History of lace an airy mix of fact and myth

For centuries, lace has been the epitome of fashion flourish and embellishment – and usually reserved for wear by those who could afford it – such as royalty – or for ecclesiastical use as vestments and winding shrouds for church leaders. Nuns may have produced most of this lace. Perhaps they even invented it. No one really knows for sure, although Greek myth says that Arachne invented lace. Arachne was the girl who challenged the goddess Athena to a weaving contest and was turned into a spider for her impudence.

When Chandler Robbins Clifford wrote and published “The Lace Dictionary” in 1913, his purpose was to define what handmade lace is, and to classify it, he says in his terse introduction. He does not mention Arachne in the dictionary, but he includes “historic and commercial terms, technical terms, native and foreign.”

Clifford defines lace as an openwork fabric and divides it into eight main categories:

. Drawn work – drawing out threads and-or tying to form patterns in fabric.

. Darned work – embroidering or darning on a mesh.

. Cutwork – a pattern formed by cutting away parts of a foundation fabric.

. Needlepoint – lace made directly with a needle.

. Bobbin – made by interweaving or plaiting.

. Knotted work – such as macrame and tatting.

. Crochet work – which uses a hook.

. Machine-made.

Clifford doesn’t mention knitting as a way of making lace, which seems rather an oversight when you stop to consider the amazing lace shawls, which so impressed Catherine the Great, knit by the women of Orenburg, Russia.

Clifford subdivides the eight categories into many variations and in the process the reader is flung, quite literally, all over Europe from England to France to Italy to Spain and a whole lot of places in between, including Greece, Asia, Egypt and Brazil.

To browse “The Lace Dictionary” is to bob gently on the surface of history. Asia Minor, Clifford tells us, is where lace in its earliest forms originated. The Egyptians made net work from fine flax thread darned with gold and silver thread. Mummy wrappings found in Greek and Roman tombs were ornamented with drawn or cutwork.

Lace was made of linen, cotton or silk thread. Some gray-haired lace makers, it is said, who desired a twinkle of silver in their work, worked strands of hair from their own heads into the lace and called it hair lace.

Clifford writes that Barbara Uttmann, born 1514, died 1575, introduced bobbin lace to Germany and the claim is made that she invented that form of lace making, although some lace historians believe she learned the use of bobbins in France or Italy.

Bobbin lace, which is more akin to weaving or plaiting than embroidery, is made on pillows with the design laid out with the aid of pins. It also was known as “bone lace.” Before the advent of metal pins, fish bones were used to hold the threads in the proper alignment and bobbins were fashioned from bone.

Simple bobbin lace made by peasants, Clifford writes, was known as beggars’ lace, fisherman’s lace and peasant lace, terms of contempt used in the 16th and 17th centuries by those who could afford to wear the coveted cutwork and needlepoint laces.

According to the dictionary, cutwork lace, popular in 1400, was first used only for ecclesiastical purposes. For centuries its techniques were regarded as a church secret. In the 1530s, Henry VIII of England dissolved the monasteries and convents when he separated the Church of England from Catholicism. Turned out of their cloisters, nuns had no means to make a living except to ply the needle so secrets such as how to do hollie, also known as holy, point stitching, were no longer a knowledge exclusive to them.

But perhaps the best history of lace is Vasna Zago’s “A Short History of Lace: The Raw, Naked Truth,” posted at http://bcn.boulder.co.us/arts/rmlg/rmlghist.html. This charming and creative account gives Arachne full credit for inventing “pretty foofy things that delight the eye” – lace.

Clifford’s “The Lace Dictionary” is out of print, but used copies are available at amazon.com and abebooks.com.

Snippets

Living History Days at Leonard’s Mills in Bradley Oct. 4-5 will feature rug braider Dot Menyon; spinners Nancy Larson, May Bird, Nancy Drew, Carol Grant and Nancy Ruggeri; quilter Janet Pickett; weaver Julie Eason; and Jim Eason and Sally Leighton dyeing wool. To learn more, call 581-2871, or visit www.leonardsmills.com.