Hand-Made Laces

Hand-Made Laces are divided into two great classes the "needle-point" and the "pillow-made"; the former is made with a needle on parchment, and the latter by twisting or plaiting threads from bobbins on a pillow.

Needle-Point Lace

Needle-Point Lace is an offspring of embroidery, and pillow-made lace is the highest artistic development of twisted and plaited threads. The foundation lines or threads of the pattern, various kinds of grounds, and the edging in needle-point lace, are usually worked over with a button-hole stitch in the ordinary course of making, while this distinguishing feature of needle-point lace is absent in the pillow-made varieties.

The Earliest Forms Of Lace

The Earliest Forms Of Lace were known as "lacis," or darned netting, and a species of embroidery called "cut-work." One kind of cutwork consisted in cutting, van-dyking, or scalloping the edges of collars, cuffs, or garments into various shapes, and overcasting the edges with the button-hole stitch; another kind was when an embroidered design was wrought on stretched network, and the pattern wrought in looped stitches with the needle. This was the transitional form between embroidery and lace work.

"Lacis," Or Darned Netting

"Lacis," Or Darned Netting, was worked in regulated stitches on a ground formed in squares, called "reseuil," and sometimes it was formed of pieces of linen cut out and applied to the net. Ornamental open-work of cut linen and other material embroidered with silks of various colours, gold and silver threads, and woollen yarns, were made before the sixteenth century. All these varieties, though akin to lace work, required some kind of a foundation, but lace consists of a combination of threads alone, and has no foundation.

Pattern-books were published in Venice of designs for "cutworks" and embroidery of all kinds as early as 1527, and later, in 1531, a book was published by Tagliente, giving the descriptions and methods employed for making the various stitches used in embroidery for hangings, costumes, and altar-cloths. Some of the geometric designs in this book have been used for point-lace patterns. The term used by the Italians, punto in aere (aria), or "point in air," is thought by Mr. Alan Cole to mean needle-point lace. The geometric design (Fig. 276) of Genoese point is something very much akin to the punto in aria patterns.

At Antwerp and Cologne, and other cities in Germany and Flanders, imitations of the Venetian pattern-books were published, which served the lace makers of those countries for their patterns.

The Flemish lace workers imitated to a great extent the Venetian patterns, and in later years those of the French.

Lace is made in silk, cotton, flax, and sometimes in gold and silver thread, aloe-fibre, and hair.

In the early kinds of lace the pattern was united by single threads covered with button-hole stitch, and edged with little loops, the flowers or pattern made of compact "clothing," or woven threads (Fig. 277D), and the ground in its simplest variety by meshes made by plaiting (Fig. 277A), as in the Brussels and Honiton four-thread ground, or in other varieties, by simple twisting (Fig. 277B).

The Ground Or Mesh

The Ground Or Mesh (r*šseau) is usually hexagonal, and is worked together with the pattern in the Valenciennes, Mechlin, and Buckingham laces, but in the Brussels and Honiton the ground is worked in afterwards, or the pattern is sewn on. Other fancy grounds or "fillings" are called "modes" or "brides," which consist of little ties ornamented with "picots" or small loops (see Figs. 280, 284). A more elaborate form of fillings may be seen in the Brussels and Alen*¡on lappets (Figs. 278, 279); in the latter may be seen lozenges and flat hexagons of a solid character set in frames of hexagons and on the intersections of the squares. This groundwork has been termed r*šseau-rosac*š.

The outline around the pattern in some laces is called the "cordonnet"; it is an important feature of the Alen*¡on point lace (Fig. 279), where it consists of a horsehair overcast with a button-hole stitch of thread; it is also a distinctive mark of the pillow-made Mechlin lace (Fig. 283), but never occurs in the true or vrate Valenciennes.

The Oldest Of White Hand-Made Laces

The Oldest Of White Hand-Made Laces is the Italian needle-point variety, which is a development of embroidery. It is difficult to give the exact date of the invention of needle-point lace, for in the earliest specimens of Italian work, in which the patterns are copied from the geometric designs of the Venetian pattern-books, they are usually a mixture of needle-point and of plaited and twisted work, but the latter may have been done with a hooked needle, and not pillow-made. On the other hand, before point lace was so universally made by the Venetians, the pattern-books were published about the middle of the sixteenth century for merletti a piombini, or "lace made with leaden bobbins" - probably a species of pillow-made lace - and some Italian work of this kind is still in existence that is quite as early in date as that of the oldest needlepoint variety. This would prove that there was little or no difference in the age of either invention, although perhaps priority ought to be given to the needle-point variety.

Guipure

Guipure is a name that has been given to lace in which the flowers are united with ties or "brides picotees" (Fig. 280), but the term guipure is more properly a kind of filigree work made with stiffened cords like gimp or wire, the pattern being formed of gimp bent into a flattened design by the needle, and united where the forms touch each other (Fig. 281).

The patterns in the early laces were, as we have seen, purely geometric forms, such as squares with circles enclosed, divided by radiating lines and diagonals, rosettes, lozenges, and small trimming borders of rectangular panels, all worked on foundation lines that resembled in some degree the main lines of a spider's web.