The reason the Burano mesh is square looking has to do with the way it is made. This is a pillow-made needlelace, rather than the handheld laces of Alencon and Belgium. In Burano a thread is passed across the pattern and pulled tight. The twisted stitches are made into the row below with the tip of the needle inserted under the straight thread before twisting the thread pulling through. You can then do one or two overcast stitches on this straight base. It's exactly the opposite of Alencon where you make the twisted stitch first, then do the overcasting into the top of that row on the return which produces a more hexagonal mesh. I'll do an IOLI article on this in the near future, for the moment I'm concentrating the hand-held needlelaces.
I think your 'rosaline' piece might actually be Italian, it goes under the name of 'Punto di Milano'. Quality varies a lot, but you can usually tell examples because the motifs are made first, then put on a pillow and the 'Burano' mesh filling in the empty spaces. Old Flanders is a possibility especially given the shape of the mesh, but I think the floral terminations of a lot of the flowers look more Italian, a little on the Cantu model. I have a photo of a lacemaker working on 'Punto di Milano' with a caption saying it wasn't considered a very serious lace. Coarse examples were often made for table and bed linens. 'Old Flanders' is sort of a catch-all name for things that aren't quite Bruges, and aren't quite 18th c Flemish pieced laces. It is worth a study, but in my experience Old Flanders didn't do much with needle-made meshes. That was left up to the Italians, and there is some evidence that motifs could be made in Belgium and grounded in Italy. Laurie ____________________________________________________________________________ ___ Laurie Waters [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> 505-412-2873 - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
