Lace
A few modern artists make lace with a fine copper or silver wire instead of thread.
This description applies to many types of open fabric resulting from "looping, plaiting, twisting, or knotting...threads...by hand or machine.
Wealthy people began to use such expensive lace in clothing trimmings and furnishings, such as cushion covers.
In the 1300s and 1400s in the Italian states, heavy duties were imposed on lace, and strict sumptuary laws were passed.
[15]: 406 The largest and most intricate pieces of Venetian lace became ruffs and collars for members of the nobility and for aristocrats.
It produced extremely fine linen threads that were a critical factor in the superior texture and quality of Belgian lace.
[3]: 19 Lace arrived in France when Catherine de Medici, newly married to King Henry II in 1533, brought Venetian lace-makers to her new homeland.
The French royal court and the fashions popular there, influenced the lace that started to be made in France.
Lacemaking in Spain was established early, as by the 1600s its Point d'Espagne lace, made of gold and silver thread, was very popular.
Following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in France in 1685, many Huguenot lacemakers moved to Hamburg and Berlin.
There are two distinct areas of England where lacemaking was a significant industry: Devon and part of the South Midlands.
[20] The English diarist Samuel Pepys often wrote about the lace used for his, his wife's, and his acquaintances' clothing, and on 10 May 1669, noted that he intended to remove the gold lace from the sleeves of his coat "as it is fit [he] should", possibly in order to avoid charges of ostentatious living.
[21] In 1840, Britain's Queen Victoria was married in lace, influencing the wedding dress style until now.
[18]: 51–52 American colonists of both British and Dutch origins strove to acquire lace accessories such as caps, ruffs, and other neckwear, and handkerchiefs.
Because of sumptuary laws, such as one in Massachusetts in 1634, American citizens were not allowed to own or make their lace textiles.
[23]: 187–189 Lacemaking was being taught in boarding schools by the mid 1700s, and newspaper advertisements starting in the early 1700s offered to teach the technique.
By 1790, women in Ipswich, who were primarily from the British Midlands, were making 42,000 yards of silk bobbin lace intended for trimmings.
By the turn of the 20th century, needlework and other magazines included lace patterns of a range of types.
[23]: 195 In North America in the 19th century, missionaries spread the knowledge of lace making to the Native American tribes.
[25] Sibyl Carter, an Episcopalian missionary, began to teach lacemaking to Ojibwa women in Minnesota in 1890.
Hals created the lace effect with dabs of grey and white, using black paint to indicate the spaces between the threads.
[31] An image of an anonymous female artisan appears in The Lacemaker, a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), completed around 1669–1670.
