Samuel L. Goldenberg

“ Lace is, in fact, so indelibly associated with the chalets perched high on mountain tops, with little cottages in the valleys of the Appenines and Pyrenees, with sequestered convents in provincial France, with the raiment of men and women whose names loom large in the history of the world, and the futile as well as the successful efforts of inventors to relieve tired eyes and weary fingers, that, no matter how one attempts to treat the subject, it must be colored now and again with the hues of many peoples of many periods. ”

“ True, some of the simpler forms of hand-made lace are produced with relatively great facility, and the price is correspondingly cheap, as compared with the delicate, finely wrought designs, that it sometimes takes years to produce. Nor is this the sole reason for the popularity of machine-made laces, for to such perfection has the mechanical art of lacemaking attained that it is practically impossible, even for experts, to detect the difference between lace made by the deft, cunning fingers of lady or maid from the lace made possible by modern machinery. ”

“ The Flanders laces cry out that rather than give in they would sooner be sewn to the bottom of a petticoat. Some of the younger ones declare they must still have amusement, having had so much, and rather than renounce the world they will seek refuge in the masquerade shops. The point laces, with the exception of Aurillac, then resolve to go each to his own country, when suddenly the humble but plucky Gueuse lace, the lace of the common people, arrives from a village near Paris and encourages the others to fight it out. ”

“ In 1829 a school was opened in Limerick for instruction in the now celebrated lace or embroidery first made in that town; but in the famine years of 1846-48 more effectual measures were taken to spread a knowledge of the art, and several schools were opened in different parts of the country. The Irish have never made a lace that can in any sense be called national, but great skill has been developed in the imitations of the foreign fabrics, and the Irish name has been so closely associated with some of them that they are popularly considered a native Irish product. ”

“ Modern real lace is artistic, even superior, but compared with such few specimens as have come down to us of the work of the lacemakers of old, its deficiency, particularly in the matter of the fineness of the execution and thread, is at once apparent. Hand-made lace is to-day produced all over the world; commercially its production is confined to France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy and England, where large quantities are still produced. ”

“ There is also a needle-point lace made of rather coarse thread, and used exclusively in Ireland and England. The manufacture of laces in Ireland is carried on by the cottagers, by the nuns in the convents, and in several industrial schools founded for that purpose. It has only become a popular industry within the last twenty-five years, as the costumes of the people in earlier times did not require lace ornamentation, and there was a widespread and deep-rooted aversion to the adoption of English fashions in clothing so long as certain sumptuary laws were unrepealed. ”

“ A lace known for certain to be of Spanish origin is a coarse pillow guipure made in white thread and also of gold and silver. It is a loosely made fabric consisting of three cordonnets, the center one being the coarsest, united by finer threads running in and out across them, and with brides to join the parts of the pattern and keep them in shape. It is well known that large quantities of lace that have the characteristics of raised Venetian Point were used in Spain, both for court dresses and church purposes, such as the ornamentation of vestments and altars. ”

“ Machine-made lace may be predominantly the lace of commerce, but hand-made lace is the natural expression and embodiment of a delicate and difficult art, and thus it will ever remain.
Insertion.—A kind of lace, embroidery or other trimming used to insert in a plain fabric for ornamental purposes. It is made with the edges on both sides alike, and often a plain portion of the material outside the work, so that it may be sewn on one side to the garment for which it is intended and to the plain part of the lace or border on the other. ”

“ It is more like an imitation of a free growth of plants, the tangled growth of a state of nature, as compared with the order and beauty of art. The grounded point, the last stage of development of Venetian lace, began to be made to supply the markets of France after the fine old Venetian point had been excluded by protective laws. The Venetian lacemakers then adopted the réseau or net ground made at Alençon. The ground is composed of double twisted threads, and has a rounder mesh than Alençon, and there is no outlining cordonnet. ”

“ Lace so appliquéd can be recognized as distinct from that made with the "vrai réseau," or true network ground, by the fact that the net ground, though sometimes removed, is often seen to pass behind the lace pattern, and also by the character of the network. Machine-made net is composed of diamond-shaped meshes, and is made with two threads only, tightly twisted and crossed, not plaited, at their junction, and is quite unlike the Brussels pillow "réseau." ”

“ The Limerick embroideries, for they cannot be strictly called lace, are an imitation of Indian tambour work, and consist of fine embroidery in chain-stitches upon a Nottingham net. Carrick-ma-cross, or Irish guipure, is a kind of so-called Irish point lace, made at the town of that name, but which is really nothing more than a species of embroidery, from which part of the cloth is cut away, leaving a guipure ground. It is not a very durable lace. The most popular patterns are the rose and the shamrock. Irish crochet is an imitation of the needle-point laces of Spain and Venice ”

“ One of the most interesting developments of the lace industry has been the gradual evolution from the work of the hand toilers to the utilization of complex machinery. In addition to the Leavers machine, which is referred to elsewhere in extenso, the embroidery machine plays a very important part in the making of laces. From 1870 to 1880, various efforts had been made to produce lace on the embroidery machine, and it was during this decade that the first success was achieved in the making of Oriental or net laces in Plauen. ”

“ The threads with which the lace is formed are wound upon bobbins—small, round pieces of wood about the size of a pencil, having round their upper ends a deep groove, so formed as to reduce the bobbin to a thin neck, on which the thread is wound, a separate bobbin being used for each thread. The ground of the lace is formed by the twisting and crossing of these threads. The pattern or figure, technically called "gimp," is made by interweaving a thread much thicker than that forming the groundwork, according to the design pricked out on the parchment. ”

“ Flat Venetian point is marked by an absence of the prominent raised work, the designs are more attenuated, and the brides are altogether more prominent than in the Raised point. Coraline point is a variety of Flat point, which must be considered a deterioration in design on account of its ill-connected and irregular pattern, which was originally supposed to imitate a branch of coral. There is no raised work, the ground meshes are ill-arranged and ill-shaped, and on the whole this lace marks the decadence of an art formerly almost perfect. ”

“ Valenciennes.—A solid and durable pillow lace having the same kind of thread throughout for both ground and pattern. Both the pattern and ground are wrought together by the same hand, and as this demands much skill in the manipulation of a great many threads and bobbins, the price of Valenciennes is very high. The mesh of the ground is usually square or diamond shaped, very open and of great regularity. It is a flat lace, worked in one piece, and no different kind of thread is introduced to outline the pattern or to be wrought into any part of the fabric. ”