Honor to Barbara Uttmann!
Pillow-lace, as most people know, is made on a round or oval board stuffed so as to form a cushion. On this is fixed a stiff piece of parchment with the pattern pricked on it. The threads are wound on bobbins about the size of a pencil, with a groove at the neck. As many of the threads as will start well together are tied at the ends in a knot, and the knot fastened with a pin at the edge of the pattern; then another bunch, and so on, till the number required by the lace is completed. The lace is formed by crossing or intertwining these bobbins.
Hand-made lace is of two kinds, point and pillow. Point means a needle-work lace made on a parchment pattern, also a particular kind of stitch. The word is sometimes incorrectly applied; as, point de Malines, point de Valenciennes, both these laces being made on a pillow.
Lace consists of two parts, the ground and the flower pattern or gimp.
The plain ground is called in French entoilage, on account of its containing the ornament, which is called toilé, from the texture resembling linen, or being made of that material or of muslin.
The honeycomb network or ground—in French, fond, champ, réseau—is of various kinds: wire ground, Brussels ground, trolly ground, etc. Double ground is so called because twice the number of threads are required to make it.
Some laces, points and guipures, are not worked upon a ground, the flowers being connected by irregular threads worked over with point noué (button-hole stitch), sometimes with pearl loops (picot). Such are the points of Venice and Spain and most of the guipures. To these uniting-threads lace-makers in Italy give the name of “legs,” in England “pearl ties,” in France “brides.”
The flower is made either together with the ground, as in Valenciennes and Mechlin, or separately, and then either worked in or sewn on (applique).
The open-work stitches in the patterns are called “modes,” “jours,” or “fillings.”
The early name of lace in England and France was passement, so called because the threads were passed by each other in the making. The learned derive lace from lacina, a Latin word signifying the hem or fringe of a garment. Dentelle comes from the little toothed edge with which lace was finished after awhile. At first, it was passement dentelé, finally dentelle.