long, surmounted by a border, 'worked upon the threads,' with
representations of birds and pairs of beasts, there being between each
such pair a branching tree, a survival of the palm of Zoroaster, to which
I have before alluded. Our authors, however, do not in these examples
recognize lace, the production of which involves more refined and
artistic methods, and postulates a combination of skill and varied
execution carried to a higher degree of perfection. Lace, as we know it,
seems to have had its origin in the habit of embroidering linen. White
embroidery on linen has, M. Lefebure remarks, a cold and monotonous
aspect; that with coloured threads is brighter and gayer in effect, but
is apt to fade in frequent washing; but white embroidery relieved by open
spaces in, or shapes cut from, the linen ground, is possessed of an
entirely new charm; and from a sense of this the birth may be traced of
an art in the result of which happy contrasts are effected between
ornamental details of close texture and others of open-work.

Soon, also, was suggested the idea that, instead of laboriously
withdrawing threads from stout linen, it would be more convenient to
introduce a needle-made pattern into an open network ground, which was
called a _lacis_. Of this kind of embroidery many specimens are extant.
The Cluny Museum possesses a linen cap said to have belonged to Charles
V.; and an alb of linen drawn-thread work, supposed to have been made by
Anne of Bohemia (1527), is preserved in the cathedral at Prague.
Catherine de Medicis had a bed draped with squares of _reseuil_, or
_lacis_, and it is recorded that 'the girls and servants of her household
consumed much time in making squares of _reseuil_.' The interesting
pattern-books for open-ground embroidery, of which the first was
published in 1527 by Pierre Quinty, of Cologne, supply us with the means
of tracing the stages in the transition from white thread embroidery to
needle-point lace. We meet in them with a style of needle-work which
differs from embroidery in not being wrought upon a stuff foundation. It
is, in fact, true lace, done, as it were, 'in the air,' both ground and
pattern being entirely produced by the lace-maker.

The elaborate use of lace in costume was, of course, largely stimulated
by the fashion of wearing ruffs, and their companion cuffs or sleeves.
Catherine de Medicis induced one Frederic Vinciolo to come from Italy and
make ruffs and gadrooned colla