Needle Point Lace 

The way in which the early Venetiar punto in aria was made corresponds with that in which needlepoint lace is now worked. The pattern is first drawn upon a piece of parchment. The parchment is then stitched to two pieces of linen. Upon the leading lines drawn on this parchment a thread is laid, and fastened through to the parchment and linen by means of stitches, thus constructing a skeleton thread pattern.

Those portions which are to be represented as the clothing or toilé are usually worked and then edged as a rule with buttonhole stitching.  Between these toilé portions of the pattern are worked ties (brides) or meshes (réseaux) , and thus the various parts are united in one fabric, and wrought on to the face of the parchment patter and reproducing it.   A knife is passed between the two pieces of linen at the back of the parchment, cutting the stitches which have passed through the parchment and linen, and so releasing the lace itself from its pattern parchment.  In the earlier stages, the lace was made in lengths to serve as insertions (passements) and also in vandykes (denteiles) to serve as edgings. Later on insertions and vandykes were made in one piece. All of such were at first of a geometric style of pattern.

Following closely upon them came the freer style of design interspersed between the various details of the patterns which were of flat tape like texture. In elaborate specimens of this flat point lace some lace workers occasionally used gold thread with the white thread. These flat laces (Punto in Aria) are also called "flat Venetian point." 

About 1640 rose (raised) point laces began to be made  They were done in relief and those of bold design with stronger reliefs are called gros point de Venise.  Lace of this latter class was used for altar cloths, flounces, jabots or neck cloths which hung beneath the chin over the breast, as well as for trimming the turned over tops of jack boots. Tabliers and ladies’ aprons were also made of such lace. In these no regular ground was introduced. All sorts of minute embellishments, like little knots, stars and loops or picots, were worked on to the irregularly arranged brides or ties holding the main patterns together, and the more dainty of these raised laces exemplify the most subtle uses to which the buttonhole stitch appears capable of being put in making ornaments. 

But about 1660 came laces with brides or ties arranged in a honeycomb reticulation or regular ground. To them succeeded lace in which the compact relief gave place to daintier and lighter’ material combined with a ground of meshes.  The needle made meshes were sometimes of single and sometimes of double threads. A diagram is given of an ordinary method of making such meshes. At the end of the 17th century, the lightest of the Venetian needlepoint laces were made; and this class which was of the filmiest texture is usually known as point de Venise a réseau.  It was contemporary with the needle made French laces of  Argentani that became famous towards the latter part of the 17th century.  

Point d’Argentan has been thought to be especially distinguished on account of its delicate honeycomb ground of hexagonally arranged brides, a peculiarity  in certain antecedent Venetian point laces. Often intermixed with this hexagonal brides ground is the fine meshed ground, which has been held to be distinctive of  point d’Alencon.  But the styles of patterns and the methods of working them, with rich variety of insertions or modes are alike in Argentan and Alençon needle-made laces.

After 1650 the lace-workers at Alencon and its neighborhood produced work of a daintier kind than that which was being made by the Venetians. As a rule the hexagonal bride grounds of Alencon laces are smaller than similar details in Venetian laces. The average size of a diagonal taken from angle to angle in an Alencon (or so called Argentan) hexagon was about one-sixth of an inch, and each side of the hexagon was about one-tenth of an inch. An idea of the minuteness of the work can be formed from the fact that a side of a hexagon would be overcast with some nine or ten buttonhole stitches.

Ground and the ground of meshes, another variety of grounding (réseau rosacé) was used in certain Alencon designs. This ground consisted of buttonhole-stitched skeleton hexagons within each of which was worked a small hexagon of toilé connected with the outer surrounding hexagon by means of six little ties or brides. Lace with this particular ground has been called Argentella, and some writers have thought that it was a specialty of Genoese or Venetian work. But the character of the work and the style of the floral patterns are those of Alencon laces. The industry at Argentan was virtually an offshoot of that nurtured at Alencon, where lacis cut work and had been made for years before the well developed needle made point d’Alençon came into vogue under the favoring patronage of the state aided lace company mentioned as having been formed in 1665.

In Belgium, Brussels  acquired some celebrity for needle made laces. These, however, are chiefly in imitation of those made at Alencon, but the bile is of less compact texture and sharpness in definition of pattern. Brussels needlepoint lace is often worked with meshed grounds made on a pillow, and a plain thread is used as a cordonnet for their patterns instead of a thread overcast with buttonhole stitches as in the French needlepoint laces. 

Needlepoint lace has also been occasionally produced in England. While the character of its design in the early 17th century was rather more primitive, as a rule, than that of the contemporary Italian, the method of its workmanship is virtually the same. Specimens of needle-made work done by English school children may be met with in samplers of the 17th and 18th centuries.