The pattern of Brussels lace has always followed the fashion of the day. The most ancient is in the Gothic style (Gothique pur), its architectural ornaments resembling a pattern cut out in paper. This style was replaced by the flowing lines which prevailed till the end of the last century. (Fig. 60.)
In its turn succeeded the genre fleuri of the First Empire, an assemblage of flowers, sprigs, columns, wreaths, and petits semés, such as spots, crosses, stars, etc. In flowers, the palm and pyramidal forms predominated. Under the Restoration the flowery style remained in fashion, but the palms and pyramids became more rare. Since 1830 great changes have taken place in the patterns, which every year become more elegant and more artistic.
Fig. 59.
Old Brussels. (Point d'Angleterre. Bobbin-made, circ. 1750.)
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The lace industry of Brussels is now divided into two branches, the making of detached sprigs, either point or pillow, for application upon the net ground, and the modern point à l'aiguille gazée, also called point de Venise, a needlework lace in which the flowers are made simultaneously with the ground, by means of the same thread, as in the old Brussels. It is made in small pieces, the joining concealed by small sprigs or leaves, after the manner of the old point, the same lace-worker executing the whole strip from beginning to end. Point gaze is now brought to the highest perfection, and the specimens in the Paris Exhibition of 1867 were remarkable for the precision of the work, the variety and richness of the "jours," and the clearness of the ground.
Brussels point à l'aiguille, point de gaze, is the most filmy and delicate of all point lace. Its forms are not accentuated by a raised outline of button-hole stitching, as in point d'Alençon and point d'Argentan, but are simply outlined by a thread. The execution is more open and slight than in early lace, and part of the toilé is made is close, part in open stitch, to give an appearance of shading. The style of the designs is naturalistic. (Plate LII.)
"Point Duchesse" is a bobbin lace of fine quality, in which the sprigs resemble Honiton lace united by "brides." Duchesse is a modern name. The work less resembles the old Brussels laces than the "Guipure de Flandre," made at Bruges in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which was much used for cravats, being exceedingly rich and soft in effect. Bobbin lace is sometimes named point Plat; the word point in this case signifies the fine quality of the lace, and has nothing to do with the needle-point. Point Plat appliqué is the name given to Belgian bobbin-made sprigs which are afterwards applied to machine-made net. Bobbin lace is not now made in Brussels itself.
Brussels was a favoured lace at the court of the First Empire.[[351]] When Napoleon and the Empress Marie Louise made their first public entry into the Belgian capital, they gave large orders for albs of the richest point, destined as a present for the Pope. The city, on its part, offered to the Empress a collection of its finest lace, on vrai réseau, of marvellous beauty; also a curtain of Brussels point, emblematic of the birth of the King of Rome, with Cupids supporting the drapery of the cradle. After the battle of Waterloo, Monsieur Troyaux, a manufacturer at Brussels, stopped his lace fabric, and, having turned it into a hospital for forty English soldiers, furnished them with linen, as well as other necessaries, and the attendance of trained nurses. His humane conduct did not go unrewarded; he received a decoration from his sovereign, while his shop was daily crowded with English ladies, who then, and for years after, made a point of purchasing their laces at his establishment when passing through Brussels. Monsieur Troyaux made a large fortune and retired from business.[[352]]