The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
and the free maids that weave their threads with bone ....
William Shakespeare

 

By Marie Minnich

Garbo, Dietrich, Harlow. And now you. All sensational in vintage satin, silk and lace.

Lace has always been used in the most romantic, meticulously tailored garments, from times when beauty and glamour were synonomous with fine craftsmanship. Lace has been used to display the ecclesiastical grandeur of the church - embellishing altars, vestments, and chalice covers, and to adorn the households of royalty and nobility. The 17th Century Letter's of a Lady's Travels in Spain describes the Princess of Monteleon as having a bed of "gold and damask, line with silver brocade, and trimmed with point de Spain", and a carriage with lace-trimmed curtains.

The history of European Lace begins during the 1400's in Venice. Many of the earliest lacemakers were nuns, who developed their techniques by sharing pattern books. Eventually, the craft spread from Vemetian palazzos to the whitewashed cottages of Ireland, with stops along tahe way in France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and England.

Lace is an openwork fabric most commonly made from threads plaited, looped, knotted, and twisted by hand: tools include a needle, bobbins, bones and pins. Before the 19th century, when cotton was introduced, lace was made predominately of flax, from which a linen thread was spun. Sometimes, thtese fibers were combined with gold, silver, silk or aloe.

Handmade lace falls into essentially two categories. Point lace, the earlier kind, is akin to needlepoint, often with a geometric pattern of embroidery stitches made by a single needle and thread. The taechnique is know by various names, including punto in aria (stitch in the air) and involves drawing a cartoon on parchment or paper, completing the stitches, then cutting the cartoon away.

Bobbin lace, or pillow lace, on the other hand, is made from multiple threads wound around wooden bobbins that variously twist and braid the stramds together to produce a groundwork, or mesh. ("Bone Lace" refers to a cousin whose threads are wound around thin bone or ivory reels instead instead of wooden bobbins). The lacemaker draws a ground pattern, pricks it with holes for pins, spreads it over a stiff pillow held in her lap, and winds the thread around the pins stuck in the hole of the pattern, a complex task requiring dexterity and patience. She stitches the resulting groundwork with a thicker thread, or gimp, to create floral, animal, or architectural motifs.

The English pioneered the production of machine made lace. By 1809, John Heathcoat of Tiverton had patented a machine that actually wound threads around bobbins and twisted the strands, making lace, previously considered an extravagance, much more affordable. Factories were soon turning out vast quantities of tablecloths and runners, napkins, curtains, sheets, and coverlets for a market of worthy burghers.