The Author has to express her grateful thanks to Signore Don Tommaso Torteroli, librarian to the city of Savona, and the author of an interesting pamphlet (Storia dei Merletti di Genova lavorati in Albissola, Sinigaglia, 1863), for specimens of the ancient laces of Albissola, and many other valuable communications.
A word of Arabic derivation, used for denoting a fringe for trimming, whether cotton, thread, or silk.
This custom of ornamenting the ends of the threads of linen was from the earliest times common, and is still occasionally met with both in the north and south of Europe. "At Bayonne they make the finest of linen, some of which is made open like network, and the thread is finer than hair" (Ingenious and Diverting Letters of a Lady's Travels in Spain, London, 1679).
There is a painting of the "Last Supper" at Hampton Court Palace, by Sebastian Ricci, in which the tablecloth is edged with cut-work; and in the great picture in the Louvre, by Paul Veronese, of the supper at the house of Simon the Canaanite, the ends of the tablecloth are likewise fringed and braided like the macramé.
Lace Schools in Italy.—At Coccolia, near Ravenna, Countess Pasolini founded a school on her property to teach and employ the peasant women and copy antique designs. Another more recently established school near Udine, in the province of Friuli, is under the direction of the Contessa di Brazza. Among charitable institutions which interest themselves in the lace industry are the Industrial School of SS. Ecce Homo at Naples, and San Ramiri at Pisa, which was originally founded by the Grand Dukes of Tuscany in the middle of the eighteenth century to teach weaving. This industry, and that of straw-plaiting, met with no success, and the school gradually developed into an industrial school in the modern sense. There are many schools on the same system in Florence, and one (San Pelegrino) at Bologna. At Sassari, in Sardinia, the deaf and dumb children in the great institution of the "Figlie di Maria" are taught to make net lace. Torchon and Brussels pillow lace is worked under the direction of the Sisters of Providence in the women's prison at Perugia.