LACE. The word lace is applied to an ornamental openwork fabric formed by looping, interlacing, braiding or twisting threads of flax, cotton, silk, gold or silver, mohair or aloe fibre. Like the early English lacez and the old French lassis or lacis, it is derived from the Latin laqueus.
The cemeteries and tombs of Ancient Egypt have preserved fine linen weaves, spindles and loom weights dating from the early dynasties; but with the exception of the buratto weave which is said to have been in use in Baby lon and (during the XXII. Dynasty) in Egypt it is not un til the Coptic period, in the first decade of the Christian era, that we have in the plaited thread head-dresses of the native Egyp tians any material that may prop erly be classed as lace. It is to this field that the student of . to-day must turn for documents dealing with the beginning of lace history. In technique these caps, which in many instances re semble bags, are of what has been described as "Egyptian plaiting" although it is not known whether the technique is of Egyptian origin. In the curious twisting of the threads the fabric suggests bobbin work; but up to the present time, Egypt has failed to yield anything indicating that the art of bobbin lace-making was practised in its ancient civilization. In Italy, however, E. M. Bixio, director of the Etruscan museum at Bologna, working on the site of the ancient Roman settlement of Claterna, in 1892, unearthed a series of small cylindrical objects which in size and form would seem to be identical with modern lace bobbins, and which were, moreover, found in pairs and groups similar to the arrangement of bobbins in the manufacture of bobbin lace.
In the i3th century the art of embroidery in England had at tained a perfection that has never been surpassed, a needlecraft requiring a skill and dexterity equal to that of the Venetian lace workers, and yet England never excelled in the production of needlepoint lace. An early reference to work with bobbins, how ever, is found in a Harlean manuscript dating from about 1471, which gives directions for making "lace Bascom, lace indented, lace bordered, lace covert, a brode lace, a round lace, a thynne lace, an open lace, lace for hattys' etc.," the illuminated capital
letter with which the manuscript opens showing the figure of a woman making these articles. The process there described would seem to be allied to card-weaving, the fingers serving to carry the thread which was occasionally dropped to form a sort of indented lace or braid. Such openwork braid marked an advance in the evolution of gold and silver passementerie from the cords and lacings which many early writers on the subject freely translated as "lace." Fine bobbin lace, being dependent upon the supply of pins, could not of necessity have developed to any great extent prior to the manufacture of brass pins. Early pins were of box wood, bone, bronze or silver. One of the earliest records is that found in a wardrobe account of 1347 in which a charge for 12,000 pins is made for the trousseau of Joanna, daughter of Edward III.
The history of lace-making, as it developed, records in its evolu tion various types of openwork thread fabrics : ( 1) Interlaced and knotted threads varying, of fringed linen, the origin of the punto groppo or macrame of northern Italy; (2) Network, of which there are several varieties : (a) the Coptic type in which a series of threads arranged vertically on a rectangular frame in such a way as to form a double warp are separated by a removable rod or "sword" as they are plaited from the centre of the frame, which process produces simultaneously a weave above and below the point where the fingers are plaiting the thread; (h) also made on a frame, in which the threads forming the net are knotted at the points of intersection (It. punto a maglia quadra; Fr. reseau, rezel, rezeuil ; filet brode; Ger. Netzarbeit) ; (c) woven net, made on a small hand loom or framework in which the warp threads are twisted at each passage of the weft, the buratto above referred to, a technique which is also found in textile fragments of the Swiss Lake-dwellers and in Peruvian weaves of the 9th century (It. buratto. Fr. toile clere) ; (d) net worked by needle over a card board pattern or a spool, such as is found in the circular disc or "sol" pattern of the Spanish punto de Cataluna and in the South American nanduti or toile d'arraignee.