The flowering of the lace-art was part of the great Renaissance (lagging behind, to be sure, the major arts) and now was no longer the work of slaves, but regarded as an important, independent métier, and happily it usually escaped the despotism of the mediæval corporations. Italy, probably through her exploitation in the early part of the 15th century of her Greek Colonies, was its first western home, and Venice, the center for the exquisite needle laces of which our museums fortunately still preserve specimens. While laces made with the needle and single thread were flourishing under the Doges, bobbin laces, twisted and braided with many threads, were being made in Sicily and in other sections of the country.
From Venice, the secrets of the art traveled easily in several directions, and probably about the close of the 15th century by way of the thriving port of Antwerp, to the industrious and beauty-loving Flanders, where the seed fell on most fertile soil. Flanders possest a multitude of workers already skilled in an allied art, that of weaving, and the necessary lace material in her valley of the Lys, the finest flax region of the world. Valenciennes, Lille, Malines, Ghent, Bruges, turned to lace-making with a veritable passion; it spread throughout wide districts of what are now Northern France and Belgium.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, the lace industry made phenomenal progress, both extensively and intensively. Holland and England sent continually larger orders to Flanders. As cloths grew finer and softer, and the mode of wearing them more graceful, and as daintier linens were increasingly employed, lace became ever more filmy and exquisite. A worker spent perhaps a whole year on a single meter of Valenciennes, one head-dress cost as much as 200,000 livres. Every lace had its time, its season. During this epoch, needle laces were supreme, as bobbin laces were to be in the 18th century.
Under Louis XIV lace reached its climax of perfection and beauty. Colbert imported lace-women from each center where they had been conspicuously successful. He encouraged the invention of new designs and technique; he subsidized schools in many cities, at Reims, Alençon, Arras, Sedan, and he threatened with the death penalty those who might attempt to carry lace secrets beyond the French borders,—in every way he sought to develop an art that should belong peculiarly to France. Thus directed and subsidized by the state, and nurtured and stimulated by a beauty-seeking court, whose love of luxury was still controlled by taste and refinement, it is not surprizing that this lace-period surpassed any other known. It was true of the Court of Louis XIV as of that of Louis XIII that a seigneur was known by the number and quality of his lace points; some of them possest several hundred garnitures. Unfortunately the workers did not profit by this brilliant development,—they seem from the beginning predestined to be the victims of a social and economic slavery.
But there were already evidences of an attempt to control a demand for luxury that threatened disaster. With the 16th century, heavy duties and excess taxes were levied upon lace. An edict, dated 1729, prohibited the wearing of it, in the hope of checking over-extravagance in dress.
FIFTEENTH CENTURY PORTRAIT
Showing heavy brocade as yet unrelieved by linen or lace trimming