PLATE CXLYI.
In the remarks with which we accompanied Plates XXX. and CII. we attempted to indicate briefly thepeculiarities involved in the manufacture of run or embroidered, and of machine-made, lace; on the presentoccasion our notices will be confined to that variety known as “point;” of the successful revival of the untillately extinct processes involved in forming which the object we engrave afforded so admirable a specimen.Strictly speaking, the term “point,” as applied to lace, is correctly employed only in designating those fabricswhich are formed by the needle alone, and in which the whole texture is wrought out by “overcasting” orlooping a single thread in a variety of complicated stitches; very generally, however, the term is applied tovarieties of embroidery, and even to combinations of pure “point” with pillow groundwork, as in the fabricknown as old Brussels point.
Among the best authorities upon the subject the question has been much debated as to whether the“ lacinia” of the ancients, from which the term lace is supposed to have been derived, consisted of lace workedwith the needle, or of open-work embroidery only. Unfortunately the statues of antiquity fail to supply usw r ith any definite details of the rich hems to the garments of the ladies, which were known as “ Phrygian work”to have cost great sums of money. The best authority upon the subject may be met with in the drawingson the finer Nolan Vases, which show pretty clearly that the “lacinia” consisted both of embroidery on theedge of the robe, and of fringe formed by unravelling the end of the tissue and then plaiting the ends of thewarp threads into geometrical patterns. That every variety of precious needle-work was known to the Byzantine Greeks there can be no doubt, as for some centuries the finest vestments and the richest orphreys wereembroidered and worked for the imperial state and the maintenance of the sumptuous dignity of the Church.From the Greeks, whom the iconoclastic troubles drove to take refuge in the Scuola Greca, and other similarinstitutions in Italy , it appears highly probable that the ancient cunning of fine needlework was acquired bythe inhabitants of the last-named country. AVe can be but little surprised, therefore, to recognise in theearliest works of the Siennese and Florentine masters indications of the existence and frequent use of allvarieties of needle-worked lace. Not only do we recognise the peculiar twisted fringe of the ancients, populareven to the present day among the Calabrian peasants, but the pierced work resembling lace formed by cuttingout portions of fine linen, and edging round the openings so formed in geometrical patterns with button-holestitch. That these two varieties of working preceded regular point appears most probable, since althoughspecimens of the former are common in the works of the painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,it is not until toward the beginning of the sixteenth century that any evidence of the existence of the art ofworking the latter is to be found.
The theory of the Byzantine origin of point-lace receives some confirmation from the fact, that its earliestdevelopement in Italy may be traced to those very localities which maintained the most intimate commercialrelations with the Greek Empire; thus at Venice and Genoa, especially the former, the art flourished, and tohow great an extent is clearly shown in many old paintings by Carlo Crivelli , and yet more strikingly inthe valuable costume pictures of Carpaccio, preserved in the Academy of Fine Arts on the Grand Canal .