Needle lace
lace made with a needle and thread
Needle lace is a type of lace created using a needle and thread to create hundreds of small stitches to form the lace itself.
Origins
The origins of needle lace date back to the 15th century and embroidery. Cutwork and drawn work were developed to add interest to white on white embroidery, and the methods used in these techniques led to needle lace. A second expert puts the development of needle lace in the following century, the 16th, in Italy, also stemming from embroidery, the openwork on linen technique called reticella. To show off their wealth in that period in Italy, the aristocracy favored wearing rich cloth embellished by embroidery and braid. As the century progressed, the small areas that were cut from the fabric to highlight the needle lace were replaced by much larger areas of cutwork. The needlework was dependent on remaining threads running vertically and horizontally, leaving squares and rectangles, which led to geometric designs.
Venice was a center of needle lace making in the 1400s, as documented by official records. In the 1500s, city officials decreed that young men in Venice were prohibited from lace wearing until they had turned 25. Lace was a prized possession, appearing in lists of people's assets.
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This entry incorporates text from “Needle lace” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.