De héros en héros, d'âge en âge embelli."
—Delille. Les Jardins.
Although there long existed lace-makers in the environs of Paris, the establishment for which Chantilly was celebrated owes its formation to Catherine de Rohan, Duchesse de Longueville, who sent for workwomen from Dieppe and Havre to her château of Étrepagny, where she retired at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and established schools.
The town of Chantilly, being the centre of a district of lace-makers, has given its name to the laces of the surrounding district, the trade being distributed over more than a hundred villages, the principal of which are Saint-Maximien, Viarmes, Méric, Luzarches, and Dammartin. The proximity to Paris, affording a ready sale for its productions, caused the manufacture to prosper, and the narrow laces which they first made—gueuse and point de Paris—were soon replaced by guipures, white thread, and black silk lace.[[589]]
Plate LVIII.
French (Or Dutch).—Borders of gold and silver thread and gimp lace. Eighteenth century. From the Treasury of St. Mary's Church, Dantzig. Widths: 1⅛, 1¾ and 4¼ in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
To face page 212.
Some twenty years since there dwelt at Chantilly an elderly lady, grand-daughter of an old proprietor, who had in her possession one of the original pattern-books of the fabric, with autograph letters of Marie Antoinette, the Princess de Lamballe, and other ladies of the court, giving their orders and expressing their opinion on the laces produced. We find in the inventories of the last century, "coëffure de cour de dentelle de soye noire," "mantelet garni de dentelles noires," a "petite duchesse et une respectueuse," and other "coëffes," all of "dentelle de soye noire."[[590]]