If you are receiving this as a blind carbon copy, it is because it may be interesting to you. And, if you are a user of gmail, we know that aol emails to the Arachne server may not be reaching you.  It is reasonably certain the late Aurelia Loveman would be happy to share what she wrote in the 1987 19-page Museum Catalog for LACE, an exhibit at The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore Maryland, from October 4, 1988 to February 26, 1989. ISBN 0-911886-36-2. Loveman's wording and phrases are unique, and not for re-publication. This excerpt is under copyright, and is being shared for educational purposes only.  The Origins and Development of Handmade Lace  Lace is a textile whose identity depends entirely on the arrangement and proportion of the spaces between the threads that form the fabric. Textiles other than lace also feature spaces or actual holes in the work, but only as ornament, not fundament. Lace requires a preponderance of empty space over thread. However, this is not sufficient to define the textile; net, for instance, fulfills the condition of preponderant space, but is not lace. The term "lace" applies only when the holes and threads are perceived as forming figured patterns on ground.  Its unique structure would ensure lace a position of interest in the family of textiles but would not in itself confer the romantic attraction lace has for great numbers of people. This additional distinction derives from the fact that for hundreds of years lace was not simply a fashion accessory; it was a powerful economic, political, and artistic force in Europe.  The lace that can be bought today is imitation, machine-made lace. No matter how pretty it may be, and some of it is indeed pretty as well as expensive, it is only superficially like "real lace", as that used to be called, with awe. Real lace was made by hand, either with needle and thread or with bobbins. Needle laces (also called "points") are produced by a single continuous thread, as in embroidery, whereas bobbin laces are made by many threads all in use at the same time, as in weaving. The two techniques are profoundly different; indeed, a bobbin lacemaker rarely knows how to make needle lace, though often the two give surprisingly similar results.  Real lace is an all-but-vanished art form. It appeared in the sixteenth century and reached a pinnacle of perfection in the two centuries that followed. But aristocratic, expensive luxury that it was, lace fell victim to the French Revolution at the close of the eighteenth century, and never fully recovered. In France lace suddenly disappeared; ladies who previously would have sold almost anything to acquire it, now threw away their most exquisite pieces because lace, with its connotations of frivolity, privilege, and extravagance, became dangerous to own. When the danger subsided a decade later, fashions had changed. The delicate, clinging lawns and muslins that had become fashionable were incompatible with the bold and solid needle laces that had been popular for a hundred and fifty years. The long decline had begun, and it was soon accelerated by the appearance of machine-made lace. Although the nineteenth century saw repeated revivals and the declines of the lace industry, handmade lace was finally shouldered aside by the great textile machines, which could produce tolerable imitations of various types of lace - though never lace as "art". Real lace suffered sharp losses of design and markets. Fashions changed, and it went out of style; the phenomenon, if not the textile, vanished.  etc.  Jeri Ames in Maine USA Lace and Embroidery Resource Center   Â
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