Flat Point.—Lace made without any raised-work or work in relief from raised points.
Flemish Point.—A needle-point guipure lace made in Flanders.
Footing.—A narrow lace which is used to keep the stitches of the
ground firm and to sew the lace to the garment upon which it is to be worn. Sometimes the footing is worked with the rest of the design. It is used also in making lace handkerchiefs and for quilling effects.
Genoa.—A name originally given to the gold and silver laces for which Genoa was famed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but now applied to lace made from the fiber of the aloe plant, and also to Macramé lace.
Gold.—Lace made of warp threads or cords of silk, or silk and cotton combined, with thin gold or silver gilt bands passing around it. It was anciently made of gold or silver gilt wire. It is now used chiefly to decorate uniforms, liveries and some church costumes, and occasionally for millinery. The metal is drawn through a wire, and, after being flattened between steel rollers, several strands of the flattened wire are passed around the silk simultaneously by means of a complex machine having a wheel and iron bobbins. The history of gold lace is interesting, as illustrating the oldest form of the lacemaker's art. From the days of Egypt and Rome down to medieval Venice, Italy and Spain, gold and silver gilt wire were used in making this kind of lace. The Jews in Spain were accomplished workers in this art, and in Sweden and Russia gold lace was the first lace made. In France gold lacemaking was a prosperous manufacture at Aurrillac and Arras, at which latter place it flourished up to the end of the eighteenth century. Gold lace was imported into England at an early date, and King James I established a monopoly in it. Its importation was prohibited by Queen Anne, on account of the extravagant uses of ornamentation to which it was put, and it was also prohibited in the reign of George II, to correct the prevalent taste for the foreign manufactured lace. The attempt was unsuccessful, for we are told that smuggling greatly increased. It became a "war to the knife between the revenue officer and society at large, all classes combined, town ladies of high degree, with waiting-maids, and the common sailor, to avoid the obnoxious duties and cheat the government."
Real Mechlin.
