern maker for varieties of linen needle works and laces to his court. Through the influence of this fertile designer the seeds of a taste for lace in France were principally sown. But the event which _par excellence_ would seem to have fostered the higher development of the French art of lace-making was the aid officially given it in the following century by Louis XIV., acting on the advice of his minister Colbert. Intrigue and diplomacy were put into action to secure the services of Venetian lace-workers; and by an edict dated 1665 the lace-making centres at Alençon, Quesnoy, Arras, Reims, Sedan, Château Thierry, Loudun and elsewhere were selected for the operations of a company in aid of which the state made a contribution of 36,000 francs; at the same time the importation of Venetian, Flemish and other laces was strictly forbidden.[5] The edict contained instructions that the lace-makers should produce all sorts of thread work, such as those done on a pillow or cushion and with the needle, in the style of the laces made at Venice, Genoa, Ragusa and other places; these French imitations were to be called "points de France." By 1671 the Italian ambassador at Paris writes, "Gallantly is the minister Colbert on his way to bring the 'lavori d'aria' to perfection." Six years later an Italian, Domenigo Contarini, alludes to the "punto in aria," "which the French can now do to admiration." The styles of design which emanated from the chief of the French lace centre, Alençon, were more fanciful and less severe than the Venetian, and it is evident that the Flemish lace-makers later on adopted many of these French patterns for their own use. The provision of French designs (fig. 24) which owes so much to the state patronage, contrasts with the absence of corresponding provision in England and was noticed early in the 18th 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 they had not had their academies of design?"

The humble endeavours of peasantry in England (which could boast of no schools of design), Germany, Sweden, Russia and Spain could not result in work of so high artistic pretension as that of France and Flanders. In the 18th century good lace was made in Devonshire, but it is only in recent years that to some extent the hand lace-makers of England and Ireland have become impressed with the necessity of well-considered designs for their work. Pillow lace making under the name of "bone lace making" was pursued in the 17th century in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, and in 1724 Defoe refers to the manufacture of bone lace in which villagers were "wonderfully exercised and improved within these few years past." "Bone" lace dates from the 17th century in England and was practically the counterpart of Flemish "dentelles au fuseau," and related also to the Italian "merletti a piombini" (see Pl. fig. 10). In Germany, Barbara Uttmann, a native of Nuremberg, instructed peasants of the Harz mountains to twist and plait threads in 1561. She was assisted by certain refugees from Flanders. A sort of "purling" or imitation of the Italian "merletti a piombini" was the style of work produced then.

Lace of comparatively simple design has been made for centuries in villages of Andalusia as well as in Spanish conventual establishments. The "point d'Espagne," however, appears to have been a commercial name given by French manufacturers of a class of lace made in France with gold or silver threads on the pillow and greatly esteemed by Spaniards in the 17th century. No lace pattern-books have been found to have been published in Spain. The needle-made laces which came out of Spanish monasteries in 1830, when these institutions were dissolved, were mostly Venetian needle-made laces. The lace vestments preserved at the cathedral at Granada hitherto presumed to be of Spanish work are verified as being Flemish of the 17th century (similar in style to Pl. fig. 14). The industry is not alluded to in Spanish ordinances of the 15th, 16th or 17th centuries, but traditions which throw its origin back to the Moors or Saracens are still current in Seville and its neighbourhood, where a twisted and knotted arrangement of fine cords is often worked[6] under the name of "Morisco" fringe, elsewhere called macramé lace. Black and white silk pillow laces, or "blondes," date from the 18th century. They were made in considerable quantity in the neighbourhood of Chantilly, and imported for mantillas by Spain, where corresponding silk lace making was started. Although after the 18th century the making of silk laces more or less ceased at Chantilly and the neighbourhood, the craft is now carried on in Normandy--at Bayeux and Caen--as well as in Auvergne, which is also noted for its simple "torchon" laces. Silk pillow lace making is carried on in Spain, especially at Barcelona. The patterns are almost entirely imitations from 18th-century French ones of a large and free floral character. Lace-making is said to have been promoted in Russia through the patronage of the court, after the visit of Peter the Great to Paris in the early days of the 18th century. Peasants in the districts of Vologda, Balakhua (Nijni-Novgorod), Bieleff (Tula) and Mzensk (Orel) make pillow laces of simple patterns. Malta is noted for producing a silk pillow lace of black or white, or red threads, chiefly of patterns in which repetitions of circles, wheels and radiations of shapes resembling grains of wheat are the main features. This characteristic of design, appearing in white linen thread laces of similar make which have been identified as Genoese pillow laces of the early 17th century, reappears in Spanish and Paraguayan work. Pillow lace in imitation of Maltese, Buckinghamshire and Devonshire laces is made to a small extent in Ceylon, in different parts of India and in Japan. A successful effort has also been made to re-establish the industry in the island of Burano near Venice, and pillow and needlepoint lace of good design is made there.

At present the chief sources of hand-made lace are France, Belgium, Ireland and England.

France is faithful to her traditions in maintaining a lively and graceful taste in lace-making. Fashion of late years has called for ampler and more boldly effective laces, readily produced with both braids and cords and far less intricate needle or pillow work than was required for the dainty and smaller laces of earlier date.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.--Collar and Berthe of Irish Crochet Lace.]

[Illustration: FIG. 26.--Collar of Irish Crochet Lace.]

In Belgium the social and economic conditions are, as they have been in the past, more conducive and more favourable than elsewhere to lace-making at a sufficiently remunerative rate of wages. The production of hand-made laces in Belgium was in 1900 greater than that of France. The principal modern needle-made lace of Belgium is the "Point de Gaze"; "Duchesse" and Bruges laces are the chief pillow-made laces; whilst "Point Appliqué" and "Plat Appliqué" are frequently the results not only of combining needle-made and pillow work, but also of using them in conjunction with machine-made net. Ireland is the best producer of that substantial looped-thread work known as crochet (see figs. 25, 26, 27), which must be regarded as a hand-made lace fabric although not classifiable as a needlepoint or pillow lace. It is also quite distinct in character from pseudo-laces, which are really embroideries with a lace-like appearance, e.g. embroideries on net, cut and embroidered cambrics and fine linen. For such as these Ireland maintains a reputation in its admirable Limerick and Carrickmacross laces, made not only in Limerick and Carrickmacross, but also in Kinsale, Newry, Crossmaglen and elsewhere. The demand from France for Irish crochet is now far beyond the supply, a condition which leads not only to the rapid repetition by Irish workers of old patterns, but tends also to a gradual debasement of both texture and ornament. Attempts have been made to counteract this tendency, with some success, as the specimens of Irish crochet in figs. 25, 26 and 27 indicate.

[Illustration: PLATE III.

FIG. 8.--MARY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE, WEARING A COIF AND CUFFS OF RETICELLA LACE.

National Portrait Gallery. Dated 1614.

FIG. 9.--HENRI II., DUC DE MONTMORENCY, WEARING A FALLING LACE COLLAR. By LE NAIN. Louvre. About 1628.

(_By permission of Messrs Braun, Clement & Co., Dornach (Alsace), and Paris_.)

FIG. 10.--SCALLOPPED COLLAR OF TAPE-LIKE PILLOW-MADE LACE.

Possibly of English early 17th-century work. Its texture is typical of a development in pillow-lace-making later than that of the lower edge of "merletti a piombini" in Pl. II. fig. 3.

FIG. 11.--JAMES II. WEARING A JABOT AND CUFFS OF RAISED NEEDLEPOINT LACE.

By RILEY. National Portrait Gallery. About 1685.

FIG. 12.--JABOT OF NEEDLEPOINT LACE WORKED PARTLY IN RELIEF, AND USUALLY KNOWN AS "GROS POINT DE VENISE."

Middle of 17th century. Conventional scrolling stems with off-shooting pseudo-blossoms and leafs are specially characteristic.

(_Figs._ 8 _and_ 11, _photo by Emery Walker_.)]

[Illustration: PLATE IV.

FIG. 13.--MME VERBIEST, WEARING PILLOW-MADE LACE _À RÉSEAU_.

From the family group by GONZALES COQUER. Buckingham Palace. About 1664.

(_By permission of Messrs Braun, Clement & Co., Dornach (Alsace), and Paris_.)

FIG. 14.--PIECE OF PILLOW-MADE LACE USUALLY KNOWN AS "POINT DE FLANDRES À BRIDES."

Of the middle of the 17th century, the designs for which were often adaptations from those made for such needlepoint lace as that of the Jabot in fig. 12.

FIG. 15.--PRINCESS MARIA TERESA STUART, WEARING A FLOUNCE OR TABLIER OF LACE SIMILAR TO THAT IN FIG. 17. Dated 1695.

From a group by LARGILLIERE. National Portrait Gallery. (_Photo by Emery Walker_.)

FIG. 16.--FLOUNCE OF PILLOW-MADE LACE _À RÉSEAU_.

Flemish, of the middle of the 17th century. This lace is usually thought to be the earliest type of "Point d'Angleterre" in contradistinction to the "Point de Flandres" (fig. 14).

FIG. 17--VERY DELICATE NEEDLEPOINT LACE WITH CLUSTERS OF SMALL RELIEF WORK.

Venetian, middle of the 17th century, and often called "rose-point lace," and sometimes "Point de Neige."]

[Illustration: FIG. 27.--Lady's Sleeve of Irish Crochet Lace.]

An appreciable amount of pillow-made lace is annually supplied from Devonshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Northampton, but it is bought almost wholly for home use. The English laces are made almost entirely in accordance with the precedents of the 19th century--that is to say, in definite lengths and widths, as for borders, insertions and flounces, although large shaped articles, such as panels for dresses, long sleeves complete skirts, jackets, blouses, and fancifully shaped collars of considerable dimensions have of late been freely made elsewhere. To make such things entirely of lace necessitates many modifications in the ordinary methods; the English lace-workers are slow to adapt their work in the manner requisite, and hence are far behind in the race to respond to the fashionable demand. No countries succeed so well in promptly answering the variable call of fashion as France and Belgium.

As regards trade in lace, America probably buys more from Belgium than from France; France and England come next as purchasers of nearly equal quantities, after which come Russia and Italy.

The greatest amount of lace now made is that which issues from machines in England, France and Germany. The total number of persons employed in the lace industry in England in 1871 was 49,370, and in 1901 about 34,929, of whom not more than 5000 made lace by hand.

The early history[7] of the lace-making machine coincides with that of the stocking frame, that machine having been adapted about the year 1768 for producing open-looped fabrics which had a net-like appearance. About 1786 frames for making point nets by machinery first appear at Mansfield and later at Ashbourne and Nottingham and soon afterwards modifications were introduced into such frames in order to make varieties of meshes in the point nets which were classed as figured nets. In 1808 and 1809 John Heathcoat of Nottingham obtained patents for machines for making bobbin net with a simpler and more readily produced mesh than that of the point net just mentioned. For at least thirty years thousands of women had been employed in and about Nottingham in the embroidery of simple ornament on net. In 1813 John Leavers began to improve the figured net weaving machines above mentioned, and from these the lace-making machines in use at the present time were developed. But it was the application of the celebrated Jacquard apparatus to such machines that enabled manufacturers to produce all sorts of patterns in thread-work in imitation of the patterns for hand-made lace. A French machine called the "dentellière" was devised (see La Nature for the 3rd of March 1881), and the patterns produced by it were of plaited threads. The expense, however, attending the production of plaited lace by the "dentellière" is as great as that of pillow lace made by the hand, and so the machine has not succeeded for ordinary trade purposes. More successful results have been secured by the new patent circular lace machine of Messrs. Birkin & Co. of Nottingham, the productions of which, all of simple design, cannot be distinguished from hand-made pillow lace of the same style (see figs. 57, 58, 59).

Before dealing with technical details in processes of making lace whether by hand or by the machine, the component parts of different makes of lace may be considered. These are governed by the ornaments or patterns, which may be so designed, as they were in the earlier laces, that the different component parts may touch one another without any intervening groundwork. But as a wish arose to vary the effect of the details in a pattern ground-works were gradually developed and at first consisted of links or ties between the substantial parts of the pattern. The bars or ties were succeeded by grounds of meshes, like nets. Sometimes the substantial parts of a pattern were outlined with a single thread or by a strongly marked raised edge of buttonhole-stitched or of plaited work. Minute fanciful devices were then introduced to enrich various portions of the pattern. Some of the heavier needle-made laces resemble low relief carving in ivory, and the edges of the relief portions are often decorated with clusters of small loops. For the most part all this elaboration was brought to a high pitch of variety and finish by French designers and workers; and French terms are more usual in speaking of details in laces. Thus the solid part of the pattern is called the _toilé_ or clothing, the links or ties are called _brides_, the meshed grounds are called _réseaux_, the outline to the edges of a pattern is called _cordonnet_ or _brodé_, the insertions of fanciful devices _modes_, the little loops _picots_. These terms are applicable to the various portions of laces made with the needle, on the pillow or by the machine.

The sequence of patterns in lace (which may be verified upon referring to figs. 1 to 23) is roughly as follows. From about 1540 to 1590 they were composed of geometric forms set within squares, or of crossed and radiating line devices, resulting in a very open fabric, stiff and almost wiry in effect, without _brides_ or _réseaux_. From 1590 may be dated the introduction into patterns of very conventional floral and even human and animal forms and slender scrolls, rendered in a tape-like texture, held together by _brides_. To the period from 1620 to 1670 belongs the development of long continuous scroll patterns with _réseaux_ and _brides_, accompanied in the case of needle-made laces with an elaboration of details, e.g. _cordonnet_ with massings of _picots_. Much of these laces enriched with fillings or _modes_ was made at this time. From 1650 to 1700 the scroll patterns gave way to arrangements of detached ornamental details (as in Pl. VI. fig. 22): and about 1700 to 1760 more important schemes or designs were made (as in Pl. fig. 19, and in fig. 24 in text), into which were introduced naturalistic renderings of garlands, flowers, birds, trophies, architectural ornament and human figures. Grounds composed entirely of varieties of _modes_ as in the case of the _réseau rosacé_ (Pl. V. fig. 21) were sometimes made then. From 1760 to 1800 small details consisting of bouquets, sprays of flowers, single flowers, leaves, buds, spots and such like were adopted, and sprinkled over meshed grounds, and the character of the texture was gauzy and filmy (as in figs. 40 and 42). Since that time variants of the foregoing styles of pattern and textures have been used according to the bent of fashion in favour of simple or complex ornamentation, or of stiff, compact or filmy textures.

[Illustration: FIG. 28.]

[Illustration: FIG. 29.]