Liedekerke Convent, to which some 200 of the villagers bring their laces and which once made little else than Application (many beautiful robes and flounces and scarfs have gone out from the commune and the school), now makes comparatively little of it; for during the last six years Paris and other markets have asked for Rosaline. It is to be hoped that this small quantity may be continued, and that the lace world may still win at least a few pieces yearly of the earlier, more exquisite Point d’Angleterre.
Point d’Angleterre, so named because of its great popularity in England, reached its height in beauty and in favor during the seventeenth century, when it occupied the talent and energy of all the lace-workers of Brussels. It differs from Needle Point, in which both flowers and mesh are made with the needle. It is one of the loveliest of all laces, combining in rare beauty, rich bouquets and arabesques and birds of finest bobbin work, with a frail transparent needle mesh, the flowers themselves becoming frequently more light and delicate through the introduction of charmingly varied needle-worked open spaces. Certain workers make the flowers, and others the connecting mesh. If one can imagine the softness of a kind of sublimated or diaphanous velvet, added to the fragility of an airy and cobwebby lace, one may have some idea of the effect of good Point d’Angleterre. And if one would possess a collar or a flounce, one should buy it quickly, for Point d’Angleterre is going the way of the other difficult and exquisite points. Such villages as Kerxken, Liedekerke, Destelbergen (near Ghent), and those of the Alost region still make occasional pieces.
(1) Malines (2) Application, flowers sewn on tulle (3) Duchesse, with needle-point insertions]
[Illustration: APPLICATION DETAILS TO BE SEWED ON TULLE
Upper flower shows open spaces left by bobbin worker for needle worker; lower flower shows both bobbin and needle work completed]
The more ordinary Point de Flandres, or Flanders, so generally produced to-day, has the same composition as Point d’Angleterre, since in it bobbin-work flowers are joined by a needle-mesh. And even tho coarser and less complicated than Point d’Angleterre, Point de Flandres is also difficult to make, and should be much better paid. There are innumerable differences in quality, and many ways in which this lace may be employed. The Committee has used it chiefly in elegant table centers and cloths, in lamp-shades and in various articles to embellish a drawing-or dining-room. And this summer of 1919 it is being used with much success by important French houses as trimming for dainty _ninon_ underclothing. Nineteenth century Point de Flandres, then, is little more than a commercial name for a very coarse kind of Point d’Angleterre.