MALTA.

69

The point lace manufactured in the harems is little knownand costly in price. It is said to be the only silk guipure madewith the needle. Specimens were in the International Exhibitionof 1874.

MALTA.

The lace once made in Malta, indigenous to the island, was acoarse kind of Mechlin or Valenciennes of one arabesque pattern.In 1833, Lady Hamilton Chichester induced a woman, namedCiglia, to copy in white the lace of an old Creek coverlet, whichshe still has in her possession. The Ciglia family, from that time,

Fig. 36.

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Ix>ub:ux de VeuUle. From tho cast of Ins tomb. MumSe Nutloimlo, VermilU*.

commenced the manufacture of the black and white silk plaitedguipures, so generally known under the name of Maltese lace.Much Maltese lace is now made at the orphanage in the littleadjacent island of Gozo. Malta has certainly the first claim tothe invention of these fine guipures, which have since made thefortune of Auvergne, where they have been extensively manu-factured at Le Huy, as well as by our own lace-makers ofI Bedfordshire and in the Irish schools. The black is made ofBarcelona silk, the same as that used in Catalonia for thefabrication of the black blonde mantillas of the Spanish ladies.Fig. 36 represents the trimming round the ecclesiastical robe ofIlugues Loubeux de Yerdale, cardinal and grand master of theKnights of Malta, who died 1595, and is buried in the church ofSt. John, where a magnificent tomb is erected to his memory.