During the sixteenth century there was the most extravagant use of lace by the court of France. In 1577, on a state occasion, the king wore four thousand yards of pure gold lace on his dress, and the wardrobe accounts of the queen are filled with entries of point-lace. Such was the prodigality of the nobility at this period in the purchase of lace that sumptuary edicts were issued against it, but edicts failed to put down Venetian points; profusion in the use of lace only increased. The consumption of foreign lace and embroidery was unbounded. Immense sums of money found their way annually from France to Italy and Flanders for these costly fabrics. As royal commands were powerless against the artistic productions of Venice, Genoa, and Brussels, it was determined by Colbert, the French minister, to develop the lace-manufacture in France, that the money spent upon these luxuries might be kept within the kingdom. Skillful workmen were suborned from Venice and the Low Countries, and placed around in the existing manufactories and in towns where new ones were to be established.
Fig. 4.—Old Honiton Application.
A declaration of August 5, 1665, orders "the manufacture of all sorts of works of thread, as well of the needle as on the pillow, in the manner of the points which are made at Venice and other foreign countries, which shall be called 'points de France.'" In a few years a lucrative manufacture was established which brought large sums into the kingdom. Point de France supplanted the points of Venice and Flanders, and France became a lace-making as well as a lace-wearing country.
The manufacture of the most sumptuous of the points de France was established by the minister at the town of Alençon, near his residence. Venetian point in relief was made in perfection in this place before his death, 1683. In all the points of this century the flowers are united à bride (Fig. 2), but in the eighteenth century the network ground was introduced, and soon became universal. The name
