Ce Pelican contient en longueur 70 mailles et en hauteur 65.
The author of the Consolations aux Dames, 1620, in addressing the ladies, thus specially alludes to the custom of working on quintain:—
"Vous n'employiez les soirs et les matins
A façonner vos grotesques quaintains,
O folle erreur—O despence excessive."
Again, the pattern was made without any linen at all; threads, radiating at equal distances from one common centre, served as a framework to others which were united to them in squares, triangles, rosettes, and other geometric forms, worked over with button-hole stitch (point noué), forming in some parts open-work, in others a heavy compact embroidery. In this class may be placed the old conventual cut-work of Italy, generally termed Greek lace, and that of extraordinary fineness and beauty which is assigned to Venice. Distinct from all these geometric combinations was the lacis[[61]] of the sixteenth century, done on a network ground (réseau), identical with the opus araneum or spider-work of continental writers, the "darned netting" or modern filet brodé à reprises of the French embroiderers.
The ground consisted of a network of square meshes, on which was worked the pattern, sometimes cut out of linen and appliqué,[[62]] but more usually darned with stitches like tapestry. This darning-work was easy of execution, and the stitches being regulated by counting the meshes,[[63]] effective geometric patterns could be produced. Altar-cloths, baptismal napkins, as well as bed coverlets and table-cloths, were decorated with these squares of net embroidery. In the Victoria and Albert Museum there are several gracefully-designed borders to silk table-covers in this work, made both of white and coloured threads, and of silk of various shades. The ground, as we learn from a poem on lacis, affixed to the pattern-book of "Milour Mignerak,"[[64]] was made by beginning a single stitch, and increasing a stitch on each side until the required size was obtained. If a strip or long border was to be made, the netting was continued to its prescribed length, and then finished off by reducing a stitch on each side till it was decreased to one, as garden nets are made at the present day.
This plain netted ground was called réseau, rézel, rézeuil,[[65]] and was much used for bed-curtains, vallances, etc.
In the inventory of Mary Stuart, made at Fotheringay,[[66]] we find, "Le lict d'ouvrage à rezel"; and again, under the care of Jane Kennethee, the "Furniture of a bedd of network and Holland intermixed, not yet finished."
When the réseau was decorated with a pattern, it was termed lacis, or darned netting, the Italian punto ricamato a maglia quadra, and, combined with point-coupé, was much used for bed-furniture. It appears to have been much employed for church-work,[[67]] for the sacred emblems. The Lamb and the Pelican are frequently represented.[[68]]