XXVI
THE MARCHIONESS OF LA SOLANA
(By Goya)
In 1877, at the Exhibition of Sumptuary Arts which was held in Barcelona, a magnificent lace toca was shown, which was affirmed by its possessor, Señor Parcerisa, to be the work of a Spaniard of the later part of the fifteenth century, and to have belonged to Isabella the Catholic. The cathedral of the same city owns three thread-lace albs of sixteenth century workmanship, and the South Kensington Museum other pieces of Spanish lace of a comparatively early date, probably made by nuns and subtracted from the convents during the stormy scenes of 1835.
Dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we have a number of notices, though scrappy and inexplicit as a rule, relating to Spanish lace. One of the more complete and interesting is quoted by Riaño from the Microcosmia y Gobierno Universal del Hombre Cristiano (Barcelona, 1592) of Father Marcos Antonio de Campos. “I will not be silent,” wrote this austere padre, “and fail to mention the time lost these last years in the manufacture of cadenetas, a work of thread combined with gold and silver; this extravagance and excess reached such a point that 100 and 1000 ducats were spent in this work, in which, besides destroying the eyesight, wasting away the lives, and rendering consumptive the women who worked it, and preventing them from spending their time with more advantage to their souls, a few ounces of thread and years of time were wasted with so unsatisfactory a result. I ask myself, after this fancy shall have passed away, will the lady or gentleman find that the chemises that cost them 50 ducats, or the basquiña (petticoat) that cost them 300, are worth half their price, which certainly is the case with other objects in which the material itself is worth more?”
XXVII
A SPANISH MAJA
(A.D. 1777)
Several of the other notices relating to the lace-makers' craft are from the pen of Countess d'Aulnoy. Of the Countess of Lemos this writer says: “Her hair was white, but she carefully concealed it beneath a black blonde”; and of another Spanish lady, Doña Leonor de Toledo, that she wore “a green velvet skirt trimmed with Spanish blonde.” In the apartments of the young Princess of Monteleón the countess saw “a bed of green and gold damask, decorated with silver brocade and Spanish blonde. The sheets were fringed with English point-lace, extremely broad and handsome.” The countess also says that the petticoats of the Spanish ladies were of English point-lace,[53] and that these ladies, when they visited each other, wore on their heads “a toca of the richest English black point-lace, half a yard broad, forming points like the antique laces, beautiful to look at, and very dear. This head-dress suits them rarely.”
According to Balsa de la Vega, whose interesting articles on Spanish lace (published in the newspaper El Liberal) are worth perusal by all who are interested in this craft, about the middle of the seventeenth century the custom originated in Spain of making lace in broader pieces, dividing the pattern into a number of strips or fajas which were subsequently sewn together. In Belgium, on the contrary, the design was cut out, following the contour of the floral or other decoration.
In former ages gold and silver lace was made in France, and also at Genoa. I think it possible that Genoese merchants, many of whom are known to have settled in Granada and other Spanish cities, may first have introduced this branch of lace-making among the Spaniards. The sumptuary laws of Aragon, Castile, León, and Navarre would seem to show that lace of these materials, known as punto or redecilla de oro (or plata) was manufactured by the Spanish Jews between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. During the seventeenth century and part of the eighteenth, the quantity produced in the Peninsula was very large. In his Fenix de Cataluña, a work which was published at Barcelona in 1683, Feliu de la Peña says that Spanish randa or réseuil, of gold and silver, silk, thread, and aloe fibre, was better made in Spain than in the Netherlands. The journal of Bertaut de Rouen contains the following notice of this silver lace: “Le Roy y envoya le Lieutenant du Maistre des Postes, avec huit postillons, couverts de clinquant, et quarante chevaux de poste, dont il y en avoit huit avec des selles et des brides du Roy où il y avoit de la dentelle d'argent, que Monsieur le Mareschal fit distribuer à environ autant de gens que nous estions, sur une liste qu'il avoit envoyée quelques jours auparavant.”
