Transcriber's Notes:
Inconsistencies in spelling (for example "fogliami" vs. "foliami") havegenerally been preserved as originally printed. All corrections made tothe text are listed at the end of this ebook.
SEVEN
CENTURIES
OF LACE
BY
MRS. JOHN HUNGERFORD POLLEN
WITH A PREFACE BY ALAN COLE, C.B.
AND 120 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
MCMVIII
Printed in England
[v]PREFACE
Dear Mrs. Pollen,—Having examined the admirable photographs to yourlace collection, and the letterpress which you have written to accompanythem, with a view to meet your wish that I should make revisions andsuchlike where I thought necessary, please allow me in the first placeto thank you for having entrusted me with what has been a very congenialwork, and to say that I really have but few suggestions to offer. Suchas they are, they amount to little more than amplifying, and slightlymodifying here and there, what you have written.
Your glossary of terms used in describing lace and cognate work is veryfull, and contains several Italian terms which strike me as beingunquestionably of technical value in supplementing information putforward in the best English works on lace-making.
Upon the introductory part of your attractive letterpress you also askedme to freely express an opinion, giving it such a shape as to make itsuitable for use as a preface to your work. I now do this withconsiderable diffidence, notwithstanding that during a good many years Ihave had a large number of specimens of lace before me, includingprobably some of the finest ever made. You had the initial advantage ofinheriting lace of incontestable origin and antiquity, and also offinding specimens in different countries where facts and traditions oftheir manufacture could be ascertained on the spot.
For so long a period as that from, say, the sixteenth to the[vi] eighteenthcenturies, men derived as much satisfaction in acquiring and wearinglaces as women then did. But autres temps, autres mœurs, andclosely as our sex may at one time have run yours in the appreciation oflace, yours has outstripped and beaten ours. This, of course, is as itshould be, for skill in all forms of needlework and dainty thread-workhas practically been the monopoly of women from the time of Penelopeforwards, notwithstanding the strict observance of the rule laid down bySt. Benedict that the members of his Order should be expert in the useof both pen and needle (as they were for centuries); or the records ofthe seventeenth century, that boys attended lace-making schools inDevonshire, and that English tailors and labouring men often made goodsaleable lace in their leisure time during the eighteenth century.
With your suggestion that many sorts of white thread ornamental work,from which a development of needle-made and bobbin-made laces can betraced, are of earlier date than the sixteenth century, I entirelyagree; and in corroboration of this, various public collections, withincomparatively recent times, have secured from disused ancient Copticcemeteries in Egypt fragments of elaborate nettings and Saracenicexamples of