In the Victoria and Albert Museum there are two women's ruffs from Nuremberg belonging to the latter part of the sixteenth or early seventeenth century, and embroidered in blue and black silk and white cotton, and edged with a coarse thread Mechlin lace with a large meshed irregular plaited réseau, probably late seventeenth century.
Perhaps the finest collection of old German point is preserved, or rather was so, in 1840, in the palace of the ancient, but now extinct, Prince-Archbishops of Bamberg.
Several more pattern-books were published in Germany. Among the most important is that printed at Augsburg, by John Schwartzenburg, 1534. It is printed in red, and the patterns, mostly borders, are of delicate and elegant design. (See Appendix.)
Secondly comes one of later date, published by Sigismund Latomus at Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1605; and lastly, that of "Metrepière Quinty, demorāt dempre leglīe de iii roies," a culōge (Cologne), 1527.
In Austria, writes Peuchet, "les dentelles de soie et de fil ne sont pas moins bien travaillées." Many of the Protestant lace-workers took refuge in the cities of Freyburg and Altenburg.
There is a collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum of cuffs embroidered in satin stitch, and edged with bobbin-lace "torchon" of the peasants' work in Slavonia in the eighteenth century. The patterns resemble Cretan and Russian laces.
There is a comparatively modern variety of lace made in Austria and Bohemia which resembles the old Italian bobbin-lace; the school where it is taught is under Government patronage. This industry was established as a means of relieving the distress of the Tyrol in 1850, and continues to flourish.
Austria sent to the International Exhibition of 1874 specimens of needle-point and point plat made in the school of the Grand Duchess Sophie, and specimens of border laces in the style of the Auvergne laces were exhibited from the Erzgebirge and Bohemia.
At the Paris Exhibition, Austria and Vienna both exhibited copies of old needle-point laces.
At Laybach, in Austria, there was at one time a bobbin-lace factory which produced lace much esteemed in the eighteenth century.