Guipure Lace

This name is often applied to needlepoint and pillow laces in which the ground consists of ties or brides, but it more properly designates a kind of lace or passementerie, made with gimp of fine wires whipped round with silk, and with cotton thread.

An earlier kind of gimp was formed with Cartisane, a little strip of this parchment or vellum covered with silk, gold or silver thread. These stiff gimp threads, formed into a pattern, were held together by stitches worked with the needle.

Gold and silver thread laces have been usually made on the pillow, though gold thread has been used with fine effect in 17th century Italian needle point laces.