wake, while Venice and Milan appear much later in the field. Gold of Jeane
formed, as already mentioned, an item in our early statutes. The merchants
mingled the pure gold with Spanish "laton," producing a sort of "faux
galon," such as is used for theatrical purposes in the present day. They
made also silver and gold lace out of drawn wire, after the fashion of
those discovered, not long since, at Herculaneum.
When Skippin visited Turin, in 1651, he described the manner of preparing
the metal wire. The art maintained itself latest at Milan, but died out
towards the end of the seventeenth century.
Our earliest mention of Genoa lace is,[225] as usual, to be found in the
Great Wardrobe Accounts of Queen Elizabeth, where laces of Jeane of black
"serico satten," of colours,[226] and billement lace of Jeane silk, are
noted down. They were, however, all of silk.
It is not till after a lapse of nigh seventy years that first Point de
Gênes appears mentioned in an ordinance,[227] and in the wardrobe of Mary
de Médicis is enumerated, among other articles, a "mouchoir de point de
Gennes frisé."[228]
{73}Moryson, who visited the Republic in 1589, declares "the Genoese wear
no lace or gardes."
As late as 1597, writes Vulson de la Colombière,[229] "ni les points de
Gennes, ni de Flandre n'etoient en usage."
It was not before the middle of the seventeenth century that the points of
Genoa were in general use throughout Europe. Handkerchiefs, aprons,
collars,[230] seem rather to have found favour with the public than lace
made by the yard.
No better customer was found for these luxurious articles of adornment than
the fair Madame de Puissieux, already cited for her singular taste in
cut-work.
"Elle étoit magnifique et ruina elle et ses enfans. On portoit en ce
temps-la," writes St. Simon; "force points de Gênes qui étoient extrêmement
chers; c'étoit la grande parure--et la parure de tout age: elle en mangea
pour 100,000 ecus (£20,000) en une année, à ronger entre ses dents celle
qu'elle avoit autour de sa tête et de ses bras."[231]
"The Genoese utter a world of points of needlework," writes Lassels, at the
end of the century, and throughout the eighteenth we hear constantly of the
gold, silver and thread lace, as well as of the points of Genoa, being held
in high estimation.
Gold and silver lace was prohibited to be worn within the walls of the
city, but they wear, writes Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, exceeding fine lace
and linen.[232] Indeed, by the sumptuary laws of the Republic, the richest
costume allowed to the ladies was black velvet trimmed with their home-made
point.
The _femmes bourgeoises_ still edge their aprons with point lace, and some
of the elder women wear square linen veils trimmed with coarse lace.[233]
{74}"That decayed city, Genoa, makes much lace, but inferior to that of
Flanders," states Anderson in his _Origin of Commerce_, 1764.
The Genoese wisely encouraged their own native manufacture, but it was now,
however, chiefly for home consumption.
Savary, speaking of the Genoa fabric, says: As regards France, these points
have had the same lot as those of Venice--ruined by the act of prohibition.
In 1840, there were only six lace-sellers in the city of Genoa. The women
work in their own houses, receiving materials and patterns from the
merchant who pays for their labour.[234]
Lace, in Genoa, is called _pizzo_. _Punti in aco_ were not made in this
city. The points of Genoa, so prized in the seventeenth century, were all
the work of the pillow, _a piombini_,[235] or _a mazzetta_, as the Italians
term it, of fine handspun thread brought from Lombardy. Silk was procured
from Naples. Of this Lombardy thread were the magnificent collars of which
we give an example (Fig. 35), and the fine guipures _à réseau_ which were
fashioned into aprons and fichus. The old Genoa point still finds favour in
the eyes of the clergy, and on fête days, either at Genoa or Savona, may be
seen splendid lace decorating the _camicie_ of the ecclesiastics.
The Ligurian or Genoese guipures have four entirely distinctive characters.
The Hispano-Moresque (or Greek) point de Gênes frisé, the Vermicelli from
Rapallo and Santa Margherita, a lace resembling Milanese lace with
"brides," and a fourth kind, entirely different from these varieties,
called _fugio_ (I fly), as it is very soft and airy. It is an adaptation of
guipure-like ribbons of weaving, with open-work variations, held together
by a very few bars. In all these laces, as in Neapolitan and Milanese lace,
a crochet needle is used to join the bars and design by drawing one thread
through a pin-hole in the lace and passing a free bobbin through the loop
to draw the knot tight.
[Illustration: Fig. 35.
GENOA POINT, BOBBIN-MADE. From a collar in the possession of the Author.
This is an elaborate specimen of Point de Gênes frisé--Italian merletti a
piombini. The plaits almost invariably consist of four threads.
_To face page 74._]
{75}The lace manufacture extends along the coast from Albissola, on the
Western Riviera, to Santa Margherita on the eastern. Santa Margherita and
Rapallo are called by Luxada[236] the emporium of the lace industry of
Genoa, and are still the greatest producers of pillow-lace on the coast.
The workers are mostly the wives and daughters of the coral-fishers who
support themselves by this occupation during the long and perilous voyages
of their husbands. In the archives of the parochial church of Santa
Margherita is preserved a book of accounts, in which mention is made, in
the year 1592, of gifts to the church, old nets from the coral fishery,
together with _pisetti_ (_pizzi_), the one a votive offering of some
successful fishermen, the other the work of their wives or daughters, given
in gratitude for the safe return of their relatives. There was also found
an old worn parchment pattern for a kind of tape guipure (Fig. 36).[237]
The manufacture, therefore, has existed in the province of Chiavari for
many centuries. Much of this description of lace is assigned to Genoa. In
these tape guipures the tape or braid was first made, and the ground worked
in on the parchment either by the needle or on the pillow. The laces
consist of white thread of various qualities, either for wear, church
decoration, or for exportation to America.
Later, this art gave place to the making of black blonde, in imitation of
Chantilly, of which the centres in Italy are now Genoa and Cantu. In the
year 1850 the lace-workers began to make guipures for France, and these now
form their chief produce. The exportation is very great, and lace-making is
the daily occupation, not only of the women, but of the ladies of the
commune.[238] In 1862 Santa Margherita had 2,210 lace-workers: Rapallo,
1,494. The _maestri_, or overseers, receive all orders from the trade, and
find hands to execute them. The silk and thread required for the lace is
weighed out and given to the lace-makers, and the work when completed is
re-weighed to see that it corresponds with that of the material given. The
_maestri_ contrive to realise large fortunes, and become in time _signori_;
not so the poor lace-makers, whose hardest day's gain seldom exceeds a
franc and a half.[239] Embroidered lace is also made at Genoa. On a band of
tulle are embroidered in darning-stitch flowers or small detached springs,
and the ground is sometimes _semé_ with little embroidered dots. A coarse
thread outlines the embroidery.
{76}[Illustration: Fig. 36.
LACE PATTERN FOUND IN THE CHURCH AT SANTA MARGHERITA (circ. 1592).]
PLATE XX.
[Illustration: ITALIAN. BOBBIN TAPE WITH NEEDLE-MADE RÉSEAU. Width, 8 in.
Photo by A. Dryden.]
PLATE XXI.
[Illustration: ITALIAN, GENOESE. SCALLOPED BORDER OF UNBLEACHED THREADS,
TWISTED AND PLAITED.--Sixteenth or seventeenth century. Width, 5 in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.]
_To face page 76._
{77}[Illustration: Fig. 37.
PARCHMENT PATTERN USED TO COVER A BOOK, BEARING THE DATE 1577. (Reduced.)]
The laces of Albissola,[240] near Savona, of black and white thread, or
silk of different colours, were once an article of considerable exportation
to the principal cities of Spain, Cadiz, Madrid and Seville. This industry
was of early date. In many of the parochial churches of Albissola are
specimens of the native fabric dating from 1600, the work of devout ladies;
and parchment patterns drawn and pricked for pillow-lace, bearing the
earlier date of 1577, have been found covering old law books, the property
of a notary of Albissola. The designs (Fig. 37) are flowing, but poor, and
have probably served for some shawl or apron, for it was a custom long
handed down for the daughters of great nobles, previous {78}to their
marriage, to select veils and shawls of this fabric, and, in the memory of
an aged workwoman (1864), the last of these bridal veils was made for a
lady of the Gentili family. Princes and lords of different provinces in
Italy sent commissions to Albissola for these articles in the palmy days of
the fabric, and four women would be employed at one pillow, with sixty
dozen bobbins at a time.[241] The making of this lace formed an occupation
by which women in moderate circumstances were willing to increase their
incomes. Each of these ladies, called a _maestra_, had a number of workers
under her, either at home or out. She supplied the patterns, pricked them
herself, and paid her workwomen at the end of the week, each day's work
being notched on a tally.[242] The women would earn from ten soldi to two
lire a day. The last fine laces made at Albissola were bought up by the
lace-merchants of Milan on the occasion of the coronation of Napoleon I. in
that city.[243]
Among the Alençon laces is illustrated a beautiful lappet sent from Genoa,
now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.[244] The pattern is of the Louis
Quinze period, and the lovely diapered ground recalls the mayflower of the
Dresden and the oeil-de-perdrix of the Sèvres china of that time. It was
supposed to be of Italian workmanship, though the very fine ground
introduced in the _modes_ of the riband pattern is the true Alençon réseau
stitch. M. Dupont Auberville claimed it for Alençon, asserting he had met
with the same ground on point undoubtedly of that manufacture. He named it
_réseau rosacé_.
A considerable quantity of lace was formerly made from {79}the fibre of the
aloe (filo d'erba spada)[245] by the peasants of Albissola, either of its
natural cream colour or dyed black. This lace, however, like that
fabricated in the neighbourhood of Barcelona, would not stand washing.[246]
There exists a beautiful and ingenious work taught in the schools and
convents along the Riviera. It is carried to a great perfection at Chiavari
and also at the Albergo de' Poveri at Genoa. You see it in every stage. It
is almost the first employment of the fingers which the poor children of
either sex learn. This art is principally applied to the ornamenting of
towels, termed Macramé,[247] a long fringe of thread being left at each end
for the purpose of being knotted together in geometrical designs (Fig. 38).
Macramé at the Albergo de' Poveri were formerly made with a plain plaited
fringe, till in 1843, the Baroness A. d' Asti brought one from Rome, richly
ornamented, which she left as a pattern. Marie Picchetti, a young girl, had
the patience to unpick the fringe and discover the way it was made. A
variety of designs are now executed, the more experienced inventing fresh
patterns as they work. Some are applied to church purposes. Specimens of
elaborate workmanship were in the Paris Exhibition of 1867. These
richly-trimmed macramé form an item in the wedding trousseau of a Genoese
lady, while the commoner sorts find a ready sale in the country, and are
also exported to South America and California.[248]
{80}CANTU.
Cantu, a small town near Lake Como, is one of the greatest lace-producing
centres in Italy. The lace industry was planted there in the sixteenth
century by the nuns of the Benedictine order, and until fifty years ago was
confined to simple and rude designs. During the latter half of the
nineteenth century, however, the industry has been revived and the designs
improved. Thousands of women throughout the province work at it and dispose
of their lace independently to travelling merchants, or work under the
direction of the Cantuese lace-merchants. The laces are all made with
bobbins with both thread and silk.
[Illustration: Fig. 38.
FRINGED MACRAMÉ.--(Genoa.)]
SICILY.
Sicily was celebrated in olden times for its gold and metal laces, but this
fabric has nearly died out. An attempt, however, is now being made to
organise a revival of the lace industry as a means of support for the women
of Palermo and other populous centres.
PLATE XXII.
[Illustration: ]
PLATE XXIII.
[Illustration: ITALIAN. OLD PEASANT LACES, BOBBIN MADE.--Actual size.]
PLATE XXIV.
[Illustration: ITALIAN. MODERN PEASANT BOBBIN LACE.--Made at the School at
Asolo near Bassano, founded by Browning. Width about 4 in.
Photo by A. Dryden.]
_To face page 80._
{81}At Messina, embroidered net (lacis) was made, and bobbin-laces and the
antique Sicilian drawn-work are now copied in the women's prison there.
Torchon, a lace which is also made in Sicily, has no design worked upon the
parchment. The peasant follows the dictates of her fancy, and forms
combinations of webs and nets by skipping the holes pricked at regular
intervals over the strip of parchment sewed upon the cushion or
_ballon_.[249]
There are other variations of old Italian laces and embroideries which have
not been mentioned here on account of space; either they are not often met
with--certainly not outside Italy--or in some cases they appear to be only
local names for the well-known sorts.
{82}CHAPTER V.
GREECE.
"Encor pour vous poincts de Raguse
Il est bon, crainte d'attentat,
D'en vouloir purger un Estat;
Les gens aussi fins que vous estes
Ne sont bons que comme vous faites
Pour ruiner les Estats."--_La Révolte des Passemens._
We have already spoken of Greece as the cradle of embroidery, and in those
islands which escaped the domination of the Turks, the art still lingered
on. Cyprus, to which in after times Venice gave a queen, was renowned for
its gold, its stuffs, and its needlework. As early as 1393, in an inventory
of the Dukes of Burgundy, we find noted "un petit pourpoint de satin noir,
et est la gorgerette de maille d'argent de Chippre"--a collar of silver
network.[250] The peasants now make a coarse thread lace, and some fine
specimens have recently been made in white silk, which were exhibited in
the Cyprus Court of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886, and are now
in the possession of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
In our own country, in 1423, we have a statute touching the deceitful works
of the embroiderers of gold and of silver of Cipre, which shall be
forfeited to the king.[251] But the secret of these cunning works became,
after a time, known throughout Europe. Of cut-works or laces from
Cyprus[252] and the islands of the Grecian seas, there is no mention; but
we hear much of a certain point known to the commerce of the seventeenth
century as that of Ragusa, which, after an ephemeral existence, disappears
from the scene. Of Ragusa, {83}says Anderson, "her citizens, though a
Popish state, are manufacturers to a man."
Ragusa, comparatively near the Montenegrin sea-board, and north-western
coast of Greece, was, in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, one
of the principal Adriatic ports belonging to the Venetian Republic. Certain
it is that this little republic, closely allied with the Italian branches
of the House of Austria, served them with its navy, and in return received
from them protection. The commerce of Ragusa consisted in bearing the
products of the Greek islands and Turkey to Venice, Ancona, and the kingdom
of Naples;[253] hence it might be inferred that the fine productions of the
Greek convents were first introduced into Italy by the merchants of
Dalmatia, and received on that account the denomination of points de
Raguse. When Venice had herself learned the art, these cut-works and laces
were no longer in demand; but the fabric still continued, and found favour
in its native isles, chiefly for ecclesiastical purposes, the dress of the
islanders, and for grave-clothes.
In our English statutes we have no allusion to the point de Raguse; in
those of France[254] it appears twice. "Tallemant des Réaux"[255] and the
"Révolte des Passemens"[256] both give it honourable notice. Judging from
the lines addressed to it in the last-named _jeu d'esprit_, point de Raguse
was of a more costly character, "faite pour ruiner les estats,"[257] than
any of those other points present. If, however, from this period it did
still form an article of commerce, we may infer that it appeared under the
general appellation of point de Venise. Ragusa had affronted Louis Quatorze
by its attachment to the Austro-Italian princes; he kicked out her
ambassadors,[258] and if the name of the point was unpleasant, we may feel
assured it was no longer permitted to offend the royal ears.
{84}[Illustration: Fig. 39.
SILK GIMP LACE.]
Though no manufacture of thread lace is known at Ragusa, yet much gold and
silver lace is made for ornamenting the bodices of the peasants. They still
also fabricate a kind of silk lace or gimp, made of twisted threads of
cotton covered with metal, which is sewn down the seams of the coats and
the bodices of the peasantry. The specimen, illustrated in Fig. 39, may
possibly be the old, long-lost point de Raguse. Its resemblance, with its
looped edges, to the pattern given from _Le Pompe_,[259] published at
Venice in 1557, is very remarkable. We have seen specimens from Italy and
Turkey.
PLATE XXV.
[Illustration: SICILIAN. OLD DRAWN-WORK.--Height, 12 in.
Photo by A. Dryden from Salviati & Co.'s Collection.]
PLATE XXVI.
[Illustration: SOUTH ITALIAN.--The upper one is seventeenth century Church
lace--réseau of threads twisted into star-shaped meshes. The three lower
are considered eighteenth century CRETAN. All pillow made of thread and
silk. Widths: 2, 2½, 1¾, 3¾ in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.]
_To face page 84._
{85}The conventionally termed Greek lace is really the Italian _reticella_.
"The designs of the earliest Greek laces were all geometrical, the oldest
being simple outlines worked over ends or threads left after others had
been drawn or cut. Next in date come the patterns which had the outlines
further ornamented with half circles, triangles, or wheels. Later,
open-work with thick stitches was produced."
[Illustration: Fig. 40.
RETICELLA, OR GREEK LACE.--(Zante.)]
The principal seats of the manufacture were the Ionian Isles, Zante, Corfu,
Venice, Naples, Rome, Florence and Milan. The Ionian Islands for many years
belonged to Venice, which accounts for the similarity in the manufacture.
Fig. 40 is from a specimen purchased in the Island of Zante. This lace was
much in vogue in Naples for curtains, bed-hangings, and coverlets, and even
formed a substitute for {86}tapestry. A room hung with bands of Greek lace,
alternated with crimson or amber silk, has a most effective appearance.
The church lace of the Ionian Isles was not appreciated by the natives, who
were only too glad to dispose of it to the English officers in garrison at
Corfu. "Much is still found in Cephalonia: the natives bring it on board
the steamers for sale, black with age, and unpleasant to the senses. This
is not to be wondered at when we consider that it is taken from the tombs,
where for centuries it has adorned the grave-clothes of some defunct
Ionian. This hunting the catacombs has now become a regular trade. It is
said that much coarse lace of the same kind is still made in the islands,
steeped either in coffee or some drug, and, when thus discoloured, sold as
from the tombs" (1869).
The Greek islands now fabricate lace from the fibre of the aloe, and a
black lace similar to the Maltese. In Athens, and other parts of Greece
proper, a white silk lace is made, mostly consumed by the Jewish Church.
CRETE.
Pillow-lace making in Crete would seem to have arisen in consequence of
Venetian intercourse with the island. "The Cretan laces[260] were chiefly
of silk, which seems to point to a cultivation of silk in the island, as
well as to its importation from the neighbouring districts of Asia Minor,
when laces were made there, at least one hundred years ago." In 1875, the
South Kensington Museum acquired a collection of Cretan laces and
embroideries, some of which (the white thread laces) bear distinct traces
of Venetian influence, as, for example, those in which costumed figures are
introduced. "As a rule, the motives of Cretan lace patterns are traceable
to orderly arrangement and balance of simple geometric and symmetrical
details, such as diamonds, triangles and quaint polygonal figures, which
are displayed upon groundworks of small meshes. The workmanship is somewhat
remarkable, especially that displayed in the making of the meshes for the
grounds. Here we have an evidence of ability to twist and {87}plait threads
as marked, almost as that shown by the lace-makers of Brussels and Mechlin.
Whether the twisting and plaiting of threads to form the meshes in this
Cretan lace was done with the help of pins or fine-pointed bones, may be a
question difficult to solve."
The patterns in the majority of the specimens are outlined with one, two,
or three bright-coloured silken threads, which may have been worked in with
the other threads as the _cordonnet_ in Mechlin. The numerous
interlacements which this _cordonnet_ makes with the lace point also to the
outline having perhaps been run in with a needle.
TURKEY.
"The Turks wear no lace or cut stuff," writes Moryson (1589), winding up
with "neither do the women wear lace or cut-work on their shirts"; but a
hundred and fifty years later fashions are changed in the East. The Grand
Turk now issues sumptuary laws against the wearing gold lace "on clothes
and elsewhere."[261]
A fine white silk guipure is now made in modern Turkey at Smyrna and
Rhodes, oriental in its style; this lace is formed with the needle or
tambour hook. Lace or passementerie of similar workmanship, called "oyah"
is also executed in colours representing flowers, fruits and foliage,
standing out in high relief from the ground. Numerous specimens were in the
International Exhibition of 1867.
The point lace manufactured in the harems is little known and costly in
price. It is said to be the only silk guipure made with the needle. Edgings
of it resemble in workmanship Figs. 121 and 122.
MALTA.
The lace once made in Malta, indigenous to the island, was a coarse kind of
Mechlin or Valenciennes of one arabesque pattern.[262] In 1833, Lady
Hamilton Chichester {88}induced a woman named Ciglia to copy in white the
lace of an old Greek coverlet. The Ciglia family from that time commenced
the manufacture of the black and white silk guipures, so generally known
under the name of Maltese lace. Much Maltese is made in the orphanage in
the little adjacent island of Gozo. Malta has certainly the first claim to
the invention of these fine guipures, which have since made the fortune of
Auvergne, where they have been extensively manufactured at Le Puy, as well
as by our own lace-makers of Bedfordshire and in the Irish schools. The
black is made of Barcelona silk, the same used in Catalonia for the
fabrication of the black blonde mantillas of the Spanish ladies. Fig. 41
represents the lace round the ecclesiastical robe of Hugues Loubeux de
Verdale, Cardinal and Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, who died in
1595, and is buried in the church of St. John, where a magnificent tomb is
erected to his memory.
[Illustration: Fig. 41.
LOUBEUX DE VERDALE.--(From the cast of his Tomb, Musée de Versailles.)]
Pillow-laces made by women in Ceylon and Travancore, as well as elsewhere
in India,[263] seem to owe more to the instruction of the Portuguese than
to the Dutch or English. We mention it in this place because the specimens
of thread pillow-lace from Point de Galle and Candy bear a striking
resemblance to the Maltese.
PLATE XXVII.
[Illustration: ITALIAN, RAPALLO. MODERN PEASANT LACE, BOBBIN MADE, IN
SILK.--Actual size.]
PLATE XXVIII.
[Illustration: MALTESE. MODERN, BOBBIN MADE IN SILK.--About two-thirds
actual size.
Photos by A. Dryden.]
_To face page 88._