A great modern revival of lace making has taken place in the island of Burano, near Venice, which dates from the year 1872. This is due to the energy and ability of Madame Bellario, assisted by the patronage of the Queen of Italy and other members of the royal family. The variety made is the needle-point, and the designs are mostly good copies of the old Venetian and seventeenth-century French patterns.
Fig. 285.—Irish Point; Modern.
Machine-made lace has been brought to an advanced state of perfection, and Nottingham in England, where the first machines were set up, is now the great centre of this industry. The machine on which lace is made is a development of the stocking-knitting machine, and lace nets were first made on these machines about 1770. Heathcote, of Nottingham, invented the bobbin net machine, and Leaver invented the lace machine which is still in use with various improvements and modifications. Almost any kind of lace can now be imitated by the machine, but it is easily distinguished from the hand-made varieties by the greater regularity of texture, the absence in the machine-made point lace of any imitation of the button-hole stitch and of the elaborate plaiting that is found in the pillow hand-made laces.
CHAPTER VII.
MOSAICS.
The word mosaic is applied generally to a decorative work executed with small cubes or tesseræ made from various coloured marbles or enamels, cut into convenient sizes according to the requirements or scale of the design.
These cubes of enamels or marbles are placed in a bed of cement which is first spread on the surface of the wall or panel. The composition of this cement has varied in the different periods and countries and according to the nature of the ground which receives it.
The Italian method is to spread on the wall a thick coating of mastic cement composed of marble dust or powdered stone, lime, and linseed oil; when this cement is partly set a coating of fine plaster is laid on the top and brought up to the level of the intended surface of the mosaic; the design is traced on this surface, and the plaster is then cut away with a fine small chisel, little by little, just sufficient at a time to receive a small quantity of the tesseræ or cubes, which are first dipped in moist cement and inserted in their proper places, matching the colour copied from the cartoon. When the work is finished the surface is brought to a uniform level by a polishing process.
Some of the earlier kinds of mosaic were composed of pieces of marble or other stones cut in geometric slabs or rectangular shapes; this kind was called by the Romans lithostratum, and was used chiefly in pavements; opus sectile is a kind of pavement mosaic made of different colours, the marbles being cut into small regular portions; opus tesselatum is a variety of the opus sextile, but has its component parts made of geometric forms in which straight and parallel lines predominate in the design; and opus vermiculatum has its tesseræ composed of small cubes or bits of enamel (glass mosaic), terra-cotta, or marble, which are cut into all kinds of shapes, so as to form a more pliant or softer contour to the proposed design. This latter variety is used in picture mosaics and in the goldsmiths’ work and jewellery made at the present time in Rome and Venice.
Another kind of mosaic used in pavement is that known as opus Alexandrinum. Large slabs of different coloured marbles have been used as floor pavements and as wall linings, both on the exterior and in the interior of churches and other buildings in Italy and elsewhere. Most of this work is of a geometric pattern; the different pieces of stone, marble, terra-cotta, or enamel, being cut into exact shapes to fit a preconceived pattern, form a species of inlay, and do not therefore come under the head of a true mosaic. Coloured marbles and precious stones have been used in the decoration of furniture by the Italians and French, which is known by the name of “Florentine mosaic,” or “pietra dura.”