Fig. 278.—Lappet; Brussels; Eighteenth Century.
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.
Fig. 279.—Lappet; Point d’Alençon; Eighteenth Century.
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.
By degrees these patterns developed into a more solid massing of the flower forms, and the ties, or brides, became more irregular, but at the same time more evenly distributed.
Sometimes, as in Venetian point lace, the brides had little flowers worked on them, and in many instances the larger forms were raised to a considerable height or thickness. The groundwork in some of the scroll designs of Venetian point laces is composed of regular hexagons, and this was the starting-point of the future hexagonal mesh grounds.
