Lace Making in Hungary

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Early Design in Lace

Author(s): John Hungerford Pollen

Source: The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vol. 19, No. 98 (May, 1911), pp. 73-75+78-

79

Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd.

To trace rapidly the development of lace work

from the earliest times to the beginning of the

sixteenth century will be sufficient for the present

purpose. The earliest foundation of lace work

was the knotting or twisting of threads by hand

or by bobbins worked in a frame. Woven linen,

with threads drawn or cut out, also served as a

foundation. The results can be seen in the darned

nets and fringes of the sculptures of Nineveh, and

in the actual lace found in Egypto-Roman tombs

of the first to the third centuries, preserved to us

by the desert sand and the wonderful climatic

conditions.

Later we have no specimens to point to, until

in the lacis or knotted thread work (Italian,

modano) and linen lace work of the thirteenth

and following centuries, we see so clearly the very

stitches and design of the earlier fabrics that it is

plain that the art was never lost. Workers,

whether Babylonic, Coptic, or Italian, could darn

exquisite patterns on net-work, or by ingeniously

cutting and sewing over threads in the linen, obtain

those beautiful and intricate effects called reticello,

now the generic term for all lace of geometric

design whether needle or bobbin made. Reticello,

as a strictly lace term, implies a foundation of linen,

and is therefore in the same class as drawn or cut

linen work; this obtains, even although the linen

threads are often completely covered by needle-

point. Fig. A [PLATE 1], represents a true reticello :

the edge shows the linen threads. Many examples

of this exist, and are depicted by Cimabue, Giotto,

and other painters of the thirteenth

and fourteenth

centuries.

Early in the sixteenth century, workers, not

satisfied with the limitation of material,

and also,

as can be shown, incited by examples from the

East, began to discard the knotted thread

foundation, and to use less and less of the linen,

and more of the unfettered needle guided only by

the heart and brain. This transition can be

observed in Fig. B [PLATE I], where the merest

threads are left as a lattice background

to the inter-

lacing strapwork

which, as well as the conventional

floral

pattern,

is worked entirely

by the needle. Thus

came into being the wonderful

punto in aria, a

name which has never been translated

into another

tongue and expresses the glory of the first lace

work created solely by the needle. Signora Elisa

Ricci speaks of the perfection of style and of the

elegance, combined with simple exactitude of

design, in the early punto in aria, which she calls

the most Italian of all laces.' At the same time it

must be said that it is more plainly inspired by the

East than any previous or subsequent fabric, and,

in fact, I claim for Persia the fame of having given to

Venice her pre-eminence in the matter of lace

design. It is uncontested that the commerce of

Venice in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

was largely with the East. I think the influence

of Persia is clearly shewn in the designs for punto

in aria in its first development from Oriental

sources. Photographs of Persian tiles [see Fig. c,

PLATE

I] in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and

other early fourteenth-century tiles in the Salting

Collection may be mentioned, and leave us no

doubt of this.