In the 16th century Italy and Belgium became centers of lace production as their artisans developed a refined form of needlework that would become popular adornment to the wardrobes of the growing bourgeoisie and aristocracy of Western Europe. Lacework developed from the open decorative technique of embroidery and was in its early manifestations called cut-work. As embroidery was used to finish the hems of garments and would add slight flourishes of thread patterning along edges of cloth it allowed needlework to separate itself more and more from the greater garment and evolve into a coveted item in its own right.

As early as the 14th century the Italian and Flemish states had developed economic ties and traded goods between each other through their shipping routes and it would be these two centers that would become centers of lace craftwork as much as fine art production. By the 16th century they were centers of the Renaissance movement that promoted new levels of aesthetic appreciation and technological advances in manufacture, engineering, and printing among other things. Lacework, as an art of intricate patterning that would serve to enrich textiles as much as add refinement to the fashions of the new middle classes and the extant nobility, came into great favor at this time. Women would use pattern books (that had become available through new printing practices) to develop their lacework by setting a network of crossing threads upon a frame in defined patterns.

Set into the frame, beneath the network of threads, was the quintain (the background fabric) that would be sewn to the network where necessary in accordance with the patterning while any excess quintain would be cut away. These networks of thread would be laid out according to a geometric pattern radiating from a center and would combine open-work with heavily embroidered sections. The other form of lacework that came out of this period was referred to as lacis, patterns coming from a French tradition of working along a gridded network ground and establishing shapes according to compilations of squares on the grid.

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Lace trade relied on small manufacturing centers out of Antwerp, Brussels, Venice and Florence (and subsequently France) and as markets expanded and fashion and textile trends were made available to more than the noble classes, pedlars would distribute them to provincial centers where they would be sold at market to the ever-growing consuming bourgeois class. *image– 16th century Italian lace, Henry III cypher and arms *image– lacework sample

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