CRAFT STORIES | BRUSSELS | EUROPE | TEXTILES

The Story of Lace

© The Fashion and Lace Museum, Brussels.

Lace, while technically not a fabric, is threaded through European history as dress, trim, embellishment and signifier of social or regal status. Traditionally crafted by women, it is distinguished by its disciplined construction from thread and air, a structure that carries both technical and cultural meaning. Despite its delicacy, lace has endured through centuries of changing fashion. Cabana explores its fascinating story with Catherine Gauthier, a curator at the Fashion & Lace Museum in Brussels.

Within the history of European textiles, lace holds an anomalous yet central place in fashion and interior design. It appears delicate and ornamental, but its construction marks a departure from the woven structures that defined cloth for centuries.

Lace emerged in the 16th century in northern Italy and the Low Countries, coinciding with the fashion for white linen across Europe that called for embellishment. As Catherine Gauthier, curator at the Fashion & Lace Museum in Brussels, notes: “Historians agree that lace appeared in the 16th century, simultaneously in Veneto and Flanders, using both needle and bobbin techniques. Both regions produced linen, the raw material for lace. In reality, like many technical innovations, lace responded to new needs, such as the decoration of white linen, which was then in fashion.”

Long before lace existed independently of cloth, textile workers experimented with subtraction, withdrawing threads from woven linen and reinforcing the remaining grid with needle-made bars, creating controlled apertures on the surface. Drawn thread work and cutwork introduced absence as an aesthetic device, allowing the void to become part of the design while remaining dependent on a woven foundation.

Marten and Oopjen are the only couple that Rembrandt painted life-size; here, the sitter, a law student, is draped in lace trim. © Joint acquisition by the Dutch State and the French Republic, collection Rijksmuseum/collection Musée du Louvre.

In late 15th-century Italy, Reticella (a form of cutwork) extended this approach by organising open spaces into geometric compartments, connected by elaborate bridges of thread. The decorative system began to assert itself over the cloth it supported. The decisive shift occurred when the woven ground was abandoned altogether.

The pattern was constructed from thread alone, suspended across space and held in equilibrium by tension. What sets handmade lace apart from every other historic textile is precisely that absence of warp and weft, a structural condition that, as Gauthier notes, means that lace (made by hand) is "not technically a fabric: there is no weft or warp thread. It is created from empty space, fullness and transparency”. Such construction demands both precision and patience.

The development of lace in both Veneto and Flanders reflected the economic and material conditions of those regions. Linen production was already well established, and embroidery traditions provided the technical foundation for innovation. Venetian needle lace evolved toward sculptural density, with raised surfaces and scrolling forms reflecting the exuberance of the Baroque. Flemish bobbin lace cultivated a more continuous dialogue between motif and ground. The identities of these regional traditions were preserved in their names. As Gauthier observes, “Lace names often refer to the names of towns where they were originally produced, each with its own technical characteristics.”

Steel bobbin lace sample in coarse thread, demonstrating a leaf-shaped motif, together with a fragment of lace in which this technique is applied. Anonymous, c. 1900–c. 1930. © The Rijksmuseum.

As lace moved from experiment to industry, its social function became more prominent in European courts and cities. “Like other decorative arts, lace serves a practical purpose: to accessorise clothing or linen. It is an outward sign of wealth and developed a vocabulary following artistic trends and fashions.” The scale and intricacy of collars, cuffs, and engageantes shifted with prevailing aesthetics.

Production was slow and labour-intensive, so lace had a clear economic status. “Like luxury fabrics, lace was expensive because it was slow to produce. It was worn by men, women, and children alike.” Quality was carefully distinguished, determined by “technical difficulty, design quality and thread fineness.” By the 18th century, Brussels lace led the highest tier, “competing with Alençon lace, while Paris lace was more affordable.” 

In 17th and 18th-century painted portraiture, lace serves as a compositional element. It frames faces and hands with intricate drapery, heightening contrast against darker fabrics and flesh tones. Its delicate edges catch light, something painters were careful to record. In domestic interiors, lace played a similar role at the window, filtering daylight and casting patterned shadows. The same balance between fullness and void that supports a collar in air allows a curtain panel to mediate light, showing how the architectural logic of lace extends beyond the body.

Lavinia Fontana "Portrait of Bianca degli Utili Maselli and Her Children," ca. 1604-5. Photograph by Randy Dodson, courtesy Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Behind the courtly lace seen in portraits lay labour that is only partly documented. “Information about working conditions under the ancien regime is incomplete and patchy,” says Gauthier. “We know lace makers’ working conditions and pay were poor, and their roles were specialised for productivity.” Production was often organised through distributed female domestic systems with subdivided tasks. Gauthier notes the lack of formal oversight: “There are no corporations (in Brussels) regulating the work of these women.”

Industrialisation changed the conditions of lace production, but did not diminish the conceptual breakthrough that lace represented. In Brussels, handmade motifs were applied to machine-made tulle to maintain artisanal prestige. This hybrid approach responded to mechanised competition, but proved temporary once Jacquard systems were refined. They could weave background and pattern simultaneously: “Mechanisation initially focused on copying the various lace techniques and their results, but then developed its own patterns and objects that set it apart from hand-made lace.”

© The Fashion and Lace Museum, Brussels.

Today, major institutions like New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and London's V&A Museum preserve lace as a technical milestone in European craftsmanship. Its evolution from Reticella grids to flowing floral grounds can be studied in detail. Although its reputation outside specialist circles has fluctuated, handmade lace is less valued on the market today than it was 20 years ago, according to Gauthier.

"Lace undoubtedly suffers from a distorted image," she says. "For the general public, it is often associated with women's handicrafts, whereas for a long time it was a fashion accessory, as historical portraits show.” However, the material’s intricate, complex structure continues to inspire admiration among close observers. “For today’s lace makers, it remains an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Collectors, craftspeople, artists and museum visitors alike cannot help but admire this mastery.”

Tracing lace back through its early experiments in withdrawn thread reveals not just a decorative development but a new way of thinking about textiles. “For museums, it remains an object that bears witness to the heritage and history of our societies, as well as to a particular skill,” summarises Gauthier.

Boué Soeurs (Sylvie and Jeanne Boué) robe de style. © Designmuseum Denmark / Photo: Pernille Klemp.