Lace types

Lace types

Limerick tambour lace is a form of embroidered net lace, made with a machine-made net (tulle) and using chain stitch and a tambour hook for decoration. It should not be confused with Limerick run lace. It was made in Limerick, Ireland, from about 1829, when Mr Charles Walker set up a lace manufacturing business.

Madeira lace is a type of bobbin lace originally worked by nuns and their pupils on the island of Madeira. This type of bobbin lace was regarded as a coarse copy of Maltese, Mechlin and torchon lace forms.

Mechlin lace (Dutch: Mechelse kant) is one of the oldest and most delicate forms of bobbin lace produced in Flanders, Belgium. It is made without pins. Its name derives from that of the town of Mechelen. This type of lace was used mainly to decorate (women's) clothing, and remained popular until the beginning of the twentieth century, mainly being worn, because of its open appearance, over clothing of a different colour.  

Milanese lace, or Milanese tape lace, is a form of bobbin lace produced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Milan, Italy. It is characterised by bold leaf, scroll or chain designs, mixed sometimes with animal or human forms. The designs are made up of braids or tapes, that are combined with bars or net. It should not be confused with Point de Milan, which is a nineteenth century Belgian product.

Modano is a Renaissance Italian term for a form of square-meshed, knotted lace.

The Irish village of Moynalty lies about six km from the town of Kells and is often said to have been the origin of Moynalty lace.

Naples lace, or punto di Napoli, is a form of bobbin lace that resembles Milanese (tape) lace, but it characterised by its rounder mesh and coarser appearance.

Point de Sedan is a form of needlepoint lace, with a raised design ('gros'), which is named after the town of Sedan, in northeastern France. The lace was produced during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Point Colbert is a form of needlepoint lace, with a raised design ('gros'), made in Bayeux, France, in the mid-nineteenth century. It is said to have been inspired by seventeenth century Alençon lace. Point Colbert is named after Louis XIV’s (1638-1715) finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683). Point Colbert is characterised by its use of stylised flowers, seams and so forth, on a background of bars (‘brides’).

Point de France, next to Point de Sedan, is the general term for the needlepoint lace that was produced in France in the second half of the seventeenth century, mainly in order to counter the import of expensive laces from Italy (Gros Point de Venice) and Flanders.

Point de Milan is a type of tape lace that was produced in Belgium in the first half of the twentieth century. It uses straight tapes with needlepoint fillings.

Point de neige is a form of 'Venetian' raised needlepoint lace, with small tiered flowers and stars made from elaborate bars with picots that were regarded as being like snow crystals. Point de neige was made from about the 1650's to 1710. It may have been made at Burano, near Venice, in the eighteenth century and it may have continued to be made on the island under the name of rosseline.

Point de Venice refers to a needlepoint lace from Venice dating to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (often known as Gros Point de Venice). But it is also the name of a Belgian needlepoint lace.

Princess lace is a form of Renaissance lace or tape lace, made in Belgium in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It originally developed as an imitation of Duchess lace. Some authors describe it as a form of lace assembling, rather than lace making.

Puncetto is a knotted needle lace made with needle and thread, without a frame, and is worked back and forth, in rows. The technique originates from the Valsesia area in the North Italian Piedmont. Puncetto lace is characterised by its strictly geometric designs. In the late nineteenth century, it was promoted by the Anglo-Irish Mrs. Johnson-Lynch. It is also sometimes referred to as Punto Avorio ('ivory point').

Punto in aria is regarded as a very early form of lace. It is a needle lace, closely related to reticella, and developed in Italy. While reticella still is very much based on a ground material, whereby more and more threads are being removed, with punto in aria the lace is worked without a ground material. 

Sicilian lace is the term for various types of embroidered lace, notably buratto embroidery, drawn thread work and darned net, made in Sicily from the sixteenth century onwards. Sicilian lace was used for both secular and religious purposes. Some forms of Sicilian lace were embroidered with coloured silks, notably, bluish green, rose pink and canary yellow.

Tambour lace is a form of embroidered net, and is made by stretching a fine net over a frame and then working the design in a chain stitch using a fine hook (tambour hook).

Torchon lace is one of the most common forms of bobbin lace, and perhaps also the simplest. Ground and motifs are made at the same time, in strips of 2.5 to 5 cm wide. Use is made of a relatively thick thread. The motifs are simple. It is a strong type of lace originally made of linen, but cotton is also being used. The motifs are often outlined with a gimp thread. Originally hand-made, torchon lace is machine made since at least the early twentieth century.

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