Fifty years ago, when a knowledge of many useful and ingenious arts
formed a part of the education given to young women destined for
genteel life, one who should have supposed that any reader could be
ignorant of the manner in which lace is made, would only have been
laughed at; but as most of our young ladies at present employ the
greater part of their time in reading romances or the trifles of the
day, it is probable that many who have even had an opportunity of
frequenting the company of the fair sex, may never have seen the method
of working lace. For this reason, I hope I shall be permitted to say a
few words in explanation of an art towards the history of which I mean
to offer such information as I have been able to collect.
Proper lace or point was not wove. It had neither warp nor woof, but
was rather knit after the manner of nets (_filets_) or of stockings.
In the latter, however, one thread only is employed, from which the
whole piece or article of dress is made; whereas lace is formed of as
many threads as the pattern and breadth require, and in such a manner
that it exhibits figures of all kinds. To weave, or, as it is called,
knit lace, the pattern, stuck upon a slip of parchment, is fastened
to the cushion of the knitting-box; the thread is wound upon the
requisite number of spindles, which are called bobbins; and these are
thrown over and under each other in various ways, so that the threads
twine round pins stuck in the holes of the pattern, and by these means
produce that multiplicity of eyes or openings which give to the lace
the desired figures. For this operation much art is not necessary; and
the invention of it is not so ingenious as that of weaving stockings.
Knitting, however, is very tedious; and when the thread is fine and the
pattern complex, it requires more patience than the modern refinement
of manners has left to young ladies for works of this kind. Such
labour, therefore, is consigned to the hands of indigent girls, who by
their skill and dexterity raise the price of materials, originally of
little value, higher when manufactured than has ever yet been possible
by any art whatever. The price, however, becomes enormous when knit
lace has been worked with the needle or embroidered: in French it is
then called _points_.
The antiquity of this art I do not pretend to determine with much
certainty; and I shall not be surprised if others by their observations
trace it higher than I can. I remember no passage in the Greek or Latin
authors that seems to allude to it; for those who ascribe works of
this kind to the Romans found their opinion on the expression _opus
Phrygianum_: but the art of the Phrygians[1437], as far as I have
hitherto been able to learn, consisted only in needle-work: and those
ingenious borders sewed upon clothes and tapestry, mention of which
occurs in the ancients, cannot be called lace, as they have been by
Braun[1438] and other writers. I am however firmly of opinion that lace
worked by the needle is much older than that made by knitting. Lace of
the former kind may be found among old church furniture, and in such
abundance that it could have been the work only of nuns or ladies of
fortune, who had little else to employ their time, and who imagined
it would form an agreeable present to their Maker; for had it been
manufactured as an article of commerce, we must certainly have found
more information respecting it.
We read in different authors that the art of making lace was brought
from Italy, particularly from Genoa and Venice, to Germany and France;
but this seems to allude only to the oldest kind, or that worked with
the needle, and which was by far the dearest. At any rate, I have
nowhere found an expression that can be applied to lace wove or knit.
In the account given of the establishment of the lace manufacture under
Colbert in 1666, no mention is made but of _points_[1439].
I will venture to assert that the knitting of lace is a German
invention, first known about the middle of the sixteenth century; and
I shall consider as true, until it be fully contradicted, the account
given us that this art was found out, before the year 1561, at St.
Annaberg, by Barbara wife of Christopher Uttmann. This woman died in
1575, in the sixty-first year of her age, after she had seen sixty-four
children and grandchildren; and that she was the inventress of this
art is unanimously affirmed by all the annalists of that part of
Saxony[1440]. About that period the mines were less productive, and the
making of veils, an employment followed by the families of the miners,
had declined, as there was little demand for them. This new invention,
therefore, was so much used that it was known in a short time among
all the wives and daughters of the miners; and the lace which they
manufactured, on account of the low price of labour, soon became
fashionable, in opposition to the Italian lace worked with the needle,
and even supplanted it in commerce.
A doubt, however, has often occurred to me, which may probably occur
also to some of my readers, that this Barbara Uttmann may be entitled
only to the merit of having made known and introduced this employment;
and that, as has often happened to those who first brought a new art
to their own country, she may have been considered as the inventress,
though she only learned it in a foreign land, where it had been long
practised. But I conjecture that this could not have been the case, as
I find no mention of the art of knitting lace, nor any of the terms
that belong to it, before the middle of the sixteenth century.
[The application of machinery to the manufacture of lace dates from the
early part of the present century. The original fabric, called pillow
or bone-lace, which formerly gave employment to so many thousands[1441]
of the poorer classes, is now, especially in this country, almost
entirely abandoned, in consequence of the invention of the bobbin-net
machinery.
The bobbin-net trade is a branch of the cotton manufacture, the net
being almost invariably formed of that material. It originated in
successive improvements and alterations on the stocking-frame, by
which it was adapted to the weaving of lace; though it is deserving of
notice that it could have had no existence but for Samuel Crompton’s
invention, the mule, which spins yarn suitable for that delicate
fabric. The application of the stocking-frame to lace-making was
first attempted by a frame-work knitter of Nottingham, named Hammond,
about 1768; but it was not rendered completely successful till after
improvements by John Heathcoat, also of Nottingham, for which a
patent was secured in 1809. His improvements were of so important a
character as to entitle him to be justly considered the inventor of
the lace-frame, and the father of the bobbin-net manufacture. Means
were besides discovered for making the net into various widths,
instead of only one broad piece as at first, and likewise to work
various ornaments into it by the aid of machinery, which, in point
of complex ingenuity, far surpasses that used in any other branch of
human industry[1442]. One of Fisher’s spotting-frames, according to Dr.
Ure, is as much beyond the most curious chronometer in multiplicity
of mechanical device, as that is beyond a common roasting-jack. The
combined effects of these improvements is, that fabrics, for which £5
were paid during the existence of Mr. Heathcoat’s patent, may now be
purchased for 2_s._ 6_d._ The different systems of bobbin-net machines
are described in Ure’s Dictionary, or his Cotton Manufacture of Great
Britain. It has been found that no machines, except those upon the
circular-bolt principle invented by Mr. Morley of Derby, have been
found capable of working successfully by mechanical power.]