XXX
HANDKERCHIEF OF CATALAN LACE
(Presented to Queen Victoria of Spain, on her marriage)
A good deal of lace, principally of the less elaborate and cheaper kinds, was formerly manufactured in the kingdom of Valencia. Cabanillas wrote in 1797 that at Novelda, a small town of this region, more than two thousand women and children worked at making laces, which were hawked about the country by others of the townspeople. Swinburne remarks upon the same industry, and Ricord tells us in his pamphlet (1791) that cotton lace was made in six factories at Torrente, Alicante, and Orihuela.[57] The total product of these factories for the said year was 1,636,100 yards, which sold at from nine to twelve reales the yard. Laborde wrote some years later, in the first volume of his book, that lace, and gold and silver fringes were then made at Valencia, and in the fourth volume; “Gold and silver laced stuffs, and velvets of all colours brocaded and flowered with the same metals, are made at Toledo, Barcelona, Valencia, and Talavera de la Reina; and the manufacture at the last-named city annually consumes four thousand marks of silver, and seventy marks of gold.
“At Barcelona, Talavera de la Reina, and Valencia are also manufactured gold and silver edgings, lace, and fringes, though not in a sufficient quantity to answer the demands of Spain; and the gold is very badly prepared, having too red a cast.”
Lace-making was an ancient and important industry of every part of Cataluña. Lace articles for ladies' headwear are known to have been made throughout this region at least as far back as the fifteenth century, and Capmany reminds us that by a cedula dated from the Cortes of Monzón, December 16th, 1538, the Emperor Charles the Fifth confirmed the Ordinances of the guild, established long before, of the tejedores de velos of Barcelona. Technical provisions are embodied in this code, concerning various articles of lace employed as headwear, such as alfardillas, quiñales, and espumilla, all of which were largely exported to America.
The attention of foreigners who travelled in Cataluña towards the eighteenth century was constantly attracted by the lace-makers. Swinburne mentions “Martorell, a large town, where much black lace is manufactured,” and “Espalungera (Esparraguera?), a long village, full of cloth and lace manufacturers,” and wrote of Sarriá and its surroundings, close to Barcelona: “The women in the little hamlets were busy with their bobbins making black lace, some of which, of the coarser kind, is spun out of the leaf of the aloe. It is curious, but of little use, for it grows mucilaginous with washing.”
XXXI
CURTAIN OF SPANISH LACE
(Point and Pillow Work. Modern)
“Martorell,” wrote Townsend in 1786, “is one long, narrow street, in which poverty, industry, and filth, although seldom seen together, have agreed to take up their abode. The inhabitants make lace, and even the little children of three and four years old are engaged in this employment.” Laborde wrote that at the beginning of the eighteenth century seventeen manufactories of blondes were established at Mataró, and adds of Barcelona province generally at that time: “Laces and blondes constitute the employment of women and children. The work is principally done at Pineda, Malgrat, San Celoni, Tosa, Canet, Arenys, Callela, San-Pol, Mataró, Esparraguera, Martorell, and Barcelona…. The laces are almost all shipped for the New World.”