Lacework

LACEWORK. - Lace, or merlo, trina, pizzo, is a transparent fabric worked by hand with the needle, with bobbins, with the crochet hook and also with the shuttle, using thread of every quality: linen, cotton, twine, silk, gold and silver.

Of this small but precious art, whose first certain examples date back to the end of the 15th century, and which can easily be known through the surviving examples, needlework and bobbin work almost exclusively excel. Both the one and the other have a notable history that from the end of the 15th century reaches down to our own day with different origins and developments.

Needle laces are by now almost unanimously considered of Italian, or rather Venetian, origin, and their derivation can be specified from the ancient embroideries executed on drawn fabrics, both on those with "drawn threads," commonly called "reticelli," and on buratto or modano. The true "punto tagliato," which descends from the ancient "reticello," appears in the volume of Matthieu Pagan, L'ornamento delle belle et virtuose donne (Venice 1543), in other little books, mostly published in Venice and Bologna, in that of Aurelio Passarotti, of 1560, with beautiful plates, in which the "punto in aria" is already found. The little volumes follow one another ever more thickly, from Cesare Vecellio to Isabetta Catanea Parasole and Bartolomeo Danieli up to around 1630, bearing witness to the richness of the stitches, the variety of the patterns and the spread of this art, which had become in that era supremely refined. From the "punto tagliato" (point coupé) to the "punto in aria," to the raised foliage stitch (gros point de Venise), to the very light stitch with little roses, the way was opened to the most evolved and precious laces, which from palaces and convents, their first seat, passed to the workshops, taking on an ever greater development, in direct relation to the immoderate luxury of the time.

In France, where the art of Venetian laces spread greatly, from 1598, when the name dentelles was written for the first time in the Nouveaux pourtraicts de point coupé, of Jacques Foillet, to 1665 (edict of Colbert) the flowering was most intense. With Colbert, the important centers of needlework manufactures were founded, which, while imitating the Italian laces of Venice, Ragusa, Bologna, Milan or Genoa, took the name of point de France. And the French names would from then on be partly adopted also in Italy, and in Italy itself the Italian names were Frenchified. Alençon would become the most important center, followed by Sédan, Argentan, Aurillac etc., all dependent on a perfect state organization, interrupted only by the Revolution, while in Italy and in Flanders in the 18th century attempts were made to imitate the exquisite refinements of French art; thus Venice created in the 18th century the "punto di Venezia col fondo" with broad foliage and openwork-marked ribs, in order to surpass in preciousness the beautiful point of Alençon, and the point of Burano, another famous type of lace with small round meshes and minute motifs, which would meet with much success and which persists even after the 19th-century revival (1872)

of this local and popular art, still flourishing. Other living centers in Italy are those of Val Sesia, Vallevogna and above all Bologna with the "Aemilia Ars" Society.

Italy and Flanders still contend today over the origin of bobbin laces, but even foreign scholars, such as Seguin (La dentelle, Paris 1875), lean toward Italy. In any case they also spread rapidly in Flanders and thus in Spain and in France, where it was thought they arrived by way of Spanish pilgrims. As for the technique, bobbin laces, perhaps of very ancient use, are a transformation of the ancient galloons or "passementeries" (passements) executed with fabrics in gold and silk or gold and wool, often studded with gems; worked in the manner of ribbons, they were applied to fabrics for trimming. With the passage of time attempts were made to render them of an ever more open fabric, and on one side they were ornamented with little teeth ever less simple and more slender, until they passed to bobbins, doing without the fabric support. The technique is one: at one end the threads are fixed on a cushion with pins that are moved by hand as the work proceeds, and at the other the threads are interwoven and knotted in various ways with the small bobbins with a rotating movement (hence the names of bone lace, lead lace, mazzette lace, tombolo lace, bobbin lace, according to the names given to the cushion or to the bobbins). Ancient documents attest to the existence of bobbin work (Ferrara 1476); in any case the first edition of patterns for such works is found in the famous collection Le Pompe (Venice 1557, 1559); in Switzerland the little book published in Zurich by Friskower came out in 1560; in France in 1598 that of Foillet (not to be confused with the volume already cited, published in the same year at Montbéliard, but concerning needle lace) and in 1615 in Paris La pratique de l'aiguille industrielle by Matthias Miguersk with many examples of bobbin lace, still called passements.

This art, even in its best period, which is the early 17th century, never reaches the preciousness of needle lace, neither at Genoa, its principal center - where a somewhat thick stitch called the rosaces de Gênes and the guipure are in use - nor at Portofino, Rapallo, S. Margherita, Chiavari, Albissola, small lively centers scattered along the two rivieras, at Pescocostanzo, at L'Aquila, at Naples. The varieties of stitches are many: in Italy the "punto in trezzola" (Venice), the "punto di Milano," characterized by a narrow little ribbon that marks without interruption very long volutes with floral designs, especially suitable for liturgical vestments, which has produced patterns of great value; outside Italy the Malines point and the Valenciennes, the point of Brussels, of Paris, of Arras, the Chantilly, in black silk, the point of Lille, of Flanders, of Bruges, of England, and famous too is the Irish lace executed with the crochet hook. There exists moreover a type of lace executed with shuttles called "frivolità." Already in the 19th century and especially in modern times a rich mechanical production has developed in Italy and abroad which imitates above all bobbin work. - See plates XLIV-XLV.

1597, died at Cologne on 21 April 1644. A priest in 1621, he was vicar from 22 March 1623 until his death; parish priest of St. Mary "in Pasculo."

Most zealous, of a most pious life, he is known principally for his books of devotion, all published at Cologne, in Latin, the best known of which is the Paradisus animae (1650, often reprinted down to 1898), translated into various languages. Noteworthy moreover: Enchiridion Officii divini (1623); Monita sapientiae christianae (1629); Fasciculus myrrhae et thuris (1630); Viaticum quotidianum (1633); Apharismi eucharistici (1638; German trans., Cologne 1828, 1902). M. also edited new editions of the works of St. Bernard (1641, 6 vols.), of Thomas à Kempis (1643) and of other ascetic authors (Septem tubae orbis christiani, 1635).

Pietro Grootens