Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 126, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1909 — Decline of French Lace Making. [ARTICLE]

Decline of French Lace Making.

One of the moot melancholy facta la the rlatory of modern art Industry In France is the emigration to Belgium Of nearly all the fine old “points” in tece manufacture for which tills country has been tor centuries so justly Dudousl The true Velenciennes is now a thing, of the past, and the point of that name with which the smart women of Paris trim their gowns is a bastard variety made in Belgium which tn the process of emigration has lost most of its former delicacy and suppleness. It is no longer the unritalled lace of which so much was produced in a year, and which sold for $44 an ell. Sedan point has gone the same way, and under Belgian fingers has taken on all sorts of strange and uncouth adornments. Paris point is produced at Louvain and in other ports of Belgium, but no longer in the French capital, and the same fate has befallen the most characteristically French of all laces, th,e point of Lille, with its delicate transparencies. Venetian point, which the great Colbert was anxious to implant in France, has also emigrated in great measure to Belgium, whence Is certainly derived much of the lace sold.as pure Venetian in Venice itself. And Belgium copies the French points which she has not yet literally anexed, the points oi Argentan and Argentella, the glorious Alencon, and that marvellous “point Colbert,” which was successfully rer suscitated a few years ago at Bayeux. Efforts, however, are being made in France to recover some of the lost ground. The black, white and blond laces of Chantiuy still hold their own, though for two or three years past the first of these kinds has been out of fashion even for mourning. Auvergne supplies a lace known as "guipure de Cluny,” which yields, in nothing for delicacy of conception and perfection of execution to the finest laces of the Middle Ages, whose designs it chiefly fallows. And, curiously enough, the lace the manufacture of which in France enjoys the most prosperity Is itself an importation. This is the kind known as Irish guipure. From fifteen to twenty thousand workwomen are constantly employed in the Haute Saone, In the Vosges, Auvergne, Normandy and Brittany, and even as far as the Pyrenees, in the production of this lace, which, however, has not preserved many of the distinguishing qualities of the Belfast and Dublin originals. It is the lace which best adapts itself to the modem Style of dress, especially since the introduction of what is known here as “I’art moderns,” with its flowing lines and forms borrowed from flowers and plants. It is rich and sumptuous, as a rule, in its general effects, and harmonizes well with furs and velvets. It has also been largely introduced into the decoration of furniture, and has now become an important article of export from France. This isolated success, however, is only a pfttr consolation for the irreparable loss of most of the fine old points which were the pride of the French “grandes dames” in the “olden time long ago.”