Fig. 2.—CORNER OF A BED-COVER OF PILLOW-MADE LACE OF A TAPE-LIKE TEXTURE WITH CHARACTERISTICS IN THE TWISTED AND PLAITED THREADS RELATING THE WORK TO ITALIAN “MERLETTI A PIOMBINI” OR EARLY ENGLISH “BONE LACE.”
Possibly made in Flanders or Italy during the early part of the 17th or at the end of the 16th century. The design includes the Imperial double-headed eagle of Austria with the ancient crown of the German Empire. (Victoria and Albert Museum.)

Plate II.

Fig. 3.—THREE VANDYKE OR DENTATED BORDERS OFITALIAN LACE OF THE LATE 16th CENTURY.
Style usually called “Reticella” on account of the patterns beingbased on repeated squares or reticulations. The two first bordersare of needlepoint work; the lower border is of such pillow laceas was known in Italy as “merletti a piombini.”
Fig. 7.—BORDER OF FLAT NEEDLEPOINT LACE OFFULLER TEXTURE THAN THAT OF FIG. 3, ANDFROM A FREER STYLE OF DESIGN IN WHICHCONVENTIONALIZED FLORAL FORMS HELD TOGETHERBY SMALL BARS OR TYES ARE USED.
Style called “Punto in Aria,” chiefly on account of its independenceof squares or reticulations. Italian. Early 17th century.
Fig. 5.—CORNER OF A NAPKIN OR HANDKERCHIEFBORDERED WITH “RETICELLA” NEEDLEPOINTLACE IN THE DESIGN OF WHICH ACORNS ANDCARNATIONS ARE MINGLED WITH GEOMETRICRADIATIONS. Probably of English early 17th century.
Fig. 4.—CATHERINE DE MEDICI, WEARING A LINENUPTURNED COLLAR OF CUT WORK AND NEEDLEPOINTLACE. Louvre. About 1540.
Fig. 6.—AMELIE ELISABETH, COMTESSE DE HAINAULT,WEARING A RUFF OF NEEDLEPOINT RETICELLALACE. By Morcelse. The Hague. About 1600.
(Figs. 4 and 6 by permission of Messrs Braun, Clement & Co.,Dornach (Alsace), and Paris.)

Fig. 24.—Portion of a Flounce of Needlepoint Lace, French, early 18th century, “Point de France.” The honeycomb ground is considered to be a peculiarity of “Point d’Argentan”: some of the fillings are made in the manner of the “Point d’Alençon” réseau.

France and England were not far behind Venice and Flanders in making needle and pillow lace. Henry III. of France (1574-1589) appointed a Venetian, Frederic Vinciolo, pattern maker for varieties of linen needle works and laces to his court. Through the influence of this fertile designer the seeds of a taste for lace in France were principally sown. But the event which par excellence would seem to have fostered the higher development of the French art of lace-making was the aid officially given it in the following century by Louis XIV., acting on the advice of his minister Colbert. Intrigue and diplomacy were put into action to secure the services of Venetian lace-workers; and by an edict dated 1665 the lace-making centres at Alençon, Quesnoy, Arras, Reims, Sedan, Château Thierry, Loudun and elsewhere were selected for the operations of a company in aid of which the state made a contribution of 36,000 francs; at the same time the importation of Venetian, Flemish and other laces was strictly forbidden.[5] The edict contained instructions that the lace-makers should produce all sorts of thread work, such as those done on a pillow or cushion and with the needle, in the style of the laces made at Venice, Genoa, Ragusa and other places; these French imitations were to be called “points de France.” By 1671 the Italian ambassador at Paris writes, “Gallantly is the minister Colbert on his way to bring the ‘lavori d’aria’ to perfection.” Six years later an Italian, Domenigo Contarini, alludes to the “punto in aria,” “which the French can now do to admiration.” The styles of design which emanated from the chief of the French lace centre, Alençon, were more fanciful and less severe than the Venetian, and it is evident that the Flemish lace-makers later on adopted many of these French patterns for their own use. The provision of French designs (fig. 24) which owes so much to the state patronage, contrasts with the absence of corresponding provision in England and was noticed early in the 18th century by Bishop Berkeley. “How,” he asks, “could France and Flanders have drawn so much money from other countries for figured silk, lace and tapestry, if they had not had their academies of design?”

The humble endeavours of peasantry in England (which could boast of no schools of design), Germany, Sweden, Russia and Spain could not result in work of so high artistic pretension as that of France and Flanders. In the 18th century good lace was made in Devonshire, but it is only in recent years that to some extent the hand lace-makers of England and Ireland have become impressed with the necessity of well-considered designs for their work. Pillow lace making under the name of “bone lace making” was pursued in the 17th century in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, and in 1724 Defoe refers to the manufacture of bone lace in which villagers were “wonderfully exercised and improved within these few years past.” “Bone” lace dates from the 17th century in England and was practically the counterpart of Flemish “dentelles au fuseau,” and related also to the Italian “merletti a piombini” (see Pl. fig. 10). In Germany, Barbara Uttmann, a native of Nuremberg, instructed peasants of the Harz mountains to twist and plait threads in 1561. She was assisted by certain refugees from Flanders. A sort of “purling” or imitation of the Italian “merletti a piombini” was the style of work produced then.

Lace of comparatively simple design has been made for centuries in villages of Andalusia as well as in Spanish conventual establishments. The “point d’Espagne,” however, appears to have been a commercial name given by French manufacturers of a class of lace made in France with gold or silver threads on the pillow and greatly esteemed by Spaniards in the 17th century. No lace pattern-books have been found to have been published in Spain. The needle-made laces which came out of Spanish monasteries in 1830, when these institutions were dissolved, were mostly Venetian needle-made laces. The lace vestments preserved at the cathedral at Granada hitherto presumed to be of Spanish work are verified as being Flemish of the 17th century (similar in style to Pl. fig. 14). The industry is not alluded to in Spanish ordinances of the 15th, 16th or 17th centuries, but traditions which throw its origin back to the Moors or Saracens are still current in Seville and its neighbourhood, where a twisted and knotted arrangement of fine cords is often worked[6] under the name of “Morisco” fringe, elsewhere called macramé lace. Black and white silk pillow laces, or “blondes,” date from the 18th century. They were made in considerable quantity in the neighbourhood of Chantilly, and imported for mantillas by Spain, where corresponding silk lace making was started. Although after the 18th century the making of silk laces more or less ceased at Chantilly and the neighbourhood, the craft is now carried on in Normandy—at Bayeux and Caen—as well as in Auvergne, which is also noted for its simple “torchon” laces. Silk pillow lace making is carried on in Spain, especially at Barcelona. The patterns are almost entirely imitations from 18th-century French ones of a large and free floral character. Lace-making is said to have been promoted in Russia through the patronage of the court, after the visit of Peter the Great to Paris in the early days of the 18th century. Peasants in the districts of Vologda, Balakhua (Nijni-Novgorod), Bieleff (Tula) and Mzensk (Orel) make pillow laces of simple patterns. Malta is noted for producing a silk pillow lace of black or white, or red threads, chiefly of patterns in which repetitions of circles, wheels and radiations of shapes resembling grains of wheat are the main features. This characteristic of design, appearing in white linen thread laces of similar make which have been identified as Genoese pillow laces of the early 17th century, reappears in Spanish and Paraguayan work. Pillow lace in imitation of Maltese, Buckinghamshire and Devonshire laces is made to a small extent in Ceylon, in different parts of India and in Japan. A successful effort has also been made to re-establish the industry in the island of Burano near Venice, and pillow and needlepoint lace of good design is made there.

At present the chief sources of hand-made lace are France, Belgium, Ireland and England.