Stoke Goldington

The English origin of the word lace owes something to the French lassis or lacis, but both are connected with the earlier Latin laqueus.

Early French laces were also called passements; being the name applied to ornamental open work formed of threads of flax, cotton, silk, gold or silver, and occasionally of mohair or aloe fiber, looped or plaited or twisted together by hand: (1) with a needle, when the work is distinctively known as needlepoint lace ; (2) with bobbins, pins and a pillow or cushion, when the work is known as pillow lace ; and (3) by steam-driven machinery, when imitations of both needlepoint and pillow laces are produced. Lace making implies the production of ornament and fabric concurrently. Without a pattern or design the fabric of lace cannot be made.

The Origins of Lace Making
The publication of patterns for needlepoint and pillow laces dates from about the middle of the 16th century. Before that period lace described such articles as cords and narrow braids of plaited and twisted threads, used not only to fasten shoes, sleeves and corsets together, but also in a decorative manner to braid the hair, to wind round hats, and to be sewn as trimmings upon costumes.

As to the evolution of lace-making, notice should be taken of the fact that at an early period the darning of varied ornamental devices, stiff and geometric in treatment into hand-made network of small square meshes became specialized in many European countries. This is held by some writers to be opus filatorium, or opus araneum (spider work). Examples of this opus filatorium, said to date from the 13th century exist in public collections. The productions of this darning in the early part of the 16th century came to be known as punto a maglia quadra in Italy and as lacis in France, and through a growing demand for household and wearing linen, very much of the lacis was made in white threads not only in Italy and France but also in Spain. In appearance it is a filmy fabric. With white threads also were the purlings above mentioned made, by means of leaden bobbins or fuxii, and were called merletti a piombini.