soiled
and spoiled in the making that only women having specially dry hands
could be employed, and that during the summer months the lace was worked
in the open air, and in the winter in rooms specially built over
cow-houses, so that the animals' breath might just sufficiently warm
the workers in this smokeless atmosphere. Other towns engaged in
lace-making were Havre, Dieppe (the latter town making a lace resembling
Valenciennes), Bayeux, which carried on an extensive trade with the
Southern Islands; Mexico and Spain taking an inferior and heavy Blonde
lace for mantillas.

In Bretagne so dear is lace to the heart of the French peasant woman
that every garment is trimmed with lace, often of her own making; and
along with the provision of a little "dot" for her daughter she makes
pieces of lace for her wedding dress. A curious custom is noted, that
the peasant woman often wears this treasured garment only twice, once
for her wedding and lastly for her funeral!

VII

THE LACES OF FLANDERS

[Illustration: POINT D'ANGLETERRE.

Period Louis XIV.

(_Author's Collection._)]

VII

THE LACES OF FLANDERS

Early Flemish--Brussels lace--Point d'Angleterre--Cost of real
Flanders flax thread--Popularity of Brussels lace--Point Gaze.

Whether Italy or Flanders first invented both Needlepoint and Pillow
laces will ever remain a moot point. Both countries claim priority, and
both appear to have equal right. Italian Needlepoint without doubt
evolved itself from the old Greek or Reticella laces, that in turn being
a development of "Cutworke" and drawn thread work. Flanders produces her
paintings by early artists in which the portraits are adorned with lace
as early as the fourteenth century. An altar-piece by Quentin Matys,
dated 1495, shows a girl making Pillow lace, and later, in 1581, an old
engraving shows another girl busy with her pillow and bobbins. An early
Flemish poet thus rhapsodises over his countrywomen's handiworks:

"Of many arts, one surpasses all;
The threads woven by the strange power of the hand--
Threads, which the dropping of the spider would in vain
attempt to imitate,
And which Pallas herself would confess she had never known."

Whether Flanders imitated the Italian laces or not, it is unquestioned
that every other lace-making country imitated _her_. Germany, Sweden,
France, Russia, and England have, one after the other, adopted her
method to such