Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/199

LACE 187

from one design. From about 1670 to 1780 a great deal of point lace was made at Alençon and in the neighbouring villages. The styles of patterns varied, as has been stated. Point d'Alençon is still made.

In Belgium, Brussels has acquired some celebrity for needle-made laces. These, however, are chiefly in imitation of those made at Alençon. Brussels needlepoint lace is often worked into meshed grounds made on a pillow. The Brussels needle-lace workers used a plain thread as a cordonnet for their patterns instead of a thread overcast with button-hole stitches as in the Venetian and French needlepoint laces.

Fig. 12. – English Point Lace.

This kind of lace has also been produced in England. Whilst the character of English design in needlepoint laces of the early 17th century (fig. 12) is simpler than that of the contemporary Italian, the method of workmanship is virtually the same. Specimens of needle-made work done by English school children may be met with in samplers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Point lace is successfully made in Irish convents. In all great towns like London, Paris, Brussels, Vienna, lace dealers undertake to supply demands for finely executed modern imitations of old needle-made lace. At Burano the lace-making school lately established there produces hand-made laces which are, to a great extent, careful reproductions of the more celebrated classes of point laces, such as "punto in aria," "rose point de Venise," " point de Venise à réseau," "point d'Alençon," "point d'Argentan," and others. A weaving of threads with a needle into a foundation of net – very distinctive, and different from the "punto a maglia" or "lacis" – has been done for a long time in Spain. Its leading characteristic is the pattern of repeated squares, filled up with star figures. When fine thread is used the effect of heavy cobwebs is produced. Work of this description has been made in Paraguay, where a coarse "torchon" pillow lace is also produced.

Pillow-made Lace. – Pillow-made lace is built upon no substructure, like a skeleton thread pattern, such as is used for needlepoint lace. It is the representation of a pattern obtained by twisting and plaiting threads. The only pre-existing analogue of pillow laces is to be found in the primitive twistings and plaitings of fibres and threads. The English word "lace" in the 15th century was employed to describe fine cords and braids. In a Harleian MS. of the time of Henry VI. and Edward IV., about 1471, directions are given for the making of "lace Bascon, lace indented, lace bordered, lace covert, a brode lace, a round lace, a thynno lace, an open lace, lace for hattys," &c. The MS. opens with an illuminated capital letter, in which is the figure of a woman making these articles. Her implements are not those with which pillow lace of ornamental quality from the middle of the 16th century and onwards has been made. The MS. supplies a clear description how threads in combinations of twos, threes, fours, fives, to tens and fifteens, were to be twisted and plaited together. Instead of the pillow, bobbins, and pins with which pillow lace is made, the hands were used. Each finger of a hand served as a peg. The writer of the MS. says that it shall be understood that the first finger next the thumb shall be called A, the next B, and so on. According to the sort of twisted cord or braid which had to be made, so each of the four fingers A, B, C, D might be called upon to act like a reel, and to hold a "bowys" or "bow," or little ball of thread. Each ball might be of different colour from the other. A "thynne lace" might be made with three threads, and then only fingers A, B, C would be required. A "round" lace, stouter than the "thynne" lace, might require the service of four or more fingers. By occasionally dropping the use of threads from certain fingers a sort of indented lace or braid might be made. But when laces of more importance were wanted such as a broad lace for "hattys," the hands of assistants were required.

Fig. 13. – Cuff trimmed with Plaited and Twisted Thread Work in Points, or Scallops. Late 16th century.

Pillow lace making was never so strictly confined to geometric patterns as point lace making. Curved forms, almost at its outset, seem to have been found easy of execution (fig. 13). One reason for this no doubt is that the twisted and plaited work was not constrained by a foundation of any sort. The plaitings and twistings gave the workers a greater freedom in reproducing designs. At the same time, little speciality of pattern seems to have been produced for the pillow lace workers, and so laces worked on the pillow, particularly those of higher pretence to artistic design, were similar in pattern to those worked with the needle. The early wiry-looking twisted and plaited thread laces were soon succeeded by laces in which flattened and broader lines occupy a prominent position (fig. 14). Tape was also sometimes used for the broad lines. The weaving of tape appears to have been begun in Flanders about the end of the 16th or the beginning of the 17th century. In England it dates no farther back than 1747, when two Dutchmen of the name of Lanfort were invited by an English firm to set up tape looms in Manchester and give instructions in the method of weaving tape.

Fig. 14. – Plaited and Twisted Thread Work known as "Merletti a Piombini." About 1560.

Fig. 15. – Diagram showing six Bobbins in use.

The process by which lace has been made on the pillow from about the middle of the 17th century is very roughly and briefly as follows. A pattern is first drawn upon a piece of paper or parchment. It is then pricked with holes by a skilled "pattern pricker," who determines where the principal pins shall be stuck for guiding the threads. This pricked pattern is then fastened to the