The finest Brussels lace can only be made in the city itself. Antwerp, Ghent, and other localities have in vain tried to compete with the capital. The little town of Binche, long of lace-making celebrity, has been the most successful. Binche, however, now only makes pillow flowers (point plat), and those of an inferior quality.
When, in 1756, Mrs. Calderwood visited the Béguinage at Brussels, she wrote to a friend describing the lace-making. "A part of their work is grounding lace; the manufacture is very curious. One person works the flowers. They are all sold separate, and you will see a very pretty sprig, for which the worker only gets twelve sous. The masters who have all these people employed give them the thread to make them; this they do according to a pattern, and give them out to be grounded; after this they give them to a third hand, who 'hearts' all the flowers with the open work. That is what makes this lace so much dearer than the Mechlin, which is wrought all at once."[[337]]
The thread used in Brussels lace is of extraordinary fineness. It is made of flax grown in Brabant, at Hal and Rebecq-Rognon.[[338]] The finest quality is spun in dark underground rooms, for contact with the dry air causes the thread to break, so fine is it as almost to escape the sight. The feel of the thread as it passes through the fingers is the surest guide. The thread-spinner closely examines every inch drawn from her distaff, and when any inequality occurs stops her wheel to repair the mischief. Every artificial help is given to the eye. A background of dark paper is placed to throw out the thread, and the room so arranged as to admit one single ray of light upon the work. The life of a Flemish thread-spinner is unhealthy, and her work requires the greatest skill; her wages are therefore proportionably high.
Fig. 57.
Brussels Needle-point.
To face page 118.
It is the fineness of the thread which renders the real Brussels ground (vrai réseau, called in Flanders, "droschel") so costly.[[339]] The difficulty of procuring this fine thread at any cost prevented the art being established in other countries. We all know how, during the last fifty years of the bygone century, a mania existed in the United Kingdom for improving all sorts of manufactures. The Anti-Gallican Society gave prizes in London; Dublin and Edinburgh vied with their sister capital in patriotism. Every man would establish something to keep our native gold from crossing the water. Foreign travellers had their eyes open, and Lord Garden, a Scotch Lord of Session, who visited Brussels in 1787, thus writes to a countryman on the subject: "This day I bought you ruffles and some beautiful Brussels lace, the most light and costly of all manufactures. I had entertained, as I now suspect, a vain ambition to attempt the introduction of it into my humble parish in Scotland, but on inquiry I was discouraged. The thread is of so exquisite a fineness they cannot make it in this country. It is brought from Cambrai and Valenciennes in French Flanders, and five or six different artists are employed to form the nice part of this fabric, so that it is a complicated art which cannot be transplanted without a passion as strong as mine for manufactures, and a purse much stronger. At Brussels, from one pound of flax alone they can manufacture to the value of £700 sterling."
There were two kinds of ground used in Brussels lace, the bride and the réseau. The bride was first employed, but, even a century back,[[340]] had been discontinued, and was then only made to order. Nine ells of "Angleterre à bride" appear in the bills of Madame du Barry.[[341]] The lace so made was generally of most exquisite workmanship, as many magnificent specimens of "bas d'aube,"[[342]] now converted into flounces, attest. Sometimes bride and réseau were mixed.[[343]] In the inventories the description of ground is always minutely specified.[[344]] (See Plates XXXVII., XLVII., XLVIII., XLIX., LI.)
Fig. 58.