EXQUISITE LINENS

 The Lace Dictionary

C

CAEN.   Blonde and black silk lace made in the city of Caen in Normandy (France). 

CALABRIA. A knotted lace now made in Calabria. Used for trimming underdresses and ornamental household linens.

CALAIS.    French manufacturing center famous  for very fine laces made on the Nottingham go-through machine, black or white.

CALVADOS (France). Early Alencons were made here and also  Campagne lace.

CAMPAGNE LACE. A bobbin-lace edging, very narrow, sort of picot lace, sometimes made of gold and colored silk.

CANDIA. Called in ancient times Idoea, afterwards Crete, one of the largest islands in the Mediterranean.   See Crete.

CANNETILLE.    Bullion lace.

CARNASSIERE, FIL DE.    Italian knotted lace.

CARNAVAL. Reticella lace showing crests and armorial bearings, especially worn by the nobility, is called Carnaval lace.    When used for trousseaux it is called bridal lace.

Carrickmacross Guipure

CARRICKMACROSS. Carrickmacross lace, like all Irish lace, was a copy of the lace of other countries. There were two kinds, applique and guipure. The applique is worked upon a machine-made net. The guipure is more of an embroidery than a lace, made with fine mull or lawn, in which the design is traced.    The thread  is then run  around the out-lines of the design; • the centers are cut away, buttonholed and filled with open stitches.

CARTASANE. A parchment or velum cord covered with silk or gold or silver thread.   Used to form a pattern.

CASCADE. Trimming term. Material folded in zigzag form.

CATALONIA (Spain). Famous for its black and blonde silk laces. To-day the term Catalonia applies to laces of a fine Cluny character.

CATERPILLAR LACE. Lace made by employing the natural web of the caterpillar, a freak lace only occasionally made by experimentalists; sometimes the spider is employed in like manner.

CAUTERIZED.      See Burnt Lace.

CEVENNES. White silk for the silk laces made at Bayeux, Caen and Chantilly, at one time came from Cevennes, hence the term Cevennes lace.

CEYLON.     Maltese laces were made here.

CHANSONS A TOILE. Ballads sung by lace-makers at work.

CHANTILLY. The Chantilly white laces much resemble lisle. A thick silk-looking thread outlining the pattern. Black silk Chantilly appeared about the middle of the Eighteenth Century, characterized by fine ground and elegance of floral festoons. The silk laces made in the natural color and called Blonde were made at Chantilly, and as the term Blonde was accepted by many as applying to silk the term Black Blonde was often used to mean black silk. These laces made in Chantilly were called Chantilly laces. Little hand-made lace is now made in Chantilly, the introduction of machinery killing the industry.

Chantilly

CHIOGGIA LACE. Made at the island of Chioggia, near Venice. The industry was revived in 1872. Resembles Old Flemish laces.

CINGALESE.    Famous for Maltese laces.

CLINQUANT.      The flat kind of bullion lace is termed Clinquant.

CLOSE-STITCH.      A name sometimes given to buttonhole stitch.

Cluny

CLUNY.    Modern  Cluny is coarse, thick, strong, bobbin, white, made in Belgium, Germany and Italy.    It.is characterized by paddles or wheels introduced upon what is otherwise a torchon. The modern name is derived from the museum Cluny and there is little relationship between the modern Cluny and the ancient Cluny Guipure.    See Araneum.

The differences between the real and the imitation Cluny, torchon or similar bobbin laces may be detected in three ways. First, the imitation made on a machine shows under the magnifying glass the use of two sizes of thread instead of one size, as in the real; second, the threads thrown in a machine are, naturally, crinkly, irregular, and loose, instead of straight and taut, as with real, made on a pillow between rigid pins;

third, the imitation is usually of cotton, the real usually linen. See torchon, the prototype  of Cluny.

COLBERT AND COLBERTAN. Synonymous terms derived from the name of Colbert, the illustrious prime minister of France in the Seventeenth Century. The lace has an irregular ground after the fashion of Venetian lace preceding the introduction of nets.

COLYFORT. An English town at one time active in the making of bobbin laces.

COMO. Much excellent modern Cluny lace is made in the neighborhood of Como.

CONTE, POINT. Darned netting in countable stitches, as distinguished from irregular stitching of spider work or Opus Araneum.

CORALINE. A heavy Italian jeedle-point lace, one of the variety of flat Venetian point.   Its pattern is cordlike.

CORDELLA. A fine net lace with raised cord outlining the pattern.

CORDONNET.     The cord outline applied to a pattern.

CORFU. A coarse Greek lace of little value for artistic use.

CORNISH. A century ago Cornwall laces were of considerable variety.

COUPE, POINT.    French term for cut-work.

COURONNES. Ornaments to the cordonnet of needle-point lace.

COURTRAI LACE. Of Valenciennes character made in the town of  Courtrai,  Belgium.

COXCOMBS. Name often substituted for bars, the connecting threads thrown across open spaces.

COYLTON. Town in England where a few old lace-makers are still employed in the manufacture of Honiton sprigs.

CRACKLE OR CRACKLY. A modern machine-made net or mesh to lace or veiling resembling the crackle in the glaze of old pottery.

CREPE. A thin crimped stuff of warp silk gummed on the mill.

CREPE DE CHINE. An exquisitely soft and drapy form of crepe;  plain,  figured  or  printed.

CRETE. Lace of loose bobbin variety made in Candia or Crete. Designs generally geometrical, ground colored silk or flax  with  a  colored  chain-stitch,  along  the  edge,  giving  a urocnet gay effect.    In  the upholstery trade to-day the term  Crete applies to a light-weight curtain material.

CRETE. The term Crete is often applied to lace similar to Cyprus lace, sometimes called Roman, sometimes Greek lace.

CREVA. Drawn-work, as made in Brazil by the negroes. It is evidently a rough copy of Italian drawn.

Crochet

CROCHET. Crochet lace introduced in Ireland about 1820. It is distinguished by crochet stitch, usually imitating modern reticellas and Venetian point. It is wrought with a hooked needle and is sometimes called "nun's work." The name is derived from the French "crochet," crock, and the old Danish "krooke," or hook. The distinguishing mark of Irish crochet which has never been imitated is the fine crochet stitch followed by every thread of the work.    Sometimes the crochet is called raised Rose point or Point de Trico or Honiton crochet to indicate the character of the design more than the technique.    The flat variety, however is better known to-day as baby Irish, as distinguished from the raised or heavy variety.

The manufacture of Irish crochet, however, is not confined entirely to Ireland. The Syrians in this country and the peasants of Italy, Austria, Germany, Turkey and France are all at work upon the same sort of lace. In Ireland, where by far the best crochet is made, the work is now a national industry with its main centers at Cork and Monaghan. At one time there were no less than 12,000 women in the neighborhood  of  Cork alone  engaged in the making of crochet collars and cuffs and yard laces after Spanish and Venetian patterns. In Austria the government has established lace-making as a national industry, 60,000 peasant workers being engaged under royal auspices. The Austrian crochet work follows strictly the Irish examples. A hand-made gown of Irish crochet passes before it is finally completed through as many as a hundred different hands, and includes in its makeup a great variety of motifs  

designed especially for the garment. These motifs are made by different individuals, assembled and put together at some center with racord stitches. These racord stitches are of several designs, coming in the French, English, Irish and large  open-mesh   patterns.

Irish crochet is difficult to imitate. Under a glass and frequently to the naked eye the deception is perfectly clear. The stitch of the crochet is purely a crochet stitch or button-hole stitch while the imitations aim at the effect with a perfectly straight over-and-over stitch.   Recently some imitations have been produced which simulate crochet effect, and a great many crochet laces are on the market which a child may be taught to accomplish but which can not be regarded as Irish crochet. Some of the factory crochet reproductions are very clever, but the difference between the Irish crochet and the rest lies in the finish and latterly even this is being closely imitated. We may say, however, that the real Irish crochet is characterized by its linen character as distinguished   from   cotton   reproductions   of   the   imitation, The cut-out mesh before edge       Needle-point  edging  to   a  cut-out is   finished.     

and by the stiff or starchy closeness of the feel as distinguished from the puffiness or softness of the imitation. Crochet laces are also known as Oyah. It is the guipure lace or openwork embroidery made by means of a hook in a fashion like crochet. It is sometimes elaborate and in silks of many colors showing foliage and flowers in relief. Point de Turque is a term sometimes used for Oyah lace. Spanish guipure is also classed as crochet but it is a misnomer because the real Spanish guipure was of the Fifteenth Century   and   followed   the   Reticella   models.

CURRAGH.   Another name for Irish Point.    Owing to the fact that many of the needle-point laces of Ireland are produced at Curragh schools, the term Curragh is often applied indiscriminately to Irish laces.

Cyprus

CUT-WORK. Cut-work had great vogue during 1400. It was known in the earliest stages of lace-making. • One can readily understand that the earliest endeavor at lace-making began with the drawing of threads. Then the dividing of the threads into strands, then working them into patterns or over-stitching them or darning, or what we to-day call hemstitching.

It was a logical step from this form of work to the cutting away of some of the threads.   Little by little as the cutwork came more into vogue and the designs more and more complex, an effort was made to produce these open-work patterns in a more direct manner and as a result we have Reticella, which was the very beginning of needle-point lace.

The first examples of cut-work were doubtless used only for ecclesiastical purposes, and until the dissolution of the monasteries it was regarded as a church secret. Indeed, as early as 1400 Nun's Work was a term applied generally to cut-work in  Great  Britain.

CYPRUS. Lace highly thought of in the Middle Ages, formerly made of gold and silver, manufacture now extinct. Peasants make a coarse thread lace.