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PORTRAIT OF COUNTESS OF HAINAULT, BY MOREELZE, ABOUT 1600.

is furnished by contemporary portraits and monuments.

This comparatively stiff, almost wiry, cord work was invariably of geometric design. It was the predominant and only style for a time. Laces of softer, pliant, and delicate texture in which floral forms were the motives, laces with fine net grounds, and with all sorts of fanciful enrichments, were things of much later date.

During the first half of the 17th century the cord-like and wiry-looking laces were succeeded

birds, animals, and the like. The patterns from which the lace-makers worked were skillfully composed and drawn out by competent draughtsmen. By the end of the 17th century, lace-makers had attained to such excellence in handicraft, that they could translate into material, by their twistings and plaitings, almost any kind of form, so that instead of conventional scrolls and ornament we find a new phase or style in which botanical forms in particular are reproduced in filmy textures with great accuracy and realism. Whilst of

such naturalistic and realistic laces many, made at Mechlin and at Valenciennes, were worked in lengths, in complete lappets, collars, cuffs, &c., others, as some from Brussels and its neighbourhood, as well as places in France, were made in portions or separate sprays only, which were subsequently grouped together in accordance with a predetermined scheme of the designer. It is from this particular phase of making lace in separate pieces that the making of Devonshire sprigs has descended. But the descent started, as far as I can make out, with the false idea of producing sprigs by themselves without a clear plan of how they were to be related to one another to compose a pattern. Thus when made up in much of the Devonshire lace of the late 18th and early 19th century, they became fortuitous concurrences of miscellaneous details. A poor style was thereby established, and its influence, where it prevails to the present day, militates against success for Devonshire lace in competing with foreign lace that involves no greater cleverness of fingers in twisting and plaiting threads into devices.

At this point I introduce a series of lantern slides to illustrate the successive historic types of lace ornament to which I have referred.

I begin with two pages from a Venetian pattern-book of the late 16th century. The first shows two insertions; the style of ornament is based upon the varied use of concentric circular devices and radiating lines; it is purely geometric.

The second shows a series of tooth shapes or vandykes with simple symmetrical arrangements of lines and geometric devices. These vandykes were used sometimes as edgings to linen collars and cuffs, and sometimes as additions to the geometric lace insertions, in which latter case the insertions combined with the edgings, became broad borders of lace.

In this portrait of a Duke of Savoy-painted in 1582-we have an example of a linen ruff trimmed with the simple cord-like and wirylooking lace.

Here is a portrait of a Countess of Hainault by Moreelze-painted about 1600-in which the lady's stiff, upstanding ruff consists only of the wiry-looking geometric lace (Fig. 1, p. 426).

The texture of such geometric lace is fairly well shown in this slide made from a tablecloth, with an insertion and tooth - shaped trimming of the lace. This probably was made quite early in the 17th century; and I think

that it represents the texture and appearance of that contemporary kind of work which in Devonshire was known as "bone lace." Although there are not to my knowledge any authenticated specimens of "bone lace," some early 17th century sculptured monuments bear well preserved indications of geometric lace, as upon a monument to Lady Pole in Colyton Church, dated 1623, and upon another to Lady Doddridge (1614) in Exeter Cathedral. Lastly, in illustration of this kind of lacemaking the only one prevalent at the timethe next slide displays other specimens of it made according to carefully designed patterns. All of them are not of twisted and plaited thread-bobbin or bone work-some being of looped thread work done with a needle.

The type of texture and ornament in the lace which succeeded the geometric wiry fabrics were, as I have mentioned, fuller and flatter: a restrained geometrical character of ornament is not adhered to, and the devices of pattern become changed although still distinctly conventional. The lady in this painting by Rembrandt (about 1640) wears a fichu bordered with scallops of the tapelike lace, very simple in design, but much more pliant and soft looking than the earlier geometric lace.

This painting of about the same date, gives another variety of pattern in this kind of lace.

And a richer variety is shown in the large falling lace collar worn by Queen Henrietta Maria. This is probably from a painting made about 1635. The pattern of the tapey lace here is more open than that in the two previous portraits: and this opening out of pattern led to another type of lace-more or less tapey in texture- but showing new deveTopment in ornamental design.

Here is an example of this. There are in it scrolls and forms suggestive of flowers, leaves, and suchlike. Each were made separately, though designed to harmonise into a single piece, when joined together as they are by means of little bars.

By referring to such a portrait as this by Gonzales Coques-painted in 1664-we fix the date when this style was in vogue. Of the same period is lace in which mesh grounds are introduced. Here we have fine scrolls and foliations of tape-like texture forming an open ornament in combination with a ground of meshes.

This next slide shows us a highly elaborate design of foliated scrolls: amongst them occur such forms as those of birds, a lion, a sportsman, a cupid. But each is so well

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SCALLOPED COLLAR OF NEEDI E-POINT I ACE, ABOUT 1640. ENGLISH.

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DRESS OF DEVONSHIRE PILLOW-MADE GUIPURE AND APPLIQUÉ LACE, PRODUCED UNDER THE

SUPERVISION OF MISS TREVELYAN FOR THE ST. LOUIS EXHIBITION.

It was apparently formed in separate pieces which were subsequently joined together; the naturalism of many of the details is gracefully indicated, though others are too fanciful to be taken as realistic renderings of actual plant form. The lappet on the right was made in

Here again are two more 18th century lappets, which illustrate other varieties in this class of realistic floral designing.

The last specimen of this sort of design is a jabot worn by a man: a large piece of lace which hung in folds from beneath his chin over

his chest. It is an important bit of designing, and no lace-maker could have attempted anything of the kind unless she had been supplied with a very carefully made pricking from a well-drawn design.

The effect of using a poor design will be seen even in such minor details of Devonshire lace as those given on this slide. These pieces were made in 1820. Similar effect is noticeable in this large flounce of Devonshire work, produced probably about the same time. (Fig. 3.) The general arrangement, and contrast between closely and sparsely grouped forms, make for some effectiveness; but the want of drawing in the forms and details has resulted in feeble caricatures of flowers and blossoms and nondescript twirls and loops which, with their haphazard mingling, seemed to me to have less ornamental value than the patient repetition of notches on the paddle of a South Sea Islander. Nevertheless the dexterity of the lace-maker is unquestionable in producing an even texture by plaiting and twisting threads together. This quality of manual dexterity is, I think, to be recognised in these other specimens of Devonshire lace. The upper piece was made about 1850, and the lower one a hundred years earlier, probably. The pattern in it was apparently derived from some Brussels design-of which, however, it is but a grotesque version. There are evidences all through the piece that the lace-maker was adept at making small converging forms and larger expanding ones in an even texture. Such adeptness and skill would not have been taxed in any way had the convergencies and expansions been used to interpret graceful and intelligible shapes. At the same time the primitive and probably unintentional grotesqueness of pattern in this border is preferable to the pretentiousness of the design for the collar: which is, again an example of sprigs worked independently of a controlling idea that they must bear due ornamental relation to one another, in order to secure the attractiveness of unity and harmony. Some pretty specimens of sprigs from nature, worked forty years ago at Seaton, are shown in this slide, and are excellent in texture, and in their imitation of nature. But it would be as useless to expect to convert them successfully into the components of a rationally constructed, ornamental composition, as it would be to take separate and independent sentences and form them into a sensible paragraph.

I think that the lesson one learns by comparing ordinary specimens of Devonshire lace

with kindred specimens made abroad, is that the foreign lace-maker has almost always had well considered patterns to work from, and that the Devonshire lace-maker has not. A certain number of persons have realised this condition, and the importance of its influence, upon the fortunes of lace-making in Devonshire.

More than two years ago, the county council of Devonshire appointed a special sub-committee to consider the condition of the lace industry, and the best means of developing it in East Devon. The report of this committee was issued at the end of 1902. The committee mention certain signs of vitality in the industry, and express the Hope that these will not prove of a mere transitory nature, espe cially if steps are taken to give further instruction, not only in the art of lace-making, but also in the production of improved patterns." "The industry is, so to speak, endemic in the county; it is especially a cottage industry, which may afford additional earnings to the families of the county labourers." The report deals with other matters connected with the question generally, which I need not here touch upon. The result of the report is mainly that the county council have set aside a small sum to assist the development of classes for instruction in lace-making, and have appointed an instructress to give and to organise such instruction. Under her, classes are now at work at Honiton, Colyton, Beer, Bicton, Woodbury, Sidbury, and Branscombe. Lace-making is also taught to sixteen children at the Public Elementary Schools at Honiton, and to twelve children at the Church School at Beer. It is obviously a subject of suitable manual instruction, which may educate the children's faculties of neatness, observation, perseverance, and attention, especially if the steps in the course of the instruction are gradual and well related to one another, and due provision exists for developing the individual abilities of each child. I, myself, think that in the very earliest stages of instruction it is essential to use well-drawn patterns, no matter how simple they may be. I also venture to think that these patterns cannot wisely be left as a matter of course to be devised by the teacher, who, as a rule, is doubtless expert in twisting and plaiting threads into varieties of textures, but not necessarily a qualified designer. Seventeen years ago, when I visited lace-making villages in Devonshire, and reported upon them, I was struck by the answers I received from competent lace-makers

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