Some kinds of lace, however, are made by plaiting and twisting the threads attached to bobbins round pins which are previously arranged in the holes of a pattern, pricked on parchment or glazed paper.[359] The original motive and idea of lace is a net. The patterns called by the ancients “de fundata,” are netted designs meshed. You will see them constantly in Egyptian and Greek art, both in wall painting and textile decoration. Homer speaks of golden cauls, and so does Isaiah,[360] as adorning women’s heads. They also mention nets of flax.
The capitals of the brazen columns adorned with “nets of chequer work” in Solomon’s Temple are very curious.[361] And the author of “Letters from Italy, 1776,” tells of the garment of a statue at Portici, edged with a border resembling fine netting. Egyptian robes of state appear to have been sometimes trimmed with an edging of a texture between lace and fringe.[362]
Lace has been made of many materials in many ways. We may instance “passementerie,” made with bobbins (bone lace), with or without pins, or with the needle only, by hand. The materials have been gold, silver, silk, thread (these two last white or coloured), the fibres of plants, and human hair.[363] A lace called “yak” is made of wool or hair.
Bone laces in gold and silver, or the two mixed and interchanged, are continually mentioned in the inventories of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Bed hangings, chair and cushion covers, and table cloths were constantly trimmed with gold and silver bone lace, and fringes of the same.[364] Laces in coloured silks were made in Spain and the Balearic Isles late in the last century.[365]
In 1542, a sumptuary law was passed in Venice, forbidding the metal laces embroidered in silk to be wider than “due dita,” i.e. about two inches. This paternal interference in the details of life is truly Venetian. It was intended to “protect the nobles and citizens from injuring themselves and setting a bad example.”
Perhaps this strict rule was relaxed in favour of crowned heads and royal personages; for there is at Ashridge, among the relics of Queen Elizabeth’s enforced visit, a toilet-cover of red and gold striped silk, with a trimming of lace, four inches broad, of Venice gold and silver lace embroidered in coloured silk. Specimens of these laces are rare, owing to the intrinsic value of the metal. We must suppose the origin of these golden trimmings to belong to a very early period. A piece of gold wire lace guimp was lately found in a tomb near Wareham, and is supposed, with reason, to be Scandinavian.[366]
M. Blanc describes lace as a “treillage” or network, and says it is made in three ways. You may complete the ground first, and then work the pattern with the needle. This he calls lace “pure et simple;” and he considers that it differs from guipure in that the latter consists of flowers and arabesques worked separately, and then connected with bars, lines, or meshes. This guipure is the second mode of lace-making.[367] The third is by machinery; but this has the inherent defect of all machine-made fabrics, to a practised eye; i.e. a certain rigidity and coldness in the exactly repeated forms, in which the human touch is wanting. It is curious how in art, even a “pentimento” is valuable, recalling the hand that erred as well as created; the attention that strayed, or reconsidered the design.[368]
M. Blanc, speaking of the beauty of point d’Alençon, praises it especially as being entirely needlework. He names the different modes of lace-making, and judges their merits. Of needle-made lace he says: “And the value of this lace not only arises from its representing a considerable amount of labour, but also because nothing can replace in human estimation the fabrics produced by a man’s, and still less by a woman’s handicraft. However the hand may have been restrained by the necessity of faithfully following, on green parchment, the designs imagined and traced by another person, there is always, even in copying an outline, an individuality, an imperceptible deviation to the right or to the left, above or below the tracing, which impresses on the design the accent of strength or weakness, of indecision or determination.”[369] I would add, of intelligence or stupidity; of knowledge or ignorance.
This is not the first time, and will certainly not be the last, that I shall have sought to impress on the needlewoman the fact that her individuality cannot fail to be strongly marked in her work; and I would urge her to carry out the suggestions that her experience and her taste afford her, while seeking to render faithfully the original motive of the designer. In lace-making, as in all art, the interest and the life, as it were, is imparted to each specimen by the attention and thought bestowed upon it.
Mrs. Palliser shows us, by her beautiful illustrations, how much variety may be given to designs for lace-making, which have changed with each period of contemporary art, and are markedly distinctive of their nationalities.