Mechlin lace

“ There was a fine collection of Mechlin lace in the Paris Exhibition of 1867 from Turnhout (Prov. Antwerp) , and some other localities. Very little is now manufactured. It is difficult to trace the real point de Malines. Previous to 1665, as elsewhere stated, all Flanders laces, with some exceptions, were known to the French commercial world as "Malines." According to Savary, the laces of Ypres, Bruges, Dunkirk and Courtrai passed at Paris under that name—hence we have in the inventories of the time, "Malines à bride," [354] as well as "Malines à rézeau." ”

“ They are all sold separate, and you will see a very pretty sprig, for which the worker only gets twelve sous. The masters who have all these people employed give them the thread to make them; this they do according to a pattern, and give them out to be grounded; after this they give them to a third hand, who 'hearts' all the flowers with the open work. That is what makes this lace so much dearer than the Mechlin, which is wrought all at once. ”

“ Maltese lace is made not only in Malta, but in Auvergne and Lepuy in France; in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, in England, and also in the Irish lace schools. Ceylon and Madras lace also resembles Maltese. Formerly shawls and veils of much beauty and value were made of this lace, but the manufacture is now confined chiefly to narrow trimmings.
Mechlin.—A pillow lace originally made at Mechlin, Belgium, and whose special characteristics are the narrow, flat thread, band or cord, which outlines the pattern, and the net ground of hexagonal mesh. Sometimes the mesh is circular. ”

“ The lace is made in one piece upon the pillow, the ground being formed with the pattern. The very finest thread is used, and a high degree of skill is necessary, so that the resulting fabric is very costly. It is a filmy, beautiful and highly transparent lace, and preserves for a very long time its distinguishing peculiarity of a shiny thread or band surrounding the outlines of the sprigs and dots of the design. The earliest Mechlin designs were very like those of Brussels lace, though not so original and graceful ”

“ There were several fans, of fine workmanship, a girdle of oxidized silver, set with amethysts and pearls, and a large marquetry box, which contained tea. “That's all the large things,” he said; “now we can look these over.”
Ruth was gathering up great quantities of lace—Brussels, Point d'Alencon, Cluny, Mechlin, Valenciennes, Duchesse and Venetian point. There was a bridal veil of the Venetian lace, evidently made to match that on the gown. Tiny, dried petals rustled out of the meshes, for Miss Ainslie's laces were laid away in lavender, like her love. ”

“ The ornament is not picked out with a cordonnet, as is the case with Mechlin; but, like Mechlin, the ground went through various modifications, including the "fond de neige," before the réseau was finally fixed. From their solidity, "les belles et éternelles Valenciennes" became an heirloom in each family. A mother bequeathed them to her daughter as she would now her jewels or her furs. [625] The lace-makers worked in underground cellars, from four in the morning till eight at night, scarcely earning their tenpence a day. The pattern was the especial property of the manufacturer ”

“ Although very much like Valenciennes and Mechlin, the laces were much coarser both in{158} thread and design than their prototypes. Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire did not long retain the art of lace-making, but Buckingham lace remained a staple manufacture, and is much esteemed even to-day, many connoisseurs considering it far better as a lace than the somewhat clumsy laces of Devonshire. The specimen shown is a piece of old Buckingham lace closely copying the réseau and sprigs of Lille which most lace-lovers consider it excels. ”

“ The work is simple, consisting of the ground, with a thick thread to mark the pattern [635] (Fig. 109) . Instead of the sides of the mesh being plaited, as in Valenciennes, or partly plaited, partly twisted, as in Brussels and Mechlin, four of the sides are formed by twisting two threads round each other, and the remaining two sides by simple crossing of the threads over each other. In the eighteenth century more than two-thirds of the lace-making population of Europe made it under the name of mignonettes and blondes de fil. ”

“ Some bobbin lace was made in the island, but what is known as "Isle of Wight" resembles "Nottingham" lace. It is made in frames on machine net, the pattern outlined with a run thread and filled in with needle-point stitches. Queen Victoria had several lace tippets made of Isle of Wight lace for the Royal children, and always chose the Mechlin style of rose pattern. Now (1901) there are only two or three old women workers left. ”

“ I am sorry there is still Mechlin and Brussels lace made, and glad there is no more India muslin, and rejoice in the disuse of every minute manual labor which tends to make a mere machine of God's likeness. But oh, for all that, how incomparably inferior is the finest, faultless, machine-made lace and muslin to the exquisite irregularity of the human fabric!... Good-bye, my dearest Harriet. We start for Aix-la-Chapelle at eight to-morrow. I am not in very good strength ”

“ Considering that the workers received barely a cent an hour, one gets some idea of the magnitude of the task. The Béguinage in Ghent was the headquarters for the manufacture of this lace, but only a few old nuns remain there now who know the secrets of its making. Machine-made imitations flood the market, and the former process is too costly to [147] make it worth any one’s while to master it.
BRUSSELS POINT LACE.
Mechlin is the Flemish name for the town of Malines, and both words are used in connection with the lace which originated there. ”

“ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, describing an admirer, writes:
"With eager beat his Mechlin cravat moves—
He loves, I whisper to myself, he loves!"
Fig. 62.
Mechlin.— (Formerly belonging to H. M. Queen Charlotte.)
It was the favourite lace of Queen Charlotte (Fig. 62) and of the Princess Amelia. Napoleon I. was also a great admirer of this fabric, and when he first saw the light Gothic tracery of the cathedral spire of Antwerp, he exclaimed, "C'est comme de la dentelle de Malines."
Plate XL.
Mechlin.—Three specimens of last half of eighteenth century. ”

“ As early as the fifteenth century the countrywomen from the mountains of the Vélay would congregate together during the winter within the walls of the neighbouring cities, and there, forming themselves into companies, gain their subsistence by making coarse lace to ornament the albs of the priests, the rochets of the bishops, and the petticoats of ladies of quality. And very coarse and tasteless were these early products, to judge from the specimens which remain tacked on to faded altar-cloths, still to be met with in the province, a mixture of netting and darning without design. ”

“ The Honiton laces made since the introduction of machine-made net is especially poor. Flower sprigs and sprays are made separately on the pillow, and afterwards applied to the machine-made ground. These are, as a rule, flowers and foliage treated naturalistically, and are heavy and close in design. These are often very sparingly applied over a wide expanse of net in order to make as much lace with as little trouble as possible. ”

“ The bourgoin is formed of white, stiffly-starched muslin, covering a paste-board shape, and rises to a great height above the head, frequently diminishing in size towards the top, where it finishes in a circular form. Two long lappets hang from either side towards the back, composed often of the finest lace. ”

“ Point d'Alençon is of a solidity which defies time and washing, and has been justly called the Queen of Lace. It is the only lace in which horsehair is introduced along the edge to give firmness and consistency to the cordonnet, rendered perhaps necessary to make the point stand up when exposed to wind, mounted on the towering fabrics then worn by the ladies. The objection to horsehair is that it shrinks in washing and draws up the flower from the ground. ”

“ Some is worked in coloured thread, and also black silk lace of the Chantilly type is made: of this the Erzgebirge is the chief centre. This lace is costly, and is sold at Dresden and other large towns of Germany, and particularly at Paris, where the dealers pass it off for old lace. This fabric employed, in 1851, 300 workers. A quantity of so-called Maltese lace is also made, but torchon predominates. ”

“ The specimens from Rättwik are narrow "seaming" laces of the lozenge pattern.
There is also a sort of plaiting used as a fringe, in the style of the Genoese macramè, from the ends of a small {282}sheet which the peasants spread over their pillows. No improvement takes place in the designs. The Dalecarlian women do not make a trade of lace-making, they merely work to supply their own wants. ”

“ I obtained gold medals for my work at the Exhibitions of 1894 at Antwerp and 1900 at Paris, besides others at Lisbon."—Letter from Dona Maria Bordallo Pinheiro, head of the Lace Industry Department at Lisbon, 1901.
[316]
"There are now seven families employed in the fabrication of Maltese lace, which is made almost entirely by men; the women occupy themselves in the open-work embroidery of muslin" (1869) . ”

“ The great difficulty in attempting to identify any specimen of lace is that from time to time each country experimented in the manners and styles of other lace-making nations. The early Reticella workers copied what is known as the "Greek laces," which were found in the islands of the Grecian Archipelago. Specimens of these laces found in the excavations of the last thirty years show practically no difference in method and style. France copied the Venetian laces, and at one period it is impossible to say whether a given specimen was made at Alençon or Venice. ”

“ As in Germany, Lacis and Cutworke form the only hand-made lace known, the people contenting themselves with these varieties and using coloured threads to further decorate them. Their laces may be called merely Russian embroideries. Peter the Great did much to found a lace school,{137} but only gold laces were made, of a barbaric character. Recently an attempt has been made to imitate the Venetian laces, with very fair results, but the character is very stiff and mechanical, going back to the primitive forms of Reticella rather than the elegancies of Italian Point. ”

“ The advertisements and inventories of the first years of the eighteenth century give us little reason to imagine any change had been effected in the homely habits of the people.
At the marriage of a daughter of Thomas Smythe, of Methuen, in 1701, to Sir Thomas Moncrieffe, the bride had a head-suit and ruffles of cut-work which cost nearly six pounds ten shillings. [1198] Few and scanty advertisements of roups of "white thread lace" appear in the journals of the day. ”

“ The pattern is surrounded by a heavy thread, and composed of a close stitch worked between the meshes of a coarse net ground. This lace somewhat resembles Dalecarlian lace. In the eighteenth century fine pillow lace was also made in these provinces. The celebrated industry of Offida in the Marche has sunk into artistic degradation. ”

“ In the description of the Department of the Orne drawn up in 1801, it is stated, "Fifteen years back there were from 7,000 to 8,000 lace-workers at Alençon and its environs: the fabric of Argentan, whose productions are finer and more costly, had about 2,000." Almost all these lace-makers, some of whom made réseau, others the bride ground, passed into England, Spain, Italy, Germany, and the courts of the north, especially to Russia. ”

“ Brotherton, of Leith, seems to have made a discovery which was but a prelude to the bobbin net. It is thus described in the Weekly Magazine of 1772:—"A new invention has lately been discovered by Mr. Brotherton, in Leith, for working black silk lace or white thread lace on a loom, to imitate any pattern whatever, and the lace done in this way looks fully as well as if sewed, and comes much cheaper. It is done any breadth, from three inches to three-quarters of a yard wide." ”

“ With the view of showing that Alençon and Argentan were intimately connected the one with the other in the manufacture of lace, M. Dupont says that, whereas considerable mention has been made in various records of the establishment at Alençon of a lace factory, trace of such records with regard to Alençon cannot be found. A family of thread and linen dealers, by name Monthulay, are credited with the establishment of a branch manufactory or succursale for lace at Argentan. ”

“ Real Flanders lace thread even now, spun with the help of machinery, costs £70, and is nothing like so durable as the old{108} threads. When we consider that lace to be known as "Old Lace" must be two hundred or three hundred years old, we can understand the strength of this fairy thread, which was like a spider's web in filminess and yet durable enough to last centuries of wear, and remain as a lasting memorial of its beauty. ”

“ But interesting discoveries are rare, and the body of our knowledge of lace history so far is meager.
However, we are interested primarily, not in the ancient origins of the two great lace groups, nor in early passementeries and filets and their processes, but in the [28] marvelous efflorescence of the lace art of the Western Europe of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and in its still lovely expression of to-day. ”

“ It was made on the pillow. Much was exported to Spain and the Indies. How those exiled workmen were received by the Protestant princes of Europe, and allowed to establish themselves in their dominions, to the loss of France and the enrichment of the lands of their adoption, will be told in due time, when we touch on the lace manufactures of Holland and Germany. (Plate LVIII.)
Since 1784, little lace has been made in Paris itself, but a large number of lace-makers are employed in applying the flowers of Binche and Mirecourt upon the bobbin-net grounds. ”