Punto a Gropo (Knotted Point).
7. Punto a maglia quadra.—Lacis; square netting,[178] the modano of the Tuscans. (Fig. 24.)
Fig. 23.
Gros Point de Venise.—From the Collar of a Venetian Nobleman. Musée de Cluny, Paris. 16th century.
N.B.—This drawing makes the work and design appear heavier than it is in reality.
To face page 52.
This Tuscan sort was not generally embroidered; the pattern consists in knitting the meshes together in different shapes. It was much used for hangings of beds, and those curtains placed across the windows, called stores by the French, and by the Italians, stuora.[179]
8. Burato.—The word means a stiff cloth or canvas (toille clere of Taglienti, 1527), on which the pattern is embroidered, reducing it to a kind of rude lace. One of the pattern-books[180] is devoted exclusively to the teaching of this point.
Fig. 24.
Punto a Maglia (Lacis)
The needle-made laces fabricated at Burano will be noticed later.
9. Punto tirato—Drawn work.[181] Fig. 25 is a lace ground made by drawing the threads of muslin (fili tirati).[182] The present specimen is simple in design, but some are very complicated and beautiful.
The ordinance of Colbert must have inflicted a serious injury on the Venice lace trade, which, says Daru, "occupoit la population de la capitale." In Britannia Languens, a discourse upon trade, London, 1680,[183] it is said that the laces commonly called Points de Venise now come mostly from France, and amount to a vast sum yearly.
Savary, speaking of the thread laces termed Venice point in the early part of the eighteenth century,[184] says, "The French no longer purchase these articles, having established themselves manufactures which rival those of the Adriatic."
Fig. 25.
Punto Tirato (Drawn Lace).
Still the greater number of travellers[185] make a provision of points in their passage through Venice, and are usually cheated, writes a traveller about this period.[186] He recommends his friend, Mr. Claude Somebody, a French dealer, who probably paid him in ruffles for the advertisement.
Fig. 26.
Point de Venise à Brides Picotées.—Early 18th century.
To Face page 54.
Our porte-bouquets and lace-trimmed nosegays are nothing new. On the occasion of the annual visit of the Doge to the Convent delle Vergini, the lady abbess with the novices received him in the parlour, and presented him with a nosegay of flowers placed in a handle of gold, and trimmed round with the finest lace that Venice could produce.[187]
Fig. 27.
Venice Point.
Fynes Moryson[188] is the earliest known traveller who alludes to the products of Venice. "Venetian ladies in general," he says, "wear a standing collar and ruffs close up to the chin; the unmarried tie their hair with gold and silver lace." Evidently the collars styled "bavari," for which Vecellio[189] gives patterns "all' usanza Veneziana," were not yet in general vogue.[190] The Medici collars were supported by fine metal bars called "verghetti," which were so much in demand that the inhabitants of a whole quarter of Venice were engaged in their production, and the name which it still bears was given to it in consequence.
Fig. 28.
Gros Point de Venise.—(First half of 17th century.)
Fig. 29.
Point de Venise.—End of 17th century.
Fig. 30.
Point Plat de Venise.—Middle of 17th century.
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Fifty years later, Evelyn speaks of the veils of glittering taffetas, worn by the Venetian ladies, to the corners of which hang broad but curious tassels of point laces.
According to Zedler, an author who wrote about lace in 1742, the price of Venice point in high relief varied from one to nine ducats per Italian ell.
The Venetians, unlike the Spaniards, thought much of their fine linen and the decorations pertaining to it. "La camicia preme assai più del giubbone," ran the proverb—"La chemise avant le pourpoint." Young nobles were not allowed to wear lace on their garments until they put on the robe, which they usually did at the age of five-and-twenty, on being admitted to the council.[191]
Towards 1770, the Venice ladies themselves commenced to forsake the fabrics of their native islands; for on the marriage of the Doge's son, in that year, we read that, although the altar was decorated with the richest Venice point, the bride and her ladies wore their sleeves covered up to the shoulders with falls of the finest Brussels lace, and a tucker of the same material.[192]
During the carnival, however, the people, both male and female, wore a camail, or hood of black lace, covering the chin up to the mouth, called a "bauta."[193] It was one of these old black lace hoods that Walpole describes Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as wearing at Florence, 1762, in place of a cap.
Point de Venise à réseau is chiefly distinguished by the conventional treatment of the flowers and ornament, and a general flat look of the work. The outlining thread or cordonnet is stitched to the edge of the pattern and worked in flatly. A minute border to the cordonnet of small meshes intervenes between it and the réseau, which is of square meshes and always very fine. Whether the lace was derived from the Alençon, and was the result of an attempt to win back the custom the French manufacturers were taking away from Venice, or whether it was Alençon that imitated the Venetian réseau, is a moot point, but certain it is that the Venetian product surpassed in fineness both Alençon and Brussels. Its very delicacy has been its destruction, so that very few specimens of this lace survive. Plate XII.
Mezzo Punto, or mixed Venetian guipure, was a mixed point lace, of which the scrolls and flowers were outlined in pillow-lace, or by a tape, and the designs filled in with needle fillings, and connected by pearled brides on a coarse needle-made réseau. This variety of lace was sometimes made of silk. In point de Venise, flat or raised, the pattern is always connected by an irregular network of pearled brides. Real brides connecting the flowers here and there hardly ever