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[1] 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.
Fig. 25.—Collar and Berthe of Irish Crochet Lace.
France is faithful to her traditions in maintaining a lively and graceful taste in lace-making. Fashion of late years has called for ampler and more boldly effective laces, readily produced with both braids and cords and far less intricate needle or pillow work than was required for the dainty and smaller laces of earlier date.
Fig. 26.—Collar of Irish Crochet Lace.
In Belgium the social and economic conditions are, as they have been in the past, more conducive and more favourable than elsewhere to lace-making at a sufficiently remunerative rate of wages. The production of hand-made laces in Belgium was in 1900 greater than that of France. The principal modern needle-made lace of Belgium is the “Point de Gaze”; “Duchesse” and Bruges laces are the chief pillow-made laces; whilst “Point Appliqué” and “Plat Appliqué” are frequently the results not only of combining needle-made and pillow work, but also of using them in conjunction with machine-made net. Ireland is the best producer of that substantial looped-thread work known as crochet (see figs. 25, 26, 27), which must be regarded as a hand-made lace fabric although not classifiable as a needlepoint or pillow lace. It is also quite distinct in character from pseudo-laces, which are really embroideries with a lace-like appearance, e.g. embroideries on net, cut and embroidered cambrics and fine linen. For such as these Ireland maintains a reputation in its admirable Limerick and Carrickmacross laces, made not only in Limerick and Carrickmacross, but also
- ↑ Useful information has been communicated to the writer of the present article on lace by Mrs B. Wishaw of Seville.
