VII The Laces of Flanders
Early Flemish—Brussels lace—Point d’Angleterre—Cost of real Flanders flax thread—Popularity of Brussels lace—Point Gaze.
Whether Italy or Flanders first invented both Needlepoint and Pillow laces will ever remain a moot point. Both countries claim priority, and both appear to have equal right. Italian Needlepoint without doubt evolved itself from the old Greek or Reticella laces, that in turn being a development of “Cutworke” and drawn thread work. Flanders produces her paintings by early artists in which the portraits are adorned with lace as early as the fourteenth century. An altar-piece by Quentin Matys, dated 1495, shows a girl making Pillow lace, and later, in 1581, an old engraving shows another girl busy with her pillow and bobbins. An early Flemish poet thus rhapsodises over his countrywomen’s handiworks:
“Of many arts, one surpasses all;
The threads woven by the strange power of the hand—
Threads, which the dropping of the spider would in vain attempt to imitate,
And which Pallas herself would confess she had never known.”
Whether Flanders imitated the Italian laces or not, it is unquestioned that every other lace-making country imitated her. Germany, Sweden, France, Russia, and England have, one after the other, adopted her method to such an extent that, following the tactics of Venice in 1698, she also issued an edict threatening punishment to all who would entice her workers away.
So alike are the early laces of Flanders that it is impossible to distinguish what is known as Flemish Point, Brussels Point, and Point d’Angleterre. The last-named lace is peculiar, inasmuch as it has a French appellation, is named “English,” and yet is purely Brussels in character. Two stories gather round this lace, which accounts for its name. One is that the English Government in the time of Charles II., seeing so much money go out of the country, forbade the importation of Brussels lace. The English lace merchants, not to be done out of their immense profits, smuggled it over in large quantities, and produced it as having been made in Devonshire, and sold it under the name of English Point. Another legend is that when Colbert, in the reign of Louis XIV., determined to encourage lace-making in his own country, made prohibitive the importation of any other lace than France’s own manufacture, the French Court, which had already become enamoured of Brussels lace, therefore had it smuggled into England and thence to France, as English laces were at that time too insignificant to come under Colbert’s ban.
Whichever tale we choose to believe is of little consequence. It is sufficient to say that fine Point d’Angleterre is simply Brussels of the best period when the glorious Renaissance was at its height. It is absolutely indistinguishable from Brussels of the same period. The specimen lappet, illustrated, shows the “figure” motif which appears in “Point de France” and the old “Venetian Point,” and which at once dates its manufacture.
Practically the term Flanders or Flemish lace can be applied to all the laces made in Flanders and Belgium of the earliest periods. It is peculiarly fine; the specimen shown is as fine as gossamer, showing a total absence of Cordonnet, of course, and not even having the loose thread which marks the stems and leaves of Brussels and Angleterre. The flax of Flanders was at the time of the great lace industry known and imported to all the towns engaged in making it. Italy could procure nothing so fine and eminently suitable to the delicate work she made her own as this fine thread, grown in Flanders, and spun in dark, damp rooms, where only a single ray of light was allowed to enter. The thread was so fine, it is said, that it was imperceptible to the naked eye and was manipulated by touch only. The cost of this thread was £240 a pound, and one pound could be made into lace worth £720! Real Flanders lace thread even now, spun with the help of machinery, costs £70, and is nothing like so durable as the old threads. When we consider that lace to be known as “Old Lace” must be two hundred or three hundred years old, we can understand the strength of this fairy thread, which was like a spider’s web in filminess and yet durable enough to last centuries of wear, and remain as a lasting memorial of its beauty.
Brussels
The early Flemish laces cannot be traced to any particular town, but Brussels early obtained a reputation for the production of the soft, elegant laces which are variously known as “Real old Brussels,” “Point d’Angleterre,” “Point d’Aiguille,” and “Point de Gaze.” Almost every woman, although knowing little about lace as an art, knows and easily recognises “Brussels.” It has ever been the most popular lace, partly because its price has never been actually prohibitive, although always costly. Choice pieces of Old Brussels, with real ground, rank among the laces of France and Venice as pieces of price, but the later period, especially the kind known as Brussels applique, is within everybody’s reach, even if only as a border for a best handkerchief.
Lace made at Brussels at all periods has one characteristic that places it at once and makes identification easy at a glance. The threads of the toilé—that is, the pattern—follows the curves, instead of, as in other Flanders laces, being straight up and down and across, each thread being exactly at right angles to the other; Brussels lace also has a distinctive edge to its pattern. It has no Cordonnet, but a little set of looped stitches worked along the edge of the design, afterwards whipped over to keep the edge in place. This is most clearly seen in every specimen, and, in conjunction with the curved toilé, at once settles the vexed question of the origin of Point d’Angleterre.
The mesh or ground is, again, quite different to other laces. It has three varieties of ground—
1. One, mostly used in Point d’Angleterre, being of fine “brides” with four or five picots, but this ground is also seen in Venetian and French laces.
2. A hand-made ground made of looped buttonhole stitches, which is the finest and most gossamer-like of all; and
3. A woven ground made on the pillow with plaited thread, very like Mechlin, but under the magnifying glass having two longer sides to its hexagonal mesh, and therefore being more open and clear.
The hand, or rather needlepoint, ground was three times more expensive than the woven, as it was stronger and more lasting. The special value of the “vrai reseau” in our own day is that it can be imperceptibly repaired, the broken stitches replaced, whereas in the woven ground the point of junction must show.
The needle-made net is so fine that one piece in my possession, though measuring ¾ yard by 8 inches can easily, in its widest part, be gathered and passed through a finger ring. At the present day this net is not made, and even the fine woven ground is not used except for Royal wedding orders or for exhibition purposes. A magnificent piece belonging to Messrs. Haywards, of New Bond Street (which cannot be photographed, unfortunately, as it is between two sheets of glass, and might fall to pieces if taken out), was made for George IV., and not delivered, owing no doubt to the usual depleted state of that monarch’s exchequer. Messrs. Haywards (whose courtesy is as boundless as their reputation) are always pleased to show this and their other splendid specimen collections to those interested in old lace.
Perhaps no lace is so diversified in style as Brussels. At first it was purely Flemish, and almost indistinguishable from it. Then the Venetian influence crept in, and elaboration of pattern and the Renaissance scrolls and flower work showed itself. At the Louis Quatorze period the introduction of the “fairy people,” seen at its finest and best in Point de France, marks a time of special beauty. Afterwards the influence of Alençon was shown (though it never rivalled the exquisite lace of this factory), and from that time to the present day these designs have remained for use in its best work.
Some of the choicest specimens of old Brussels are shown in the now discarded “lappets,” which when a lace head-piece and lappets were part of every gentlewoman’s costume, were actually regulated by Sumptuary Laws as to length. The longer the lappets the higher the rank.
The great Napoleon, while reviving the lace-making of Alençon, specially admired fine old Brussels, and at the birth of his only son, the little “King of Rome,” ordered a christening garment covered with the Napoleonic “N’s,” crowns and cherubs. This was sold in 1903 at Christie’s for £120. At the same sale a Court train realised £140.
In the “Creevy Papers, 1768-1838,” mention is made of Lord Charles Somerset complaining of not having slept all night, “not having had a minute’s peace through sleeping in ‘Cambrik sheets,’ the Brussels lace with which the pillows were trimmed tickling his face”! This occurred at Wynyards, the seat of the Earl of Londonderry.
Queen Anne followed the extravagant fashion of wearing the costliest laces which William III. and Queen Mary carried to such an excess. In 1710 she paid £151 for 21 yards of fine Brussels edging, and two years later the account for Brussels and Mechlin laces amounted to £1,418.
In the succeeding reign the ladies of George I.’s period wore lappets and flounces, caps, tuckers, aprons, stomachers, and handkerchiefs, all made of Brussels.
In the time of George II. lace was even more worn, but English lace began to rival Brussels, not in quality, but as a substitute.
George III. and his wife, Queen Charlotte, were economists of the first order, and personal decoration was rigidly tabooed; hence the almost total extinction of lace as an article of apparel, while in George IV.’s time dress had evolved itself into shimmery silks and lawns, lace being merely a trimming, and the enormous head-dress decorated more frequently with a band of ribbon.
An exquisite portrait of Louis Philippe’s Queen, Marie Amelia, by the early Victorian painter Winterhalter (whose paintings are again by the revival of fashion coming into favour) shows this fine old grande dame in black velvet dress covered with three graduated flounces of Brussels lace, cap and lappets and “tucker” of the same lace, lace fan, and, sad to relate, a scarf of English machine-made net, worked with English run embroidery!
Although good Queen Adelaide had a pretty fancy for lace, she wore little of it, and it was left to Queen Victoria to revive the glory of wearing Brussels to any extent; and she, alas! was sufficiently patriotic to encourage home-made products by wearing almost exclusively Honiton, which I personally am not good Englishwoman enough to admire except at its latest stage (just the past few years), when lace-making, as almost every other art work in this country, is emerging from what, from an artistic point of view, has been one long Slough of Despond.