when

arrives, in a great rage, from a village in the environs of Paris. "She is not of high birth, but has her feelings all the same. She will never submit. She has no refuge—not even a place in the hospital. Let them follow her advice and 'elle engageoit sa chaînette,' she will replace them all in their former position."

Next morn, the Points assemble. "Une grande Cravate^[135] fanfaron" exclaims:—

A council of war ensues:—

Flanders now boasts how she had made two campaigns under Monsieur, as a cravat; another had learned the art of war under Turenne; a third was torn at the siege of Dunkirk.

one and all had figured at some siege or battle.

cries Dentelle d'Angleterre. No so, thinks Point de Gênes, "qui avoit le corps un peu gros."

They all swear—

to declare open war, and to banish the Parliament.

The Laces assemble at the fair of St. Germain, there to be reviewed by General Luxe.

The muster-roll is called over by Colonel Sotte Depense. Dentelles de Moresse, Escadrons de Neige, Dentelles de Hâvre, Escrues, Soies noires, and Points d'Espagne, etc., march forth in warlike array, to conquer or to die. At the first approach of the artillery they all take to their heels, and are condemned by a council of war—the Points to be made into tinder, for the sole use of the King's Mousquetaires; the Laces to be converted into paper; the Dentelles, Escrues, Gueuses, Passemens, and Silk Lace to be made into cordage and sent to the galleys; the Gold and Silver Laces, the original authors of the sedition, to be "burned alive."

Finally, through the intercession of Love—

they are again pardoned and restored to court favour.

The poem is curious, as giving an account of the various kinds of lace, and as a specimen of the taste of the time, but the "ton précieux" of the Hôtel Rambouillet pervades throughout.

The lace trade, up to this period, was entirely in the hands of pedlars, who carried their wares to the principal towns and large country-houses.

"One Madame La Boord," says Evelyn, "a French peddling-woman, served Queen Katherine with petticoats, fans, and foreign laces." These hawkers attended the great fairs^[136] of Europe, where all purchases were made.^[137]

Even as early as King Henry III.^[138] we have a notice "to purchase robes at the fair of St. Ives, for the use of Richard our brother"; and in the dramas of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we find constant allusion to these provincial markets:—^[139]

The custom of carrying lace from house to house still exists in Belgium, where at Spa and other places, colporteurs,^[142] with packs similar to those borne by our pedlars, bring round to the visitors laces of great value, which they sell at cheaper rates than those exposed in the shops.^[143]

Many travellers, too, through the counties of Buckingham and Bedford, or the more southern regions of Devon, will still call to mind the inevitable lace box handed round for purchase by the waiter at the conclusion of the inn dinner; as well as the girls who, awaiting the arrival of each travelling carriage or postchaise, climbed up to the windows of the vehicle, rarely allowing the occupants to go their way until they had purchased some article of the wares so pertinaciously offered to their inspection.

In Paris, the lace trade was the exclusive privilege of the passementiers.^[144]

CHAPTER IV.

ITALY.

The Italians claim the invention of point, or needle-made lace.

It has been suggested they derived the art of fine needlework from the Greeks who took refuge in Italy from the troubles of the Lower Empire; and what further confirms its Byzantine origin is, that those very places which kept up the closest intercourse with the Greek Empire are the cities where point lace was earliest made and flourished to the greatest extent.^[145]

A modern Italian author,^[146] on the other hand, asserts that the Italians learned embroidery from the Saracens of Sicily, as the Spaniards acquired the art from the Moors of Granada or Seville, and brings forward, as proof of his theory, that the word to embroider, both in Italian and Spanish,^[147] is derived from the Arabic, and no similar word exists in any other European language.^[148] This theory may apply to embroidery, but certainly not to lace; for with the exception of the Turkish crochet "oyah," and some darned netting and drawn-work which occur in Persian and Chinese tissues, there is nothing approaching to lace to be found on any article of oriental manufacture.

We proceed to show that evidences of the lace-fabric appear in Italy as early as the fifteenth century.

In 1476, the Venetian Senate decreed that no Punto in Aria whatever, executed either in flax with a needle, or in silver or gold thread, should be used on the curtains or bed-linen in the city or provinces. Among the State archives of the ducal family of Este, which reigned in Ferrara for so many centuries, Count Gandini found mentioned in a Register of the Wardrobe, dated 1476 (A. C. 87), an order given for a felt hat "alla Borgognona," trimmed with a silver and silk gimp made with bobbins. Besides this, in the same document is noted (A. C. 96) a velvet seat with a canopy trimmed at the sides with a frill of gold and silver, made in squares, with bobbins.

The Cavaliere Antonio Merli, in his interesting pamphlet on Italian lace,^[149] mentions an account preserved in the Municipal Archives of Ferrara, dated 1469, as probably referring to lace;^[150] but he more especially brings forward a document of the Sforza family, dated^[151] 1493, in which the word trina (under its ancient form "tarnete") constantly occurs,^[152] together with bone and bobbin lace.

Again, the Florentine poet, Firenzuola, who wrote from 1520-30, composed an elegy upon a collar of raised point, made by the hand of his mistress.

Cavaliere Merli cites, as the earliest known painting in which lace occurs, a majolica disc, after the style of the Della Robbia family, in which, surrounded by a wreath of fruit, is represented the half figure of a lady, dressed in a rich brocade, with a collar of white lace. The costume is of the fifteenth century; but as Luca della Robbia's descendants worked to a later period, the precise date of the work cannot be fixed.

Evidences of white lace, or passement, are said to appear in the pictures of Carpaccio, in the gallery at Venice, and in another by the Gentile Bellini, where the dress of one of the ladies is trimmed round the neck with a white lace.^[153] The date of this last painting is 1500.

Lace was made throughout Italy mostly by the nuns,^[154] and expressly for the service of the Church. Venice was celebrated for her points, while Genoa produced almost exclusively pillow-lace.

The laces best known in the commercial world in the earlier periods were those of Venice, Milan, and Genoa.

VENICE.

The Venetian galleys, at an early period, bore to England "apes, sweet wines," and other articles of luxury. They brought also the gold-work of "Luk," Florence, "Jeane," and Venice.^[155] In our early parliamentary records are many statutes on the subject. The Italians were in the habit of giving short lengths, gold thread of bad quality, and were guilty of sundry other peccadilloes, which greatly excited the wrath of the nation. The balance was not in England's favour.

It was these cheating Venetians who first brought over their points into England.

In Venice itself, extravagance in lace was restrained in 1542, by a sumptuary law, forbidding the metal laces embroidered in silk to be wider than due dita (i.e., about two inches). This interference is highly Venetian, and was intended to protect the nobles and citizens from injuring themselves and setting a bad example.

At the coronation of Richard III., "fringes of Venice," and "mantil laces of white silk and Venys gold" appear, and twenty years later Elizabeth of York disburses sundry sums for "gold of Venice" and "other necessaries."^[156] The queen's accounts are less explicit than those of her royal predecessor; and though a lace is ordered for the king's mantle of the Garter, for which she paid sixteen shillings, the article may have been of home manufacture.

From this time downwards appear occasional mention of partlets,^[157] knit caul fashion, of Venice gold, and of white thread,^[158] of billament lace of Venice, in silver and black silk.^[159] It is not, however, till the reign of Elizabeth^[160] that Italian cut-works and Venice lace came into general use. These points found their way into France about the same period, though we hear little of them.

Of "point couppé" there is mention, and enough, in handkerchiefs for Madame Gabrielle, shirts for the king, and fraizes for La Reine Margot; but whether they be of Venice or worked in France, we are unenlightened. The works of Vinciolo^[161] and others had already been widely circulated, and laces and point couppé now formed the favourite occupation of the ladies. Perhaps one of the earliest records of point de Venise will be found in a ridiculous historiette of Tallemant des Réaux, who, gossiping of a certain Madame de Puissieux,^[162] writes: "On m'assuroit qu'elle mangeoit du point coupé. Alors les points de Gênes, de Raguse, ni d'Aurillac ni de Venise n'étoient point connus et on dit qu'au sermon elle mangea tout le derrière du collet d'un homme qui etoit assis devant elle." On what strange events hang the connecting threads of history!

By 1626 foreign "dentelles et passements au fuseau" were declared contraband. France paying large sums of money to other countries for lace, the Government, by this ordinance, determined to remedy the evil. It was at this period that the points of Venice were in full use.^[163]

would, in the latter case, have been more difficult, had it not been for the pattern-books so often quoted.

The earliest points, as we already know, soon passed from the stiff formality of the "Gotico" into the flowing lines of the Renaissance, and into that fine patternless guipure which is, par excellence, called Point de Venise.^[165]

In the islands of the Lagune there still lingers a tale of the first origin of this most charming production.

A sailor youth, bound for the Southern Seas, brought home to his betrothed a bunch of that pretty coralline (Fig. 20) known to the unlearned as the mermaid's lace.^[166] The girl, a worker in points, struck by the graceful nature of the seaweed, with its small white knots united, as it were, by a "bride," imitated it with her needle, and after several unsuccessful trials produced that delicate guipure which before long became the taste of all Europe.

It would be difficult to enumerate the various kinds of lace produced by Venice in her palmy days.

The Cavaliere Merli has endeavoured to classify them according to the names in the pattern-books with which Venice supplied the world, as well as with her points. Out of some sixty of these works, whose names have been collected, above one-third were published in Venice.^[167]

1. Punto a reticella.^[168]—Made either by drawing the threads of the cloth, as in the samplar already given (Fig. 5), or by working the lace on a parchment pattern in buttonhole stitch (punto smerlo). (Fig. 21.) This point is identical with what is commonly called "Greek" lace.

Under this head comes punto reale (the opposite of reticella), where the linen ground is left and the design cut out.^[169] Punto di cartella or cordella (card-work) is similar in effect to reticella, but the button-holing is done entirely over a foundation made by sewing coarse thread and bits of parchment on to the design and covering them with button-hole stitch.

To face page 50.

2. Punto tagliato.^[170]—Cut-work, already described.

3. Punto di Venezia.

4. Punto in aria.^[171]—Worked on a parchment pattern, the flowers connected by brides: in modern parlance, Guipure.

5. Punto tagliato a fogliami.^[172]—The richest and most complicated of all points, executed like the former, only with this difference, that all the outlines are in relief, formed by means of cottons placed inside to raise them. Sometimes they are in double and triple relief; an infinity of beautiful stitches are introduced into the flowers, which are surrounded by a pearl of geometric regularity, the pearls sometimes in scallops or "campané," as the French term it.^[173] This is our Rose (raised) Venice point, the Gros Point de Venise, the Punto a relievo, so highly prized and so extensively used for albs, collerettes, berthes, and costly decoration. We give an example (Fig. 23) from a collar, preserved in the Musée de Cluny, once the property of a Venetian nobleman, worn only on state occasions.

Two elaborate specimens were in the possession of Mr. Webb; one is a long narrow piece fringed at both ends, which may have served as a maniple (Fig. 26); the other, a "pale"^[174] for the communion, he has given to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

These two last are made of silk of the natural cream colour. Both silk and thread unbleached appear to have been greatly in favour. At Paris much lace of this colour has been disposed of by its owners since the revolutions in Italy.^[175]

Other varieties of so-called rose point are punto neve (point de neige), with its ground of starred threads resembling snowflakes, and the coral point, a small irregular pattern supposed to have been copied from coral.

6. Punto a gropo, or gropari.^[176]—Groppo, or gruppo, signifies a knot, or tie, and in this lace the threads are knotted together, like the fringes of the Genoese macramè.^[177] After this manner is made the trimming to the linen scarfs or cloths which the Roman peasants wear folded square over the head, and hanging down the back. (Fig. 22.)

7. Punto a maglia quadra.—Lacis; square netting,^[178] the modano of the Tuscans. (Fig. 24.)

This Tuscan sort was not generally embroidered; the pattern consists in knitting the meshes together in different shapes. It was much used for hangings of beds, and those curtains placed across the windows, called stores by the French, and by the Italians, stuora.^[179]

8. Burato.—The word means a stiff cloth or canvas (toille clere of Taglienti, 1527), on which the pattern is embroidered, reducing it to a kind of rude lace. One of the pattern-books^[180] is devoted exclusively to the teaching of this point.

The needle-made laces fabricated at Burano will be noticed later.

9. Punto tirato—Drawn work.^[181] Fig. 25 is a lace ground made by drawing the threads of muslin (fili tirati).^[182] The present specimen is simple in design, but some are very complicated and beautiful.

The ordinance of Colbert must have inflicted a serious injury on the Venice lace trade, which, says Daru, "occupoit la population de la capitale." In Britannia Languens, a discourse upon trade, London, 1680,^[183] it is said that the laces commonly called Points de Venise now come mostly from France, and amount to a vast sum yearly.

Savary, speaking of the thread laces termed Venice point in the early part of the eighteenth century,^[184] says, "The French no longer purchase these articles, having established themselves manufactures which rival those of the Adriatic."

Still the greater number of travellers^[185] make a provision of points in their passage through Venice, and are usually cheated, writes a traveller about this period.^[186] He recommends his friend, Mr. Claude Somebody, a French dealer, who probably paid him in ruffles for the advertisement.

Our porte-bouquets and lace-trimmed nosegays are nothing new. On the occasion of the annual visit of the Doge to the Convent delle Vergini, the lady abbess with the novices received him in the parlour, and presented him with a nosegay of flowers placed in a handle of gold, and trimmed round with the finest lace that Venice could produce.^[187]

Fynes Moryson^[188] is the earliest known traveller who alludes to the products of Venice. "Venetian ladies in general," he says, "wear a standing collar and ruffs close up to the chin; the unmarried tie their hair with gold and silver lace." Evidently the collars styled "bavari," for which Vecellio^[189] gives patterns "all' usanza Veneziana," were not yet in general vogue.^[190] The Medici collars were supported by fine metal bars called "verghetti," which were so much in demand that the inhabitants of a whole quarter of Venice were engaged in their production, and the name which it still bears was given to it in consequence.

Fifty years later, Evelyn speaks of the veils of glittering taffetas, worn by the Venetian ladies, to the corners of which hang broad but curious tassels of point laces.

According to Zedler, an author who wrote about lace in 1742, the price of Venice point in high relief varied from one to nine ducats per Italian ell.

The Venetians, unlike the Spaniards, thought much of their fine linen and the decorations pertaining to it. "La camicia preme assai più del giubbone," ran the proverb—"La chemise avant le pourpoint." Young nobles were not allowed to wear lace on their garments until they put on the robe, which they usually did at the age of five-and-twenty, on being admitted to the council.^[191]

Towards 1770, the Venice ladies themselves commenced to forsake the fabrics of their native islands; for on the marriage of the Doge's son, in that year, we read that, although the altar was decorated with the richest Venice point, the bride and her ladies wore their sleeves covered up to the shoulders with falls of the finest Brussels lace, and a tucker of the same material.^[192]

During the carnival, however, the people, both male and female, wore a camail, or hood of black lace, covering the chin up to the mouth, called a "bauta."^[193] It was one of these old black lace hoods that Walpole describes Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as wearing at Florence, 1762, in place of a cap.

Point de Venise à réseau is chiefly distinguished by the conventional treatment of the flowers and ornament, and a general flat look of the work. The outlining thread or cordonnet is stitched to the edge of the pattern and worked in flatly. A minute border to the cordonnet of small meshes intervenes between it and the réseau, which is of square meshes and always very fine. Whether the lace was derived from the Alençon, and was the result of an attempt to win back the custom the French manufacturers were taking away from Venice, or whether it was Alençon that imitated the Venetian réseau, is a moot point, but certain it is that the Venetian product surpassed in fineness both Alençon and Brussels. Its very delicacy has been its destruction, so that very few specimens of this lace survive. Plate XII.

Mezzo Punto, or mixed Venetian guipure, was a mixed point lace, of which the scrolls and flowers were outlined in pillow-lace, or by a tape, and the designs filled in with needle fillings, and connected by pearled brides on a coarse needle-made réseau. This variety of lace was sometimes made of silk. In point de Venise, flat or raised, the pattern is always connected by an irregular network of pearled brides. Real brides connecting the flowers here and there hardly ever occur; and the number of picots attached to one single branch of the bride network never exceeds two. The elaborately ornamental detached brides and a multiplicity of picots are characteristic of "Spanish point" and early point de France.

The old Burano laces were a coarser outcome of the point de Venise à réseau, and alone of all Venetian needle laces survived the dark days of the close of the eighteenth century. Some fine specimens of these were shown by M. Dupont d'Auberville in the International Exhibition, and Marini quotes from a document of the seventeenth century, in which, speaking of merletti, it is said that "these laces, styled 'punti in aria,' or di Burano, because the greater part of them were made in the country so called, are considered by Lannoni as more noble and of greater whiteness, and for excellency of design and perfect workmanship equal to those of Flanders, and in solidity superior."

A new departure has been taken in modern times, in the making of hand-made laces at the island of Burano, near Venice, where a large number of girls were employed in the eighteenth century, both in the town and the convents, in making a point closely resembling that of Alençon. Here the art lingered on as late as 1845, when a superannuated nun of ninety, with whom Mrs. Dennistoun, of Dennistoun, conversed on the subject, said how in her younger days she and her companions employed their time in the fabric of "punto di Burano";^[194] how it was ordered long beforehand for great marriages, and even then cost very dear. She showed specimens still tacked on paper: the ground is made right across the thread of the lace.

Burano point had not the extreme delicacy of the Venetian point à réseau or of Alençon, and the late Alençon patterns were copied. Though needle-made, it was worked on a pillow arranged with a cylinder for convenience of working. The unevenness of the thread gives the réseau a cloudy appearance, and the cordonnet is, like the Brussels needlepoint, of thread stitched round the outline instead of the Alençon button-hole stitch over horse-hair. The mesh of the réseau is square, as in Alençon.

Fig. 32 is copied from a specimen purchased at Burano by the Cav. Merli, of the maker, an old woman known by the name of Cencia Scarpariola. In 1866, the industry was extinct, and the "Contrada del Pizzo," once the headquarters of the lace-makers, was a mystery to the natives, who could no longer account for the denomination. In the church is preserved a splendid series of altar-cloths of so-called Burano point in relief, and a fine storiato piece, representing the mysteries of the Passion. "Venice point is now no more," writes Mrs. Palliser; "the sole relic of this far-famed trade is the coarse torchon lace, of the old lozenge pattern, offered by the peasant women of Palestrina to strangers on their arrival at hotels," the same fabric mentioned by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, when she speaks of "peddling women that come on pretext of selling pennyworths of lace."

The formation of the school recently established there,^[195] and the revival of the art of lace-making in Burano, arose out of the great distress which in 1872 overtook the island. The extraordinary severity of the winter that year rendered it impossible for the poor fishermen, who form the population of the island, to follow their calling. So great was the distress at that time, while the lagoons were frozen, that the fishermen and their families were reduced to a state bordering on starvation, and for their relief contributions were made by all classes in Italy, including the Pope and the King. This charitable movement resulted in the collection of a fund of money, which sufficed to relieve the immediate distress and leave a surplus for the establishment of a local industry to increase the resources of the Burano population.

Unfortunately, the industry at first fixed upon, namely, that of making fishermen's nets, gave no practical result, the fishermen being too poor to buy the nets. It was then that a suggestion was made by Signor Fambri that an effort should be made to revive the ancient industry of lace-making, and Princess Chigi-Giovanelli and the Countess Andriana Marcello were asked to interest themselves in, and to patronise, a school for this purpose.

To this application these ladies yielded a ready assent, and at a late period Queen Margherita graciously consented to become the president of the institution.

When Countess Marcello, who from that time was the life and soul of the undertaking, began to occupy herself with the foundation of the school, she found an old woman in Burano, Cencia Scarpariola, who preserved the traditions of the art of lace-making, and continued, despite her seventy years and upwards, to make Burano point. As she, however, did not understand the method of teaching her art, the assistance was secured of Madame Anne Bellorio d'Este, a very skilful and intelligent woman, for some time mistress of the girls' school at Burano, who in her leisure hours took lessons in lace-making of Cencia Scarpariola, and imparted her knowledge to eight pupils, who, in consideration of a small payment, were induced to learn to make lace.

As the number of scholars increased, Madame Bellorio occupied herself exclusively in teaching lace-making, which she has continued to do with surprising results. Under Madame Bellorio's tuition, the school, which in 1872 consisted of eight pupils (who received a daily payment to induce them to attend), now, in 1897, numbers four hundred workers, paid, not by the day, but according to the work each performs.

In Burano everything is extremely cheap, and a humble abode capable of accommodating a small family may be had for from six hundred to one thousand Italian lire. It is not a rare occurrence to find a young lace-worker saving her earnings in order to purchase her little dwelling, that she may take it as a dower to her husband. Nearly all the young men of Burano seek their wives from among the lace-women. The school's diploma of honour speaks of the economical importance of the lace-work "to the poor place of Burano," and "the benefit which the gentle industry brings to the inhabitants of the interesting island, whose welfare, having passed through a series of undeserved trials, is due exclusively to the revival of it practised on a large scale."

The lace made in the school is no longer confined, as in the origin it was, to Burano point, but laces of almost any design or model are now undertaken—point de Burano, point d'Alençon, point de Bruxelles, point d'Angleterre, point d'Argentan, rose point de Venise, Italian punto in aria, and Italian punto tagliato a fogliami. The school has been enriched by gifts of antique lace, and Queen Margherita gave the school permission to copy two magnificent specimens of Ecclesiastical lace—now Crown property—that had formerly belonged to Cardinal de Retz, and Pope Clement VII. (Rezzonico).

In order the better to carry out the character of the different laces, the more apt and intelligent of these pupils, whose task it is to trace out in thread the design to be worked, have the advantage of being taught by professional artists.

The four hundred lace-workers now employed are divided into seven sections, in order that each may continue in the same sort of work and, as much as possible, in the same class of lace. By this method each one becomes thoroughly proficient in her own special department, executes it with greater facility, and consequently earns more, and the school gets its work done better and cheaper.

While Countess Marcello was working to re-establish the making of needle-point at Burano, Cav. Michelangelo Jesurum was re-organising the bobbin-lace industry at Pellestrina, a small fishing-town on the Lido. In 1864 the lace of Pellestrina might have been described as an inextricable labyrinth of threads with vaguely distinguishable lines and occasional holes. The lace was so imperfect, and made in such small quantities, that two women who went about selling it in Venice and the country round sufficed to dispose of all that was made. The pricked papers were prepared by an old peasant woman, who made them more and more imperfect at each repetition, losing gradually all trace of the original design. Cav. Jesurum, by a careful copying of the old designs, obtained valuable results, and founded a lace-school and a flourishing industry. About 1875 polychrome lace was introduced in Venice—bobbin-lace worked in colours with designs of flowers, fruits, leaves, arabesques, and animals, with the various tints and shading required. The women who make bobbin-lace now in Venice and in the islands amount to 3,000, but it is difficult to give an exact estimate of their numbers, as many of them are bone-workers, wives and daughters of fishermen, who combine the lace-making with their household duties, with mending of nets, and with field-work.