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 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 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.
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.
Italian, Rapallo. Modern Peasant Lace, Bobbin made, in Silk.—Actual size.
Plate XXVIII.
Maltese. Modern, Bobbin made in silk.—About two-thirds actual size.
Photos by A. Dryden.
To face page 88.
Fig. 42.
Bobbin-lace.—(Ceylon.)
The specimens of Indian pillow-laces, wrought with white and black threads, in the India Museum, are apparently made in single pieces, and not as in Honiton laces, by separate flowers, which are subsequently placed together for the ground to be worked in between them.[264] "A missionary taught a few Chinese women to make silk lace from the wild silk of this part of China," reports Consul Bullock from Chefoo (at the request of the Nottingham Chamber of Commerce), but the small quantity of lace so produced is sold to Europeans only. The Chinese do not care to buy it. Acting Consul Trotman also reported from Hangkow, that a large quantity of hand-made lace is made in the Roman Catholic orphanages there, but this was entirely for European consumption. White lace in China is not woven by the natives, for white and blue being the national mourning colours, and severe simplicity of dress being de rigueur on these occasions, lace of these colours has no sale.[265]
CHAPTER VI.
SPAIN.
"Of Point d'Espagne a rich cornet,
Two night rails and a scarf beset,
With a large lace and collaret."
—Evelyn, Voyage to Marryland.
"Hat laced with gold Point d'Espagne."[266]
—Wardrobe of a Pretty Fellow, Roderick Random.
"The Count: 'Voglio una punta di Spagna, larga, massiccia, ben lavorata. Del disegno, della ricchezza, ma niente di luccicante."—Goldoni, L'Avaro fastoso.
Spanish point, in its day, has been as celebrated as that of Flanders and Italy. Tradition declares Spain to have learned the art from Italy, whence she communicated it to Flanders, who, in return, taught Spain how to make pillow-lace. Though the dress of the Court, guided not by the impulse of fashion, but by sumptuary laws, gave little encouragement to the fabric, on the other hand, the numberless images of our Lady and other patron saints, dressed and redressed daily in the richest vestments, together with the albs of the priests and the decorations of the altars, caused an immense consumption of lace for ecclesiastical purposes. "Of so great value," says Beckford, "were the laces of these favoured Madonnas, that in 1787 the Marchioness of Cogalhudo, wife of the eldest son of the semi-royal race of Medino Cœli, was appointed Mistress of the Robes to our Lady of La Solidad, at Madrid, a much-coveted office."
Fig. 43.
The Work-Room.—(From an engraving of the Sixteenth Century after Stradan.)
Point d'Espagne, in the usual sense of the word, signifies that gold or silver lace, sometimes embroidered in colours, so largely consumed in France during the earlier years of Louis XIV.'s reign. Ornaments made of plaited and twisted gold and silver threads were produced in Spain during the seventeenth century, and mention of them is to be found in the ordinances of that time. Towards the end of the century, Narciso Felin, author of a work published in Barcelona, quoted by M. Aubry, writes that, "edgings of all sorts of gold, silver, silk thread and aloe fibres are made at Barcelona with greater perfection than in Flanders." In the