We read in different authors that the art of making lace was brought from Italy, particularly from Genoa and Venice, to Germany and France; but this seems to allude only to the oldest kind, or that worked with the needle, and which was by far the dearest. At any rate, I have nowhere found an expression that can be applied to lace wove or knit. In the account given of the establishment of the lace manufacture under Colbert in 1666, no mention is made but of points[1439].
I will venture to assert that the knitting of lace is a German invention, first known about the middle of the sixteenth century; and I shall consider as true, until it be fully contradicted, the account given us that this art was found out, before the year 1561, at St. Annaberg, by Barbara wife of Christopher Uttmann. This woman died in 1575, in the sixty-first year of her age, after she had seen sixty-four children and grandchildren; and that she was the inventress of this art is unanimously affirmed by all the annalists of that part of Saxony[1440]. About that period the mines were less productive, and the making of veils, an employment followed by the families of the miners, had declined, as there was little demand for them. This new invention, therefore, was so much used that it was known in a short time among all the wives and daughters of the miners; and the lace which they manufactured, on account of the low price of labour, soon became fashionable, in opposition to the Italian lace worked with the needle, and even supplanted it in commerce.
A doubt, however, has often occurred to me, which may probably occur also to some of my readers, that this Barbara Uttmann may be entitled only to the merit of having made known and introduced this employment; and that, as has often happened to those who first brought a new art to their own country, she may have been considered as the inventress, though she only learned it in a foreign land, where it had been long practised. But I conjecture that this could not have been the case, as I find no mention of the art of knitting lace, nor any of the terms that belong to it, before the middle of the sixteenth century.
[The application of machinery to the manufacture of lace dates from the early part of the present century. The original fabric, called pillow or bone-lace, which formerly gave employment to so many thousands[1441] of the poorer classes, is now, especially in this country, almost entirely abandoned, in consequence of the invention of the bobbin-net machinery.
The bobbin-net trade is a branch of the cotton manufacture, the net being almost invariably formed of that material. It originated in successive improvements and alterations on the stocking-frame, by which it was adapted to the weaving of lace; though it is deserving of notice that it could have had no existence but for Samuel Crompton’s invention, the mule, which spins yarn suitable for that delicate fabric. The application of the stocking-frame to lace-making was first attempted by a frame-work knitter of Nottingham, named Hammond, about 1768; but it was not rendered completely successful till after improvements by John Heathcoat, also of Nottingham, for which a patent was secured in 1809. His improvements were of so important a character as to entitle him to be justly considered the inventor of the lace-frame, and the father of the bobbin-net manufacture. Means were besides discovered for making the net into various widths, instead of only one broad piece as at first, and likewise to work various ornaments into it by the aid of machinery, which, in point of complex ingenuity, far surpasses that used in any other branch of human industry[1442]. One of Fisher’s spotting-frames, according to Dr. Ure, is as much beyond the most curious chronometer in multiplicity of mechanical device, as that is beyond a common roasting-jack. The combined effects of these improvements is, that fabrics, for which £5 were paid during the existence of Mr. Heathcoat’s patent, may now be purchased for 2s. 6d. The different systems of bobbin-net machines are described in Ure’s Dictionary, or his Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain. It has been found that no machines, except those upon the circular-bolt principle invented by Mr. Morley of Derby, have been found capable of working successfully by mechanical power.]
FOOTNOTES
[1437] This is proved by the vestes Phrygioniæ of Pliny mentioned before in the article on [wire-drawing]. Those who made such works were called phrygiones. In the Menæchmi of Plautus, act ii. scene 3, a young woman, desirous of sending her mantle to be embroidered, says, “Pallam illam ad phrygionem ut deferas, ut reconcinnetur, atque ut opera addantur, quæ volo.” Compare Aulul. act iii. scene 5; Non. Marcellus, i. 10; and Isidor. 19, 22. The Greeks seem to have used the words κεντεῖν and καταστίζειν as we use the word embroider.
[1438] De Vestitu Sacerdot. Hebræorum, i. p. 212.
[1439] Count de Marsan, the youngest son of count d’Harcourt, brought from Brussels to Paris his former nurse, named Du Mont, with her four daughters, and procured for her an exclusive right to establish and carry on the lace manufactory in that capital. In a little time Du Mont and her daughters collected more than two hundred women, many of whom were of good families, who produced such excellent work that it was in little or nothing inferior to that imported from other countries.—Vie de Jean-Bapt. Colbert, Cologne, 1696, 12mo, p. 154.
[1440] The oldest information on this subject is to be found in Annabergæ Urbis Historia, auctore Paulo Jenisio. Dresdæ, 1605, 4to, ii. p. 33.—C. Melzer, Berglauftige Beschreibung der Stadt Schneeberg. 1684, p. 471.—Historia Schneebergensis. Schneeberg 1716, 4to, p. 882.—Tob. Schmidt, Zwickauische Chronik. Zwickau, 1656, 4to. ii. p. 384.—Lehmanns Historischer Schauplatz des Obererzgebirges. Leipzig, 1699, 4to, p. 771.