Monument of Bishop Stafford, Exeter Cathedral.
These alterations in course of time found their way to England, there being much intercourse between their brethren here established and those remaining in Flanders. The lace continued to get finer and closer in texture, the flax thread being required so fine that it became necessary to spin it in damp underground cellars. That the workers in England could not compete successfully against the foreigner with their home-made threads we find over and over again. They also altered the Brussels designs, and instead of the beautiful "fillings" and open-work stitches, substituted heavy guipure bars. By this period "cordonnet" or "gimp" had come into use in Brussels lace. The "vrai réseau" or pillow-net ground, succeeded the "bride" about the end of the seventeenth century. This fashion enabled the flowers to be made separately and worked in with the net afterwards, or rather the net was worked into the flowers on the pillow. It was from the introduction of these separate sprigs that Honiton lace was able to compete with Brussels. The pattern in Fig. 153 is sewn on the plain pillow ground,[[1151]] which was very beautiful and regular, but very expensive. It was made of the finest thread procured from Antwerp, the market price of which, in 1790, was £70 per pound,[[1152]] and an old lace-maker told the author her father had, during the war, paid a hundred guineas a pound to the smugglers for this highly-prized and then almost unattainable commodity.
Nor were the lace-worker's gains less remunerative. She would receive as much as eighteen shillings a yard for the workmanship alone of a piece of this elaborate net, measuring scarce two inches in width;[[1153]] and one of the old lace-dealers showed Mrs. Treadwin a piece of ground eighteen inches square, for the making of which she was paid fifteen pounds shortly before the establishment of the machine net manufacture.[[1154]] The price of lace was proportionately high. A Honiton veil would often cost a hundred guineas.
Fig. 152.
Monument of Lady Doddridge. + 1614. (Exeter Cathedral.)
The Flemish character of Fig. 158 is unmistakable. The design of the flower vase resembles those of the old Angleterre à bride, and in execution this specimen may fairly warrant a comparison with the productions of Brabant. If really of English make, we should place its fabrication at the beginning of the eighteenth century, for it was long before the Devonshire lace-makers could rival in beauty the "cordonnet" of the Flemish workers.
Fig. 154 is an example of the pattern worked in the favourite design of the butterfly and the acorn, already familiar to us in the old point d'Angleterre and in the smock of Queen Elizabeth.
Fig. 153.
