FACING PAGE
H.M. Queen Elizabeth of Belgium,[Frontispiece]
Fifteenth Century Portrait[32]
Showing heavy brocade as yet unrelieved by linen or lace trimming.
Portrait of Charles IX (1570)[33]
Linen collar showing picot edge made with the needle.
Portrait Towards End of Sixteenth Century[40]
Showing collar ornamented with bobbin-made cluny.
Anne of Austria by Van Dyck[41]
About 1635, cluny lace made with bobbins.
Abbé Berraly School, Turnhout[56]
General view.
Nine-Year Children Making Point de Paris[57]
Point de Paris Class[64]
On dark days lamps are lighted behind bottles filled with water, the rays passing through, fall in spotlights on the cushions.
Winding Bobbins for the Children[65]
Point de Lille, or Point D’Hollande[72]
Mesh showing “Esprits” or dots characteristic of this bobbin lace.
End of a Point de Paris Scarf About 2½ Yards Long on Which Colette Worked One Year[73]
In the Abbé Berraly School, Colette, 16-Years Old, Works with 1,000 Bobbins[73]
Belgian Lace Meshes(Plate I)[80]
After Pierre Verhagen in “La Dentelle Belge.”
Belgian Lace Meshes (Plate II)[81]
After Pierre Verhagen in “La Dentelle Belge.”
Bobbin Laces[88]
Malines, Point de Paris, Valenciennes.
Cushion Cover Representing Belgium’s Gratitude to America for Bread[89]
Point de Paris lace combined with linen. The lower right-hand centerpiece shows the rose design, emblem of Queen Elizabeth.
Bobbin Laces[104]
Torchon, Cluny, Old Flemish, Binche.
Table Cloth Showing Arms of the Allies[105]
Cut linen with squares of Venise surrounded by filet and cluny; Venise made with the needle; cluny with bobbins.
A “Marie Antoinette” in Chantilly Lace[128]
Made with bobbins, near Grammont.
Cushion Cover[129]
Center Venise, borders Valenciennes, lace executed by 12 workers in one month, embroidery and mounting by four women in two months; design by M. de Rudder.
Tea Cloth[129]
Point de Paris, cock design.
Lace Makers of Bruges[144]
Bruges and Similar Bobbin Laces[145]
Lace Normal School, Bruges. Beginner’s Class[152]
Symbolic color pattern on left-hand easel; demonstration bobbins attached to colored threads at right.
Bed Cover in Duchesse or Brussels Lace[153]
Made with bobbins; executed in Flanders by 30 women in three months; design by the Lace Committee.
Rosaline, which Closely Resembles Bruges[160]
Details for Bruges Lace[160]
Made with bobbins on round cushion.
Doily Set in Point de Paris in the “Animals of the Allies” Design, Executed at Turnhout[161]
Point de Flandres or Flanders Lace[176]
Flowers made with bobbins, mesh with needle; designs by the Lace Committee.
Handkerchief in Needle-Point[177]
Made near Alost. Both mesh and flowers made with needle.
Detail Showing Seven Different Filling-in Stitches[177]
Venise Designs by the Brussels Lace Committee[180]
Handkerchief and Jewel Boxes; Flanders and Venise Over Satin and Velvet[181]
Venise Banquet Cloth Presented by the Lace Committee to H.M. Queen Elizabeth on Her Return from Exile[192]–[193]
Design by M. de Rudder; executed by 30 best Venise-makers in Belgium in six months.
Cushion Cover in Venise[196]
Pekinese dog; design by M. Allard.
Table Center in Flanders with Center and Border of Venise[197]
Design by Lace Committee; executed in West Flanders by five workers in 15 days.
“The Tourney” Banquet Cloth[208]
Design reproducing a mediæval painting in Tournai, executed in Venise lace by 10 workers in one month, mounting and embroidery by five workers in one month. Price in Brussels, 1,000 francs.
“Arms of Allies” Cushion Cover in Venise, with Details in Flanders[209]
Needle-Point Scarf Expressing Gratitude of Belgium to Holland. Presented to H.M. Queen Wilhelmina[216]–[217]
Executed by 30 workers in eight months.
Bobbin Laces[224]
Malines; Application, flowers sewn on tulle; Duchesse, with Needle-Point insertion.
Application Details to be Sewed on Tulle[225]
Upper flower shows open spaces left by bobbin worker for needle worker; lower flower shows both bobbin and needle work completed.
Wedding Gift of Mr. Hoover to Mrs. Page[240]
Executed in Venise and Flanders lace by 30 women working three months. American eagles with outspread wings, protecting the Belgian Lion enchained in the four corners.
Flanders—Needle Mesh, Bobbin Flowers[240]
Venise Lace Center, Border of Valenciennes[241]
Lace executed in Flanders by 40 women in two months; embroidery and mounting in Brussels by four women in three months.
Valenciennes, Square Mesh[241]
Fan in Needle-Point[256]
Executed by three women in six weeks. “Shields of the Allies,” design drawn by M. Knoff for the Lace Committee.
Eighteenth Century Marriage Veil in Needle-Point, Belonging to the Comtesse Elizabeth D’Oultremont[257]
It would take 40 workers about a half year to copy this veil.
At Work on Details of a Needle-Point Scarf to be Presented to Queen Elizabeth[268]
Needle Lace Class-Room in the Trade Union Lace School at Zele[268]
Needle-Point Illustration for the Fable of the Fox and the Grapes[269]
In the Zele Lace School. Joining Details of the Needle-Point Scarf Presented to Queen Elizabeth [269]

PREFACE

I entered the lace-world by the grim door of war. For it was the war-time work of the women of the Brussels Lace Committee that opened the way to me.

Long before the war, Queen Elizabeth in Belgium, like Queen Margharita in Italy, had sought means to protect the lace worker, through centuries the victim of an economic injustice, not to say crime, and to rescue and develop an industry threatened from many sides. In 1911 she gave her royal encouragement to a group of prominent Belgian women who organized as “Amies de la Dentelle,” Friends of Lace, and began a lace-saving campaign by trying to remedy the deplorable condition of most of the lace schools, the defective teaching, long hours, and pitiful pay. They could insist in the schools, as they could not elsewhere, on the right to inspect, to grant or refuse patronage. They subsidized worthy institutions, and advocated the establishment of a lace normal school and of a special school of design. Education they felt to be the main road leading out of the prevailing misery, and they were making progress along this road, when suddenly the Invader poured over their borders.

While other women hurried to open refuges and hospitals and soup-kitchens, a few of the Friends of Lace remembered first the lace-makers; and by November 1914, had effected a war emergency organization, known as the Brussels Lace Committee, with Mrs. Whitlock as honorary president. Unfortunately most of the lace dealers failed to cooperate with them, but they won the approval of the powerful Belgian Comité National, which, with the Commission for Relief in Belgium, carried on the relief of the occupied territory throughout the war. And with an initial gift of $25,000 from America to be converted into lace, they were able to start their work. It soon came to be directed altogether by four women; The Comtesse Elizabeth d’Oultremont, Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Elizabeth; the Vicomtesse de Beughem, an American; Madame Josse Allard, and Madame Kefer-Mali. At the same time the aid and protection of workers on filets and other commonly called “imitation” laces, was assigned by the Comité National to another group of women, the “Union Patriotique des Femmes Belges.”

The Brussels Lace Committee employed, as trusted business director of their offices, M. Collart, generously released to them by the Allard Bank, and as technical expert, Madame Sharlaecken, before the war with the Compagnie des Indes, one of the largest lace houses in Belgium; and as the work developed, an increasing number of designers and aides necessary to a lace business were added.

During the first few months the situation seemed utterly hopeless; thread was impossible to obtain; and even if the thread were forthcoming, no one could say who would buy the laces they might encourage the women to make; the Germans were cutting off successive sections of the lace-making areas where they had established sub-committees, and were forbidding communication with them. And yet these four women continued bravely to create the foundations of a great lace business—for an extraordinary commercial organization grew from their efforts.

However, despite all their intelligence and devotion, such a result would have been impossible but for a hard-won diplomatic victory. In early 1915 Mr. Hoover forced an international agreement which permitted the C. R. B. to bring thread for the Lace Committee into Belgium, and to take out an equivalent weight in lace, to be sold in the Allied countries for the benefit of the workers. England required a rigid control of the thread, and that it be given only to establishments open to inspection by the C. R. B. At one time these thread shipments were stopt—a period of cruel anxiety for the women—but happily after a re-adjustment they were continued. And once these international guaranties were obtained, the Belgian Comité National was able to arrange for the distribution of the thread to the various, even remote, lace centers, and for the return of the finished laces to Brussels. They granted the women a subsidy of $10,000 and insured to each dentellière the chance to make at least three francs worth of lace a week—a small minimum, to be sure, but every one understood it might be increased later, and that if each of the many thousands of workers was to have an equal opportunity, it could not in the beginning be more. After this the Lace Committee had at times as many as 45,000 women on its lists. The work in the schools and out of them began to bear fruit. The sweating system, and payment in kind (in clothing and food) were practically wiped out, and inspection and control established. Everywhere the standard of design and of execution was raised; old patterns were restored and improved, and by the end of the war 2,237 new designs had been added.