Seven Centuries of Lace 1

Seven Centuries of Lace 1

Seven Centuries of Lace

 

Author: Mrs. John Hungerford Pollen

 

PREFACE

DEAR MRS. POLLEN,--Having examined the admirable photographs to your

lace collection, and the letterpress which you have written to accompany

them, with a view to meet your wish that I should make revisions and

suchlike where I thought necessary, please allow me in the first place

to thank you for having entrusted me with what has been a very congenial

work, and to say that I really have but few suggestions to offer. Such

as they are, they amount to little more than amplifying, and slightly

modifying here and there, what you have written.

 

Your glossary of terms used in describing lace and cognate work is very

full, and contains several Italian terms which strike me as being

unquestionably of technical value in supplementing information put

forward in the best English works on lace-making.

 

Upon the introductory part of your attractive letterpress you also asked

me to freely express an opinion, giving it such a shape as to make it

suitable for use as a preface to your work. I now do this with

considerable diffidence, notwithstanding that during a good many years I

have had a large number of specimens of lace before me, including

probably some of the finest ever made. You had the initial advantage of

inheriting lace of incontestable origin and antiquity, and also of

finding specimens in different countries where facts and traditions of

their manufacture could be ascertained on the spot.

 

For so long a period as that from, say, the sixteenth to the eighteenth

centuries, men derived as much satisfaction in acquiring and wearing

laces as women then did. But _autres temps, autres mœurs_, and

closely as our sex may at one time have run yours in the appreciation of

lace, yours has outstripped and beaten ours. This, of course, is as it

should be, for skill in all forms of needlework and dainty thread-work

has practically been the monopoly of women from the time of Penelope

forwards, notwithstanding the strict observance of the rule laid down by

St. Benedict that the members of his Order should be expert in the use

of both pen and needle (as they were for centuries); or the records of

the seventeenth century, that boys attended lace-making schools in

Devonshire, and that English tailors and labouring men often made good

saleable lace in their leisure time during the eighteenth century.

 

With your suggestion that many sorts of white thread ornamental work,

from which a development of needle-made and bobbin-made laces can be

traced, are of earlier date than the sixteenth century, I entirely

agree; and in corroboration of this, various public collections, within

comparatively recent times, have secured from disused ancient Coptic

cemeteries in Egypt fragments of elaborate nettings and Saracenic

examples of that kind of work which you identify with the Italian

"Sfilatura" and "punto a stuora." This last-named stitch is virtually

the stitch used in tapestry-making, and it often appears on a small

scale in intricate, drawn and whipped thread Persian linen embroidery,

the practice of which is assuredly of great age. These methods of

stitching for ornamental purposes appear to have been well known in

countries coming at some time or another under the direct influence of

Saracenic embroiderers; but it is interesting to note they are not

identical in character with that of buttonhole stitching, which plays so

important a part in lace-making.

 

The essential feature of the fabric now recognised as lace lies in its

being wrought independently of any visible foundation such as linen or

net; it is essentially a textile ornamentation depending upon special

design, which can be rendered, so far as needle-point lace is concerned,

by variations of the buttonhole stitch--the "punto a festone" in Italy,

and "point noué" in France--which is distinctively a looping, and not a

whipping or weaving, stitch; and so far as bobbin-made lace is

concerned, by twisting and plaiting threads together.

 

The genesis of ornamental design for such laces is, I fancy, pretty well

established through the classification of kindred designs, beginning

with those involving simple abstract and geometric forms; these are

gradually succeeded by others with conventional and more varied devices,

suggesting plant and animal life; and these followed by others in which

definitely realistic renderings of actual things are aimed at. Thus,

very broadly, we have three typical groups, and of the first your

photographs Nos. 3, 6, 7, with 29, 30, and 86, give examples; of the

second group there are examples in photographs Nos. 11, 12, 16, 17, &c.;

and the third group is illustrated by Nos. 36 and 37, 90 to 93, and 116.

 

The sixteenth-century Italian pattern books are mainly concerned with

designs for lace of the first group as distinct from embroidery on linen

or net. The period of the second group is established by the laces one

finds represented in paintings by such painters as Vandyck, Rembrandt,

Gonzales Coques, Mignard, and Hyacinthe Rigaud, whilst the generality of

the designs in the third group is safely attributable to designers

employed towards the end of the seventeenth century, and during the

eighteenth by the Royal or State subsidised manufactories of France,

about which several local records, quoted by Mademoiselle Despierre in

her book on the Points d'Alençon, are particularly interesting. Laces of

rather indeterminate design, such as those which we call peasant laces,

have, as a rule, a quaint treatment of pattern, the origin of which is,

I think, almost invariably to be referred to some carefully designed

prototype; but the charm of such peasant laces lies chiefly in the

goodness of their texture combined with a distortion of forms, which

arises from the workers' naïveté in misunderstanding the parent design.

The really valuable work was that of sympathetic and skilled workers,

done directly from well-designed patterns.

 

Now the origin of needle-point and bobbin-made laces is, I think,

Occidental, or European, and not Oriental; and the three broadly

indicated pattern groups are accompanied by three equally recognisable

sorts of texture. The first of them is comparatively stiff and wiry; the

second more lissom and inclined to tapiness; and the third, still more

lissom, becoming gauzy and filmy in quality. Delicate, filmy laces,

common to the eighteenth century, could not, therefore, I think, have

been dreamt of in the sixteenth century; neither at that time was there

a conception of the tapey, and at times linen-like, laces made in the

early part and middle of the seventeenth century. Hence we seem able to

rely upon an apparent procession of design types, running concurrently

with an equally apparent procession of qualities of texture. By keeping

in mind these combined successions of pattern and texture one is enabled

not only to classify laces, but also to account for later survivals of

old types, as well as for the approximate dates when old and new types

severally have arisen.

 

It is evident that the French word "dentelle," which is a comprehensive

term for laces, came from the "dents," or tooth-shaped borders and edges

of lace made soon after the beginning of the sixteenth century. At the

same time, there had been during two centuries earlier, a fashion of

jagging or cutting into points or scallops the borders of cloth silk and

velvet costumes, gowns, hoods, and long sleeves. But when the notably

increased use of linen shirts, with cuffs and small collars just showing

beyond the outer garments occurred in the sixteenth century, white and

coloured thread purlings and taut fringings or edgings were made for

them, and so came to be called "points," "dents" and "punti" as the cut

borders of cloth costumes had been. The latter fashion gradually

obscured the former, and thus the terms "point," "dent," and "punto"

were almost solely applied to ornamentation in real lace or in lace-like

fabrics. In still later times, as you notice, point lace is generally

understood to be the designation of needle-point lace, or "dentelle à

l'aiguille," as distinct from the "dentelle au fuseau," bobbin or

pillow-made lace.

 

I have been tempted to touch upon this matter of lace points, vandykes,

and scallops because the border of the alb, said to have been worn by

Pope Boniface VIII., consists of scallops of bobbin-made thread-work,

and of a type of pattern and texture which I should say cannot very well

be earlier in date than the middle of the sixteenth century. On the

other hand, the ornamental thread-work done in "punto di treccia" and

"punto a stuora," which fills large and small squares and remarkable

five-sided figures, seems to have some Saracenic or Moorish character,

and may possibly not be assignable to the sixteenth century with the

same cogency of inference as applies to the scallops of Italian

"merletti a piombini" on the border of the alb.

 

Whatever may be the result of further inquiries concerning the tradition

of Pope Boniface having worn this alb, and therefore establishing its

date as being late thirteenth century, I hope that you will retain it as

an illustration in your book.

 

Whilst the majority of your photographs are from generally well-known

varieties of lace, those from the earlier drawn thread-works and darning

upon different makes of square mesh, net, or grounds of radiating,

intertwisted threads, are particularly interesting--and the entire

series, accompanied by your descriptions, forms a most valuable

encyclopædia of designs and textures to be seen in laces and cognate

fabrics.

 

Believe me to be,

Yours very truly,

ALAN S. COLE.

 

 

 

 

CONTENTS

 

 

PAGE

 

PREFACE BY MR. A. COLE v

 

INTRODUCTION 3

 

GLOSSARY 9

 

NEEDLEPOINT LACE 21

 

BOBBIN-MADE LACE 43

 

INDEX 55