Introduction

As quickly as lace-making emerged in the early sixteenth century, the openwork textile became a status symbol for the wealthy, embellishing the edges of all types of dress and home linens. The ubiquity of lace-trimmed handkerchiefs is underscored by their numerous appearances in contemporary portraits, engravings and inventories, as well as extant handkerchiefs in museum collections. Handkerchiefs were simultaneously functional and decorative objects, often given as gifts to lady’s maids or as tokens of love from a suitor, and carried in all strata of society, from the aristocracy to the working poor.¹

Although the finest Renaissance lace was an expensive luxury product, the ‘Refashioning’ data from Venice, Siena and Florence from 1550 to 1650, used for the analysis in many chapters of this book, show that ordinary men and women from artisanal classes owned garments and accessories trimmed with multiple types of lace. These included cuffs, handkerchiefs, ruffs, sleeves and gowns trimmed with bobbin-lace borders, edgings of reticella (an early needlepoint lace derived from cutwork), or punto in aria needle lace (which is built up from buttonhole stitches) of fine Venetian or Flemish linen thread. The probate inventories compiled in the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ database reveal the possession of numerous embellished handkerchiefs in the households of Italian artisans and merchants, including a handkerchief trimmed with gold lace owned by a Venetian innkeeper.² What surviving visual, material and archival evidence cannot tell us, however, is precisely what types of lace were available to the artisan class and what level of skill and sophistication was needed to make a fine lace-trimmed handkerchief.

In 2020–22 the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ project proposed to reconstruct a lace-trimmed accessory representing something a fashionable artisan, living between 1550 and 1650, would have owned based on material and visual evidence. We selected a handkerchief measuring 20 cm by 20 cm – half the scale of typical extant Renaissance handkerchiefs – to showcase four different edgings: a kind of lace sampler (Figures ix.1a and ix.1b). Building upon the archival research of the ‘Refashioning the Renaissance’ team, we selected each edging to represent a range of styles, techniques and fibres found in northern Italian bobbin-lace over four quarter-centuries. During this early period in lace history there were already evolutions in the design and construction of lace, as well as the development of distinct regional styles in major lace-making centres such as Venice, Milan and Genoa.

The decades on which this experiment is focused coincide with the development of bobbin and needle lace, which makes this a time period that is ripe for investigation. Bobbin-lace, which developed out of multi-strand braiding techniques related to passementerie, was made of threads wound on to bobbins to keep them organised and interlaced to create an endless variety of patterns. Simultaneously, needle lace developed from cutwork and drawnwork, an embroidery technique in which the pattern is traced on to linen fabric, threads are cut and pulled out of the design, and the voided areas filled in with buttonhole stitches. Eventually the base fabric was discarded entirely, and the stitches were worked directly on a parchment pattern, anchored by a couched outline thread.

Figure IX.1a Three reconstructed bobbin-lace edgings, from left to right: metal bobbin lace, polychrome silk and linen bobbin-lace, and Parasole bobbin-lace pattern.

Figure IX.1b Handkerchief with four reconstructed bobbin-lace edgings.

The aims of this experimental reproduction project were to investigate what types of lace were available to the artisan class and identify potential differences in cost between different types of lace. In addition, I hoped to consider broader questions about the development of bobbin-lace in northern Italy, such as what drove stylistic and regional variations, and what the process of lace production entailed for the maker. During the process of making each edging, I carefully tracked the time that it took to make each repeat, how quickly each pattern could be memorised and any notable challenges that arose. Although a Renaissance lacemaker working long hours would have been much quicker than most lace-makers of today, making multiple repeats of each edging can give a general idea of production time – information that is rarely recorded in archival documents.

The experiment

In approaching an historical reproduction project, it is imperative to research the tools that would have been used by lace-makers of the period. Bobbin-lace was made on a solid pillow, which could have been handmade by the lace-maker, a relative or another craftsperson, who packed it densely with whatever materials were available – often straw, reeds, moss or horsehair.³

Over the centuries, bobbin-lace pillows have been made in a variety of shapes and sizes, with a taut fabric cover to create a firm surface for securing pins.⁴ Given that the pillows in my collection are mostly fabric-covered ethafoam, the first step in this project was to build a cylindrical bolster pillow stuffed with barley straw. After being baked in sheets to dry, cut into segments of 5–7.5 cm and combed for bits of debris, the straw was packed into a tube of heavy muslin fabric. Lastly, the exterior was covered with a tight sheath of checked blue-and-white linen and cinched closed with a drawstring on both ends. This fabric covering was typical of the early freehand technique, wherein bobbin-lace was worked without a pattern base, following the checked or striped pattern on the pillow.⁵

As with lace pillows, bobbins varied regionally in size, shape and material, and were hand-turned on a lathe, likely by a relative or artisan in the community. Early examples depicted in paintings such as The Lacemaker by Nicolaes Maes from 1643 are wooden with bulbous ends, a style which persists in rural lace-making regions such as Le Puy en Velay, France.⁶ I am fortunate to have inherited hand-turned nineteenth-century bobbins in a comparable shape from a friend’s grandmother, as the size and weight of the bobbins can impact the lace-making process. Handmade pins, of the kind found by mudlarkers along the banks of the Seine, were not available to me, so contemporary steel straight pins had to fit the bill.

To represent the earliest quarter-century of the period, 1550–75, I opted to reproduce a metallic bobbin-lace edging from an extant handkerchief in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (T.99–1954). Although this is catalogued as English, the metal lace was likely imported from Venice, as Venice had a thriving silk and metal thread industry in the sixteenth century, as well as both bobbin and needle lace production.⁷ This style of handkerchief, with satin stitch embroidery around the border, gold or silver metal lace trimming and small tassels at each corner, is mentioned in multiple historical records, such as in a list of New Year’s gifts to Queen Mary I in 1556, and in the 1599 inventory of Gabrielle d’Estrées.⁸

Gilian Dye, an expert in early bobbin-lace techniques, published a reproduction of the V&A handkerchief edging in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Lace, Book 1: Gold and Silver Edgings.⁹ As it was my first time reproducing historical lace, I used this as a launching point, and I am greatly indebted to Dye’s research as well as that of Rosemary Shepherd. This edging was worked in size 40/3 thread of gold-plated nickel wrapped around a rayon core from Klöppelwerkstatt, a German manufacturer. Consistent with the earliest bobbin-laces, this pattern was worked freehand, using the checked pattern on the lace pillow covering as a guide.

Initially, working with the metal thread was challenging, requiring careful tensioning or the picots (decorative loops) would collapse. The first repeat took twenty-seven minutes to complete, which was reduced to around five minutes after a few repeats, a strikingly rapid pace for lace-making. This reaffirmed that the high cost of early bobbin-lace was due to the use of precious materials rather than the production hours – an inverse of later, more elaborate, linen laces.¹⁰ Metal laces were frequently subject to sumptuary legislation, such as a Florentine law of 1638 restricting the width of gold and silver laces to 19.4 mm.¹¹ Measuring 13 mm in width, this particular metal lace edging would have been safely within the reach of the artisan class.

To represent the quarter-century period from 1575 to 1600, I chose to reproduce a rare example of polychrome bobbin-lace from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, New York (08.180.505). The Met textile conservator Giulia Chiostrini generously analysed the fibres and confirmed that the white thread is linen and the pink and yellow threads are silk. Although the original usage of this edging is unknown, based on its similarity to surviving linen objects with silk and linen bobbin-lace edgings, I postulate that it could have been attached to a linen garment or accessory such as a handkerchief. Typically, however, these bobbin-lace examples feature one colour of silk thread paired with white linen thread. Although there are a number of extant examples of polychrome silk bobbin-laces from the sixteenth century, they typically incorporate metal threads, and are often paired with corresponding embroidery.¹²

In contrast to many contemporary lace-makers who prioritise a uniform end result, production lace-makers in the Renaissance did not always work from precise stitch diagrams and may have prioritised speed over perfection. This has resulted in stitch variations between repeated motifs in historic lace edgings. Therefore, when reproducing extant historic lace, modern designers may select one repeat to focus on, or select areas of each motif to create a uniform diagram. Given that the goal of this project was to better understand lace in the context of the Renaissance rather than to design a pattern for contemporary makers to follow, I opted to work directly on a freehand drawing of the lace pattern rather than create a detailed diagram. This meant that, like historical lace-makers’, my process of producing the edging involved active decision-making based on observation of the original edging.

Using materials as close to the originals as possible, I selected white Irish linen in size 40/2 and Soie Ovale, a French silk floss produced by Au Ver à Soie, in pink and yellow. Due to past experience with silk thread, I scaled the initial sample up slightly to accommodate for shrinkage when removed from the pillow. Ultimately, the tight four-strand braids that dominate the design held their shape and did not shrink to the degree anticipated, and the final design was redrawn to the precise width of the original lace (23 mm). The inclusion of sturdier linen thread in the original edging may have served a practical purpose as a kind of scaffolding to stabilise the silk floss. The first repeat of the pattern took forty minutes to complete, which gradually decreased to seventeen minutes for the final repeat, for an average of around twenty minutes each (Figure ix.2). At the resultant ten minutes per centimetre or 6 cm per hour, by my estimation, a professional lace-maker working twelve-hour shifts could likely have produced a full metre per day of this lace edging. That is arguably much quicker and thus more cost-effective than a needle-lace edging of a similar width and complexity.

The sixteenth-century bobbin-lace pattern books Le pompe: opera nova (1557) and Nüw Modelbuch von allerley gattungen Däntelschnür (1561) have previously been the subject of in-depth analysis and reproduction by Santina Levey, Milton Sonday and Laurie Waters, among others.¹³ For this project I was interested in examining the bobbin-lace patterns of Isabella Catanea Parasole’s 1610 pattern book Fior d’ogni virtu per le nobili et honeste matrone to represent the quarter-century period from 1600 to 1625. As one of few published female lace pattern designers of her day Parasole is known for her elaborate needle-lace, cutwork and embroidery designs, but her patterns for bobbin-lace are lesser known. Described by Santina Levey as ‘spidery’ and ‘spiky’, Parasole’s bobbin-lace designs were likely inspired by fine needle-lace scallops and intended to be paired with straight cutwork bands.¹⁴

Figure IX.2 Polychrome bobbin-lace reconstruction in progress on linen-covered bolster pillow.

Renaissance pattern-book designers such as Giovani Antonio Tagliente (active 1522–45) and Alessandro Paganino (active 1511–38) described several methods for transferring the designs, many of which involved removing pages, rendering intact early pattern books a rarity.¹⁵ The most straightforward option was to work directly on to a facsimile of the pattern, but after twelve hours of work on a preliminary sample in size 100/2 linen thread it became apparent that the scale was smaller than comparable extant lace edgings of the period. Additionally, the first pattern I selected on the bottom left of page 34 had numerous ambiguities in the design that made it difficult to execute without reinterpretation. Rather than struggle to decipher the design, I opted to select another pattern on the far-left side of page 35 and scaled it up 20 per cent to be worked in size 60/2 linen thread (Figure ix.3).

However, this pattern had incongruities as well, enough to indicate that Parasole lacked a thorough understanding of bobbin-lace construction. Bobbin-lace requires management of numerous threads that travel across the design, and the pattern should clearly indicate the continuous paths linking motifs. As a rule, early bobbin-lace patterns did not provide instructional information, and lace-makers would have had to be experienced in order to find creative solutions to these obstacles. Once the pattern was resolved, I referenced parts of a diagram on page 79 of Rosemary Shepherd’s An Early Lace Workbook for the first three repeats until the pattern was committed to memory. The final edging varied from seventy-seven minutes to thirty-one minutes for each repeat, for a total of ten hours and fifty-five minutes to create 20 cm of lace.

Figure IX.3 Fior d’ogni virtu per le nobili et honeste matrone by Isabella Catanea Parasole, page 35, 1610. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 37.1 (1–40).

The final edging representing 1625–50 was by far the most challenging, highlighting the technical development of bobbin-lace over the previous century. Based on an extant seventeenth-century handkerchief from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (39.123.1), the central fabric is linen with an embroidered silk border and a scalloped bobbin-lace trim that is gathered at the corners (Figure ix.4). As is often the case with early linen laces, centuries of use have caused the fibres to blend together, making it difficult to decipher the precise stitches under magnification. After careful analysis, I measured out the 50 mm width and drew the pattern freehand. Again, rather than draw up a precise stitch diagram, I opted to interpret the pattern as I worked, referencing photos of the original. Mounting twenty-two pairs of bobbins on the bolster pillow proved to be cumbersome, as a cylindrical base is more suited to laces requiring fewer bobbins, so I opted to switch to a large, flat, contemporary pillow.

Figure IX.4 Handkerchief. Linen fabric with silk embroidery, linen bobbin-lace. Italian, seventeenth century; 45.1 cm by 45.1 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 39.123.1.

Each scallop is worked by travelling along the top half of the motif and leaving pairs behind to pick up when working the bottom half. Sewings, a technique in which a fine hook is used to link new threads into old stitches, are much less common in early bobbin-lace, although analysis of the original edging revealed one between each scallop. The challenge with Genoese-style edgings is in gracefully hiding the many pairs required to form the wide scallops in the narrow space between each motif; in this case, fourteen pairs of 100/2 thread in a narrow strip of cloth stitch. The first three repeats took between six and seven hours each to complete, but the subsequent three were closer to five hours each, for a total of thirty-four hours and thirty-eight minutes (Figure ix.5). Although a professional seventeenth-century lace-maker would have been able to work this pattern more quickly, this is a sharp increase from the pace of the previous edgings.

Arguably, the Genoese scallop represents the first quarter-century period in which, broadly speaking, the value of the labour to create bobbin-lace not only far surpasses that of the materials but is also comparable to its more time-consuming competitor, needle lace. A complementary experiment of four needle-lace edgings in a similar scale from 1550 to 1650 could further underscore the differences between these two techniques during their development. Additionally, a more in-depth examination of Parasole’s bobbin-lace patterns is warranted, particularly in contrast to Le pompe and Nüw Modelbuch.

Conclusion

What can a humble handkerchief teach us about the value of labour during the Italian Renaissance? As with the dress of the artisan class, the experiences and perspectives of lace-makers are rarely accessible through research that draws solely on written texts, and practice-led research provides an avenue to explore the choices and challenges that they would have faced in their daily lives. Rather than reconstructing a single object and illuminating just one type of lace from one moment in time, four edgings were selected to illustrate the breadth of possibilities for lace as it developed during the late Renaissance, thus creating the possibility of a comparison between periods. The resulting lace represents a spectrum of quality and design aimed at all different levels of society, from costly needle lace visible among the nobility to simpler bobbin-lace edgings, which were more affordable even when made in precious metals due to their quicker production. Overall, this experiment highlights the relative affordability of simpler bobbin-lace-trimmed handkerchiefs for the artisan class during the Renaissance. As is so often the case, the discoveries in this project have led to more questions, which I hope to explore in future research.

The technical understanding that is revealed through hands-on reconstruction also sheds light on to lacemakers’ innovations that could not have been gleaned from traditional research methodologies. Whether labouring over a length of dimensional needle lace for many months or hastening through yardage of simple bobbin-lace trim, lace-makers had a degree of creative liberty in the execution of their work. They were not mere fabricators but had to have a significant amount of knowledge and skill to interpret design ambiguities. Physically embodying their gestures can help to articulate their decision-making process – for example, which threads or stitches are more suitable or more difficult within specific techniques – and shed light on to how stylistic changes evolved. Although the names of multiple lace designers survive, namely those of pattern books, and it is easy to attribute innovations to them, through reproductions of lace, we can return some agency to the lace-makers themselves.

Figure IX.5 Reconstruction of Genoese-style linen bobbin-lace handkerchief edging in progress.