1612, is noted "narrow black Naples lace, purled on both sides."
The principal fabric of lace was in the Island of Ischia. Vecellio, in 1590, mentions the ladies' sleeves being trimmed with very fine thread lace.[221] Ischia lace may still be met with, and serves for trimming toilets, table-covers, curtains, etc., consisting generally of a square netting ground, with the pattern embroidered. Black silk lace also used to be made in Ischia.
Much torchon lace, of well-designed patterns, was also made, similar in style to that given in Fig. 40.
Though no longer fabricated in the island, the women at Naples still make a coarse lace, which they sell about the streets.[222]
The punto di Napoli is a bobbin lace, resembling the punto di Milano, but distinguished from it by its much rounder mesh and coarser make.
Towards the middle of the last century, many of the Italian sculptors adopted an atrocious system, only to be rivalled in bad taste by those of the Lower Empire, that of dressing the individuals they modelled in the costume of the period, the colours of the dress represented in varied marbles. In the villa of Prince Valguarnera, near Palermo, were some years since many of these strange productions with rich laces of coffee-coloured point, admirably chiselled, it must be owned, in giallo antico, the long flowing ruffles and head-*tires of the ladies being reproduced in white alabaster.[223]
GENOA ("Genova la Superba").
"Lost—A rich needle work called Poynt Jean, a yard and a half long and half quarter broad."—The Intelligencer, Feb. 29, 1663.
"Genoa, for points."—Grand Tour. 1756.
The art of making gold thread, already known to the Etruscans, took a singular development in Italy during the fourteenth century.
Genoa[224] first imitated the gold threads of Cyprus. Lucca followed in her 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]
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]
"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.
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.
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