the artillery they all take to their heels, and are condemned by a council of war—the Points to be made into tinder, for the sole use of the King's Mousquetaires; the Laces to be converted into paper; the Dentelles, Escrues, Gueuses, Passemens, and Silk Lace to be made into cordage and sent to the galleys; the Gold and Silver Laces, the original authors of the sedition, to be "burned alive."
Finally, through the intercession of Love—
"Le petit dieu plein de finesse,"
they are again pardoned and restored to court favour.
The poem is curious, as giving an account of the various kinds of lace, and as a specimen of the taste of the time, but the "ton précieux" of the Hôtel Rambouillet pervades throughout.
The lace trade, up to this period, was entirely in the hands of pedlars, who carried their wares to the principal towns and large country-houses.
"One Madame La Boord," says Evelyn, "a French peddling-woman, served Queen Katherine with petticoats, fans, and foreign laces." These hawkers attended the great fairs[136] of Europe, where all purchases were made.[137]
Even as early as King Henry III.[138] we have a notice "to purchase robes at the fair of St. Ives, for the use of Richard our brother"; and in the dramas of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we find constant allusion to these provincial markets:—[139]
"Seven
Pedlars' shops, nay all Sturbridge fair,[140] will
Scarce furnish her."[141]
The custom of carrying lace from house to house still exists in Belgium, where at Spa and other places, colporteurs,[142] with packs similar to those borne by our pedlars, bring round to the visitors laces of great value, which they sell at cheaper rates than those exposed in the shops.[143]
Many travellers, too, through the counties of Buckingham and Bedford, or the more southern regions of Devon, will still call to mind the inevitable lace box handed round for purchase by the waiter at the conclusion of the inn dinner; as well as the girls who, awaiting the arrival of each travelling carriage or postchaise, climbed up to the windows of the vehicle, rarely allowing the occupants to go their way until they had purchased some article of the wares so pertinaciously offered to their inspection.
In Paris, the lace trade was the exclusive privilege of the passementiers.[144]
Plate X.
Italian. Point de Venise à la rose. Modern reproduction at Burano of seventeenth century lace. Width, 17 in.
Photo by the Burano School.
To face page 44.
CHAPTER IV.
ITALY.
"It grazed on my shoulder, takes me away six parts of an Italian cut-work band I wore, cost me three pounds in the Exchange but three days before."—Ben Jonson—Every Man Out of His Humour,1599.
"Ruffles well wrought and fine falling bands of Italian cut-work."—Fair Maid of the Exchange, 1627.
The Italians claim the invention of point, or needle-made lace.
It has been suggested they derived the art of fine needlework from the Greeks who took refuge in Italy from the troubles of the Lower Empire; and what further confirms its Byzantine origin is, that those very places which kept up the closest intercourse with the Greek Empire are the cities where point lace was earliest made and flourished to the greatest extent.[145]
A modern Italian author,[146] on the other hand, asserts that the Italians learned embroidery from the Saracens of Sicily, as the Spaniards acquired the art from the Moors of Granada or Seville, and brings forward, as proof of his theory, that the word to embroider, both in Italian and Spanish,[147] is derived from the Arabic, and no similar word exists in any other European language.[148] This theory may apply to embroidery, but certainly not to lace; for with the exception of the Turkish crochet "oyah," and some darned netting and drawn-work which occur in Persian and Chinese tissues, there is nothing approaching to lace to be found on any article of oriental manufacture.
We proceed to show that evidences of the lace-fabric appear in Italy as early as the fifteenth century.
In 1476, the Venetian Senate decreed that no Punto in Aria whatever, executed either in flax with a needle, or in silver or gold thread, should be used on the curtains or bed-linen in the city or provinces. Among the State archives of the ducal family of Este, which reigned in Ferrara for so many centuries, Count Gandini found mentioned in a Register of the Wardrobe, dated 1476 (A. C. 87), an order given for a felt hat "alla Borgognona," trimmed with a silver and silk gimp made with bobbins. Besides this, in the same document is noted (A. C. 96) a velvet seat with a canopy trimmed at the sides with a frill of gold and silver, made in squares, with bobbins.
The Cavaliere Antonio Merli, in his interesting pamphlet on Italian lace,[149] mentions an account preserved in the Municipal Archives of Ferrara, dated 1469, as probably referring to lace;[150] but he more especially brings forward a document of the Sforza family, dated[151] 1493, in which the word trina (under its ancient form "tarnete") constantly occurs,[152] together with bone and bobbin lace.
Plate XI
Italian. Point Plat de Venise. Needle-point.—Seventeenth century. Length, 25 in.; width, 16 in. Victoria and Albert Museum.
To face page 46.
Again, the Florentine poet, Firenzuola, who wrote from 1520–30, composed an elegy upon a collar of raised point, made by the hand of his mistress.
Cavaliere Merli cites, as the earliest known painting in which lace occurs, a majolica disc, after the style of the Della Robbia family, in which, surrounded by a wreath of fruit, is represented the half figure of a lady, dressed in a rich brocade, with a collar of white lace. The costume is of the fifteenth century; but as Luca della Robbia's descendants worked to a later period, the precise date of the work cannot be fixed.
Evidences of white lace, or passement, are said to appear in the pictures of Carpaccio, in the gallery at Venice, and in another by the Gentile Bellini, where the dress of one of the ladies is trimmed round the neck with a white lace.[153] The date of this last painting is 1500.
Lace was made throughout Italy mostly by the nuns,[154] and expressly for the service of the Church. Venice was celebrated for her points, while Genoa produced almost exclusively pillow-lace.
The laces best known in the commercial world in the earlier periods were those of Venice, Milan, and Genoa.
VENICE.
Mrs. Termagant: "I'll spoil your point de Venise for you."—Shadwell,
Squire of Alsatia.
"Elle n'avoit point de mouchoir,
Mais un riche et tres beau peignoir
Des plus chers de point de Venise
En negligeance elle avoit mise."
Les Combats, etc., 1663.
The Venetian galleys, at an early period, bore to England "apes, sweet wines," and other articles of luxury. They brought also the gold-work