~History of lace for wealthy men, women, and home~
So, first of all, we see handcrafted lace popping up in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries.
In the history of lace, we find that the main countries where it originated from are defo Flandres (Belgium), Italy, and France.
Lace would be incorporated into aristocratic women’s and men’s attire alike.
But next to this, you would find lace being used in furnishings and accessories too like parasols, gloves, pillowcases, etc.
And it would certainly be a sign of big money, honey!
A stately status-fabric for sure.
Back then, lace was solely produced by hand in only Europe, which was quite the labor-intensive job.
Cutting lace was one of the first manners to create lace, but moving on, the main ways of producing lace was with a needle and single thread or with bobbins and many threads.
When surrounding countries got a whiff of this enticing, intricate, and exciting material, it, of course, just had to be imported from Europe.
At some point, there were even extra restrictions to obtaining lace and because of this, it had to even be smuggled by the wealthy and blue-blooded.
So, yes! Lace was considered as pretty OohLaLa!
~History of Lace and the Revolution or Evolution of lace? ~
We now know that both men, women, and regal homes were lavishly decorated with lace.
For rich men and women, we find that lace was used for their collars, cuffs, like headgear, for the hands, draped over women’s shoulders, and we find gowns completely covered in this beautiful, extravagant material.
Next to wearing lace in all sorts of chic manners, it would also be used in furnishings and fashion accessories like fans for cheer opulence.
This handmade fabulousness, imported from Europe by the rich and the blue-bloods would last quite a while until the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.
The French Revolution led to the end of the French court and with that, it was also the demise of the luxury industry.
This luxury industry unfortunately also included lace manufacturing.
Even though the French Revolution affected the craft of lace-making mega, the yearning for lace never declined and thank goodness it had its own evolution with the help of the Industrial Revolution.
~History of lace and the Mesh Machine~
An important part of the history of lace is that in 1809 an Englishman called John Heathcoat invented a machine.
This machine would take away the most tedious part of lace-making, which was the mesh (under-)ground or netting.
By the mid-1800s we start noticing a combination of handmade lace with these machine-made elements.
You would have, for example, the machine-made mesh ground and that was mixed with bobbin/appliqué.
But, with all that, we still wanted handmade lace for sure.
So, the lace-making craft spread its wings and motivated a lot of women to take up the art of lace-making too in other countries than France, Belgium, Italy.
The tatting technique, bobbin, or for example crochet were amongst the manners of creating lace domestically.
In any which way, in the history of lace we see that whether with the help of machine, a combination, or handmade, there was a huge development in making lace.
And with that, many more types of laces and techniques came into existence!
But, more on that in a next blog, mes chéries<3
~*~
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