Lace Glossary
Compiled by Kenna Libes for the book Threads of Power: Lace from the Textilmuseum St. Gallen edited by Emma Cormack and Michele Majer. This glossary was reproduced with permission from Kenna and the team at Bard Graduate Center.
Lace Glossary
Compiled by Kenna Libes
This compiled glossary draws on groundbreaking works in the field including Pat Earnshaw’s The Identification of Lace (1980) and Santina M. Levey’s Lace: A History (1983), which expand on the significant contributions that Fanny Bury Palliser, Alice Dryden, Margaret Jourdain, Emily Jackson, and Ernest Lefébure, among others, made more than a century ago. The inclusion of several glossary terms is thanks to the generous help of many textile experts, particularly Denis Bruna and Elena Kanagy- Loux, who provided clarification on the French entries; Ilona Kos, who shared her knowledge of German; and Laura Beltrán- Rubio, Amalia Descalzo Lorenzo, Mariselle Meléndez, Tanya Melendez, and Amanda Wunder, who weighed in on the Nahuatl, Quechua, and Spanish words.
abanillo
Spanish; each of the folds in the linen that make up a ruff or lechuguilla. 16th century.
Alençon
A lacemaking center in Normandy, France, from the 17th century onward. The name is also associated with a light looped net. See also point d’Alençon.
application lace
Any lace in which the additional decorative pieces are attached to the surface of a machine net or bobbin réseau ground via needle and thread.
Argentan
A lacemaking center in Normandy, France, from the 17th century onward. The name is associated with heavy, hexagonal mesh grounds (brides bouclées and brides tortillées).
Argentella
An 18th-century needlepoint lace (usually regarded as a form of Argentan) distinguished by its elaborate ground of solid hexagons within skeletal hexagons (réseau rosace).
basquiña
Spanish; the overskirt in a Spanish guardainfante ensemble, worn over the pollera. 17th century.
bavaro
Italian; a type of modesty cover (partlet) often made of lace and worn by Venetian women with decolleté gowns. The word can also refer to other kinds of collars or capes about the neck. Plural: bavari. 16th century.
blonde
Lace made of silk. In the 18th century the name was applied to a large group of bobbin laces made originally of undyed silk from Nanjing, China, but later it was used for any lace made of silk, leading to confusing terms like “black blonde.” Blonde de Caen was a 19th-century version with threads of varying textures and colors and bold floral patterns with large open or colored areas in the centers of flowers.
bobbin lace
The generic term for lace made by plaiting and twisting together a number of threads wound on small bobbins and secured at the upper ends to a hard pillow. Dutch: kloskant, gespeldewerkte kant, spellewerk kant. French: dentelle aux fuseaux. German: Klöppelspitze. Italian: opere a mazette, pizzi a fuselli, merletti a piombino. Spanish: encaje, bolillos de randa, punto de bolillos.
bobbinet
Originally, any form of mesh ground made with bobbins, but after the invention of the bobbinet machine, the term was confined to machine-made net, which mimics handmade twist net. The bobbinet machine was invented by John Heathcoat in 1809 and is also called the “Old Loughborough.”
bobbins
Handheld tools (usually elongated and made of wood or bone) used to manipulate the threads in bobbin lace by hand. Bobbins vary in size according to the quality and weight of the lace; the threads are wound around their centers to provide tension.
braccio
Italian; an old unit of length used in Italy, usually about 26 or 27 inches (66 or 68 centimeters), but varying between 18 and 28 inches (46 and 71 centimeters). Plural: braccia.
brides
French; bars, bridges. Narrow bobbin- or needle-made threads linking the individual motifs of a lace design. Also used in describing the mesh grounds of French needle laces.
Brussels bobbin lace
A name especially associated with a fine 18th-century part lace grounded with Drochel net. See also point d’Angleterre and rosaline.
Brussels needle lace
A name associated with a flat lace made with very fine thread and decorated with elaborate fillings. See also point de gaze.
Burano
A name applied to two groups of needle lace made in Burano, Italy: one dating from the late 18th century and one from the late 19th century. It is made with a mesh (réseau) ground and fine thread and resembles Alençon and Brussels needle laces.
buttonhole stitch
The basic stitch of all needle laces. French: bouclette, point de boutonnière. Italian: punto a feston. German: Knopflochstich, Schlingstich.
Chantilly lace
Name for black silk bobbin laces produced in Chantilly, France, from the second half of the 18th century. Designs of flowers and flowing ribbons are made in half stitch for delicacy with untwisted cordonnet outlines on mesh fond chant (see point de Paris). In the 19th century Chantilly broadened to include cotton and linen fibers and could also be made by machine. It was especially desirable for shawls and mantillas. In this period, the black silk used was called grenadine.
chemical lace
A form of machine embroidery developed in the 1880s in which the pattern was worked in a vegetable fiber (usually cotton) on a silk ground; the latter was then burnt out or dissolved with caustic soda or chlorine. Today chemical lace is made from many other combinations of materials and the ground fabric can be dissolved with warm water. Key to production is a difference in the material
of the ground fabric and the threads of the embroidery. It is generally used to produce imitation needle lace and crochet. French: métier suisse, dentelle suisse. See also guipure.
Cirsaka
French; an Indian textile woven with a silk warp and cotton filling, usually ornamented with metal stripes in silver or gold. Predecessor (in both textile and terminology) to seersucker. 18th century.
continuous lace
See straight lace. French: dentelle à fils continus.
coraline
Name given to a late 17th-century Venetian flat point needle lace featuring a pattern
of short, branching stems and a minimal amount of raised work. The name is said to refer to its appearance, resembling coral.
cordon/cordonnet
French; an outline of the motifs of lace, made of single thicker thread (gimp), several thinner strands, or a padded wreath oversewn with buttonhole stitch. Also called “trolly” and, in French, brode.
Cornely machine
An embroidery machine with a hooked needle moved about following the outlines of the pattern by means of a handle mounted beneath the machine. The single needle and thread produced a chain stitch inimitation of tambour work. It was patented by Antoine Bonnaz in 1865 but is named after Ercole Cornely, who purchased the patent and innovated the hooked needle.
cotilla
Spanish; stays, corset. 18th–19th century.
crieur/crieuse
French; crier, as in “town crier” or a person making a public announcement. Hawker. 17th–18th century.
crochet
1. French name for the hooked needle used in a number of textile trades, including lacemaking.
2. Form of openwork in which a single length of thread is manipulated with a fine hook to form a series of loops, chains, and knots.
cumbi
Quechua; a finely woven Andean textile made from the highest-quality alpaca fibers. 16th–18th century.
cutwork
An embroidery technique in which holes are cut in linen, embroidered with thread, and decorated with buttonhole-stitch bars. Often considered the precursor to true needle lace. 16th century. French: point coupé. German: aussgeschnittene Arbeit, Ausschneidestickerei. Italian: punto tagliato.
dentelle
French; from dents, “teeth.” It originally referred to any indented edging, but by the late 16th century became the generic term for all lace: dentelle à l’aiguille (needle lace) and dentelle aux fuseaux (bobbin lace).
drawn-thread work
Selected warp or weft threads are drawn out and cut off, the raw edges stitched over, and the remaining threads decorated with buttonhole or other stitches in a variety of designs. Extensive use of this technique could result in cutwork, and it is sometimes combined with pulled-fabric work. Requires a tightly woven fabric. Italian: punto tirato.
Drochel
A bobbinet ground most commonly associated with 18th-century Brussels bobbin lace and made without pins except along the outer edges. It is a hexagonal mesh with two sides of four threads plaited four times and four sides of two threads twisted twice. The name is thought to have derived from the Flemish word Draadsel, meaning “mesh of threads.” Also called Droschel, drossel, vrai réseau, and Flemish réseau
ell
An old measure of length often used for textiles. Equivalent in England to about 45 inches (114.3 centimeters); in Scotland, 37 inches (94 centimeters); in Belgium, 27 inches (68.6 centimeters); in France, 54 inches (137.2 centimeters; the aune).
engageantes
French; the gathered and shaped ruffles of lace or muslin that were attached to women’s sleeve cuffs in the late 17th and 18th centuries.
entretoile
French; openwork created or lace inserted between two pieces of linen. Also known as insertion work or insertion lace.
falbala
French; a gathered piece of fabric used as a decorative edging. English: furbelows.
faldellín
Spanish; a wrapped A-line skirt with a side-front opening that became fashionable to use as an outer skirt among the women of the Viceroyalties of New Granada and Peru in the 18th century. An early 18th-century source describes it as having three rows of lace with the middle row of gold and silver.
fillings
Composite stitches used to form decorative patterns in the centers of both needle- and bobbin-lace motifs to fill space. They are essentially ornamental and usually varied, as opposed to the ground, which serves the practical purpose of holding the design in place and is of uniform appearance. French: jours, modes.
fleuron
French; a flower-shaped ornament used in series or at the end of a piece of lace.
fond
French; see réseau.
à la francesa
Spanish; a catchall term for Mexican clothing in the international 18th-century style, distinct from the robe à la française.
frelange
French; a high headdress usually made of linen and lace worn by women between 1680 and 1720. Often mistakenly called a fontange, which refers only to the silk ribbons sometimes worn behind the lace.
fustán
Spanish; in 18th-century Peru, a white underskirt or petticoat, sometimes with a deep flounce of lace at the hem.
galerilla
Spanish; a woman’s fitted gown cut without a waist seam. 16th–17th century.
Genoese lace
Refers to both bobbin and needle laces made in Genoa, Italy, in a variety of materials
but usually indicates the noncontinuous scalloped linen bobbin laces decorated with wheat ears (small oval and square motifs worked in basket stitch) popular in the first half of the 17th century. French: point de Gênes.
gimp
1. A silk or metal-wrapped cord.
2. Baroque bobbin lace incorporating such cords.
3. The thick outlining threads used in English Midland county laces, also known as cordonnet or trolly.
goffering
Crimping; goffering irons were used to set starched linen ruffs in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and also to set flounces and ruffles in linen into the 19th century.
golilla
A misnomer for the valona, a wide, flat, starched linen collar worn at the Spanish court in the 17th century. The term actually refers to the pasteboard undercollar used for support.
grand habit
Also called a robe de cour; the official court dress for French women, 1682–1789. An elaborate gown that comprised a boned bodice with back lacing, multitiered lace sleeves, a skirt, and a train. The skirt was worn over a wide pannier for most of the 18th century. Spanish: traje de corte.
gros point (de Venise)
French; a 19th-century misnomer for the largest of the raised Venetian needle laces of the second half of the 17th century.
Characterized by spacious, scrolling flowers and leaves with heavily padded borders.
The padding was made of a bundle of flax or wool thread covered with buttonhole stitches and extended into crowns of spines and other intricate embellishments. It was also sometimes known as punto tagliato a fogliami (cutwork with foliage). See also point de Venise.
ground
The background bars or net supporting the pattern in a piece of lace. French: fond. See also réseau.
guardainfante
Spanish; the extremely wide hoop skirt worn in the Spanish court in the 17th century. The full ensembles are sometimes called “infanta dresses,” after the princesses who wore them in portraits by Diego Velázquez.
guarniciones
Spanish; trims.
guipure
1. French; originally a lace of narrow parchment tapes whipped round with silk or gold or silver thread; later, a lace made of bobbin or woven tapes filled with bobbin or needle stitches and linked by brides.
2. Generic term for any lace where the parts of the toilé are joined by brides rather than a mesh or net ground.
3. Swiss chemical lace made on embroidery machines from the late 19th century; the term continues to be used today for lace from St. Gallen, Switzerland.
hand-embroidery machine
A hand-guided embroidery machine that initially could produce several identical satin-stitched designs simultaneously. It was the predecessor to the Schiffli machine and was invented in France in 1828 by Josué Heilmann.
Honiton lace
A term for bobbin lace of the Brussels type in Devonshire and parts of Dorset, Somerset, and Wiltshire, United Kingdom. 18th–20th century.
huipil
Spanish; a shirt or tunic of cotton, silk, or wool and often embroidered, worn by Indigenous women of any social rank in Mesoamerica prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the Americas. Traditionally, a large square of cotton with a center opening for the head; it is worn over the shoulders and seamed on the sides with arm holes at the fold. A luxury version was made entirely of imported lace and cut like an ecclesiastical surplice in the 18th century. From Nahuatl huīpīlli.
hypertube
A term for the lacelike textiles produced by textile manufacturer Jakob Schlaepfer AG (St. Gallen, Switzerland, 1904– ) through a computerized process that applies silicone pigments to fabric (3D printing). The resulting textile is based on traditional embroidery patterns used by the company and imitates the use of gimp in handmade lace.
infanta dress
Spanish; see guardainfante.
jabot
French; a decorative ruffle attached to the front opening on a man’s shirt. 17th–18th century.
júbon
Spanish; doublet. 16th–17th century.
lace
Originally a term meaning a narrow tape or braid. By the late 16th century, it had become the generic term for all forms of nonwoven, bobbin- and needle-made openwork. Dutch: kant. French: dentelle. German: Spitze. Italian: pizzo, merletto. Spanish: encaje.
lappets
Two strips of lace or linen hanging from the back or sides of a woman’s cap. Popular in the late 17th and 18th centuries and again in the middle of the 19th century. Also called barbes (French), pinners, and streamers.
Leavers machine
A versatile variant of the 1809 bobbinet machine. Because it held more bobbins in a single row, it was able to make patterned laces more easily and did not need to traverse the net. It was invented in 1813 by John Levers in the United Kingdom.
lechuguilla
Spanish; ruff.
Lille
A lacemaking center in northern France that primarily produced lace of the Mechlin and Valenciennes types, though it is now associated with a fine twist net ground decorated with delicate, thin patterns.
listas
Spanish; ribbons.
lliclla
Quechua; a traditional Andean shawl or shoulder cloth, usually rectangular or square, worn since at least the 16th century.
macramé
A kind of lace formed by hand-knotting hanging yarns or strings, which has been practiced in various forms for thousands of years. Often seen in the form of decorated fringe on the edge of linen cloths.
Maltese lace
A 19th-century heavy cream or black silk bobbin lace based on 17th-century Genoese needle lace. Made in Malta, it often sports the Maltese cross, and it inspired the English style of Bedfordshire Maltese.
mantelet
A short mantle, cloak, or shawl.
mantilla
Spanish; a traditional lace or silk veil worn by Spanish and Mexican women that covers the head and shoulders but leaves the face visible. In 16th- and 17th-century Spain, a shorter version of the manto.
manto
Spanish; cloak, cape. In 16th- and 17th-century Spain, a cloak for women and girls that also covered the head. French: manteau.
marchandes lingères
French; female merchants and makers of linen and lace goods who worked within the guild system. 16th–18th century.
marchands merciers
French; dealer-decorators who specialized in contracting artists and craftsmen to create objets d’art for interiors. 17th–18th century.
Mechlin
English name for Mechelen, Belgium. The name is particularly associated with a straight bobbin lace made with a soft linen thread and a silky gimp with a hexagonal mesh ground. French: Malines.
mesh
Basic element of a piece of net. The shape and construction of the mesh ground is the distinguishing feature of many laces. Dutch: masche. French: mailles. Italian: maglia. See also réseau.
mignonette
French; inexpensive, narrow Lille thread bobbin lace with a delicate pattern and mesh ground. Also known as blond de fil and point de tulle and can be spelled alternatively minuit and mennuet. 18th century.
Milanese lace
A name associated with the heavy Baroque bobbin laces of the second half of the 17th century, often featuring large lilies with spreading petals. By 1700, the designs became precise and elaborate floral sprays within a round Valenciennes ground with varied fillings.
needle lace / needlepoint
A generic term covering all forms of openwork constructed with buttonhole stitches using a needle and thread. See also cutwork. Dutch: naaldkant. French: point à l’aiguille, point coupé vélin. German: Nadelspitze. Italian: punto in aria, trina ad ago.
needle-run
A method of decorating machine net by darning an embroidery thread in and out of the meshes with a hand needle.
net
A machine-made mesh, though the term is also used in modern hand-worked lacemaking, e.g., net stitch (Honiton), and net ground (Bucks point).
part lace
Any bobbin lace in which the individual motifs or sections of the pattern or toilé are made separately and are joined by hooking or by bars or a mesh ground. Also called noncontinuous lace.
pearls
See picots.
pelerine
A woman’s short shoulder cape. 19th century.
picots
French; the small projecting loops or tiny knobs that decorate both needle and bobbin laces. Also called pearls and purls.
pillow lace
An alternative term for bobbin lace that refers to the pillow upon which bobbin lace is worked (although some needle laces are also worked using a pillow).
point
French; stitch. Used first to describe early needle lace (point à l’aiguille) and then to describe certain types of needle lace (point d’Alençon), etc. By the late 17th century, it was also being used inaccurately to describe some bobbin laces, notably point d’Angleterre. In the 19th century it became a more generic term applied to many needle, bobbin, tape, and embroidered “laces.”
point Colbert
French; a 19th-century French needle lace originally made in imitation of point de Venise (see gros point) with a design of flowers, leaves, and scrolls ornamented with high raised work and a bar-and-picot ground. Named in honor of French minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who promoted lace- making in the 17th century.
point d’Alençon
French; an 18th-century meshed lace with architecturally arranged flowers and swags neatly and precisely suspended in the Alençon ground. It had a sharp, clear, firm texture, achieved by the hard rim of cordonnet supporting every piece of the design, which often extended into picots made over horsehair. There are multiple types of Alençon grounds:
1. Réseau ordinaire (ordinary réseau), a mesh ground made of twisted buttonhole stitches worked from left to right with the thread carried back from right to left. It has a light and delicate appearance and is the only one used in the earlier forms;
2. Brides tortillées (twisted réseau): this is réseau ordinaire (1) with the meshes twisted around with thread to make it look like Argentan;
3. Réseau mouché (fly réseau), a clear ground with scattered spots like tiny insects. See also semé;
4. The petit réseau (little réseau) is not used as a ground but as a filling. It is réseau ordinaire (1) on a smaller scale.
point d’Angleterre
French; “English stitch,” though it has no connection to England. A very fine noncontinuous bobbin lace (see part lace), occasionally with needlepoint fillings or motifs, made in Brussels from the mid-17th to late 18th centuries. The earlier floral designs were similar to the gros points with crowded hexagonal Drochel grounds. In the late 19th century the term referred to a Belgian lace made of fine-quality bobbin sprigs linked by a point de gaze ground and with delicate needle-made fillings.
point d’Espagne
1. French; name given to gold and silver bobbin lace produced mainly in France and exported in great quantities to Spain and Spanish America in the 17th and 18th centuries.
2. A later name sometimes applied to one 17th-century Venetian needle lace with curving lines of raised work elaborately decorated with picots. There is no evidence that lace of this type was made in Spain. Spanish: puntos de España.
3. Though point d’Espagne translates as “Spanish lace,” the English version of the phrase references an entirely different set of laces. See Spanish lace.
points de France
French; all needle and bobbin laces made under the direction of Colbert following the establishment of the French lace industry in 1665 and meant to compete with Venetian work (points de Venise). The name came to be associated with French needle lace of the late 17th and early 18th centuries decorated with delicate symmetrical floral, foliate, and figurative designs, including Alençon, Argentan, Argentella, and point de Sedan.
point de gaze
French; a mid-19th-century form of Brussels needle lace with a gauze ground of button- hole stitches and naturalistic floral patterns, especially roses. Also called gase point, gauze point, point à l’aiguille gazée, rosaline, Brussels rose point, and point de Bruxelles.
point de Paris
French; a type of bobbin réseau, variously called “six-point star,” from its shape; fond chant, from its forming the ground of 18th- century Chantilly laces; fond double, because its technique of working is like a whole stitch; “Kat stitch”; “French ground”; and “wire ground,” because the intertwining of the stretched threads looks like a wire mesh.
point de raccroc
French; a stitch used to invisibly join the strips of straight lace made in Chantilly and other French centers in the 19th
century. Also applied to the different linking stitch used to join strips of Drochel net.
Literally, “hitch stitch.”
point de Venise
1. French; an umbrella term for all laces made in Venice or in the Venetian style, including rosaline and coraline. In 17th-century French documents, the phrase used for lace made in Venice is the literal points qui se font à Venise.
2. Point de Venise à réseau; 19th-century misnomer for fine, flat, mesh-grounded needle lace made in Brussels in the 18th century.
pollera
1. Spanish; a padded skirt worn between the guardainfante and basquiña in Spain. 17th century.
2. In the Viceroyalties of New Granada and New Spain, a gathered skirt that could be worn as the top layer in domestic settings and was usually calf-length. The term also refers to a mode of dress that consisted of a very full, relatively short skirt (the pollera) that revealed the lacy flounce of an
underskirt, a chemise lavishly decorated with lace, and a short lace-trimmed waistcoat and shawl. 18th century. Polleras were adapted by Indigenous women and women of Indigenous descent in colonial Spanish America after the arrival of the Spaniards. Today, they are associated mostly with Indigenous cultures and worn in festive celebrations.
potten kant
Dutch; “flowerpot lace.” A continuous, dense Flemish bobbin lace usually patterned with a pot-of-flowers motif set in a Kat stitch (point de Paris), cinq trous, or round-meshed ground. Features a silky cordonnet and a straight heading and is similar to Mechlin but heavier and sturdier. Also called Antwerp lace. 17th–19th century.
pricking
The marking of a pinhole pattern on a card or parchment used for bobbin-lace work.
pulled-fabric work
A technique in which the threads of a woven fabric are pulled and stitched together to form decorative holes in an openwork pattern. It does not entail cutting or removing threads and requires a loosely woven fabric. Distinct from (but often combined with) drawn-thread work.
puntas
Spanish; serrated edgings. Any work that formed waves or points on the edges of a textile. 16th–17th century.
punto
Italian; stitch. Like the French point, it came to be applied to both needle and bobbin laces and to the stitches used in their construction.
punto in aria
Italian; “stitches in the air.” A needle-lace technique of detached embroidery worked in buttonhole stitch on a network of foundation threads anchored on a parchment or textile, which is afterward detached. Considered one of the first true laces. 16th century.
punto riccio
Italian; “curled stitch.” An embroidery stitch used to create curved decorations, like tendrils, found especially in Tuscan filet or Modano. A variety of punto scritto.
Pusher machine
A variant of the bobbinet machine (1809) invented in 1812, in which each bobbin was controlled by a long implement called a pusher. It made close copies of blonde and Chantilly bobbin laces, though they still had to be finished by hand.
quesquémel
Spanish; an Indigenous Mexican garment worn by the Nahuatl elite in pre-Hispanic times. The triangular form consists of a cloth with a neck hole cut in the center that is pulled on over the head and usually falls to a point in front and back. It was worn by noblewomen and priestesses in ceremonies and used over a huipil. From Nahuatl quechquemitl.
rabat
French; a man’s broad, flat white linen collar, often trimmed with lace, fitting around the base of the throat and stretching across the shoulders and to some extent over the back and chest. 16th–17th century. English: falling band.
raised work
Any three-dimensional detail in needle or bobbin lace.
randas
Spanish; a generic word denoting lace, though originally it was a kind of openwork lacis (embroidered knotted net) involving embroidery on a square woven mesh.
rengos
Spanish; likely refers to needle laces created using techniques similar to the original randas.
réseau
French; network. The uniform mesh background of a lace design (as opposed to bar- based grounds) in both needle and bobbin laces. Also called the fond, mesh, or ground.
reticella
Italian; “little net.” A geometric cutwork technique of the late 16th century in which large squares of woven linen are removed and the edges are covered in buttonhole stitches; it also refers to needle lace built up on a ground of laid threads (punto in aria). A precursor to true lace.
robe à l’anglaise
French; “English gown.” A late 18th "century front-opening women’s gown with a fitted bodice and attached, pleated skirt that opened in the front to display the petticoat (in this case, an overskirt and not an undergarment). English: English nightgown, close-bodied gown. Spanish: vaquero a la inglesa.
robe à la française
French; “French gown.” An 18th-century open-front gown with stomacher and voluminous loose pleats of fabric at back, commonly called “sack-back” or referred to by the later term “Watteau pleats.” Considered informal dress early in the century but worn for formal occasions after midcentury. English: sack gown.
ropilla
Spanish; a short Spanish overgarment with sleeve caps surrounded by a fold (brahón) and hanging sleeves, worn over a doublet. 16th–17th century.
rosaline
1. Italian; a term for English point de neige, often used for later Burano lace rather than for the 17th-century Venetian styles;
2. Rose point, which is a 19th-century name for medium-sized raised Venetian needle lace of the later 17th century (gros point being the largest and point de neige the smallest);
3. Brussels point de gaze;
4. A late 19th-century Brussels bobbin lace with crinkly edges to the motifs and a suggestion of button roses in the design;
5. A late 19th- or 20th-century Italian bobbin lace with boldly curling stems terminating in half-stitch buds, associated today with the town of Cantù. Also spelled “roselline.”
runners
1. An alternative name for worker bobbins.
2. Term for the embroiderers who worked the needle-run patterns on machine net.
saya
Spanish; a two-piece ensemble worn by Spanish women in the 16th and 17th centuries that included a cone-shaped overskirt (basquiña) and a bodice (cuera). In some later contexts, it simply denotes the skirt of the ensemble.
Schiffli machine
An embroidery machine invented by Isaak Gröbli in Switzerland in 1863 that applied the shuttle, continuous thread, and lock- stitch innovations of the sewing machine to embroidery. Until this point, such machines could work only with short lengths of thread. It can reproduce the same design many times over at once and imitate the patterns of needle-run laces. The design was originally controlled by a pantograph: as the course of the threads was traced stitch by stitch on a master design, the net itself was moved and the hundreds of needles embroidered in tandem along the width of the textile.
semé
French; a delicate allover motif of spots, sprigs, stars, or other figures.
Spachtel-Stickerei
German; an embroidered fabric in which parts of the ground are cut away to create a lacelike textile.
Spanish lace
1. Spanish bobbin lace, Spanish blonde: a continuous lace using two thicknesses of soft, lustrous silk thread and a dense design ideal for draped white or black mantillas and flounces. 18th–19th century.
2. Machine net with needle-run embroidery in a floral repeat design worked in a heavy silk thread along the border with smaller sprigs scattered through the ground. Made in black and white. 19th century.
3. Machine “Spanish lace” of varying qualities made on the Leavers and other machines, always heavily patterned with flowers.
4. See also point d’Espagne for the seventeenth-century laces under that name.
straight lace
Any bobbin lace that is made all in one piece, both pattern (toilé) and bars or ground, as opposed to part lace. Also called continuous lace.
superposé
French; a term for the three-dimensional embroidered appliqué motifs, often applied to chemical lace.
Swiss lace
See chemical lace.
tambour work
A chain-stitch embroidery technique done with a hooked needle. Commonly used to decorate machine net.
tape lace
Any lace constructed using tape (plain, narrow textiles resembling ribbons), whether loom-woven or made by needle or bobbins. Tape is often used similarly to gimp, to create thick outlines and border effects, or to split up motifs.
toilé
French; clothwork. The term can refer to:
1. As a technique, the bobbin-lace whole stitch, which looks exactly like woven linen. Also clothwork, clothing, cloth stitch, linen stitch.
2. Generally, the denser, patterned parts of the lace including motifs, trails, and fillings, as distinct from the ground.
traje de corte
Spanish; court costume. See also grand habit.
trencillas
Spanish; braid. Trencillas de oro, gold braid. In some cases it refers to bobbin or insertion lace (see entretoile).
Tulle
Small town on the edge of the Massif Central (France) that produced a fine silk net, either knotted or made with bobbins, decorated with embroidery. The name was applied by the French to the first machine-knitted nets and was subsequently used internationally to describe machine-made net of all types.
twist net
Simple form of bobbinet made with two pairs of bobbins. Also called fond simple, fond clair; Lille, point, or net ground; two-twist net; and tulle mesh. Found in Bucks, Lille, Chantilly, Spanish bobbin, and blonde lace. This is the net that Heathcoat sought to mimic with the bobbinet machine.
underpropper
The metal wire or pasteboard under-support for a ruff or other standing linen collar. Also called a supportasse or rebato. 16th–17th century.
Valenciennes
A lacemaking center in territory contested between the Southern Netherlands and France (from 1678, part of France). In the 18th century Valenciennes referred to a high-quality straight lace in which clearly defined patterns are grounded with a round or square plaited mesh. In the 19th century
it evolved to include extensive fil coupé and fil attaché techniques to create lace of variable quality with exceptionally dense, white patterns and a square mesh. It is related to Binche and Mechlin laces.
valona / valonas llanas
Spanish; the linen collars that replaced lechuguillas for both men’s and women’s dress. These valonas were part of shifts and shirts usually trimmed with lace.
17th century.
vaquero
1. Spanish; a coat-like garment with a fitted waist and long skirts worn by women and children in Spain in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
2. Colloquial name of the robe à l’anglaise
style in New Spain, 18th century.
verdugado
Spanish; farthingale. The boned hoop- petticoat used in the 16th century to support women’s skirts.