Lace - Venice: A Travel Guide to Murano Glass, Carnival Masks, Gondolas, Lace, Paper and More - page 38

wore a fine lace collar that took lacemakers Lucretia and Vittoria Torre from the hospice
of the Zitelle on Giudecca some two years to produce. The commission created renewed
demand among French patrons, and in 1665, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the French Minister of
Finance, brought a group of Venetian lacemakers to train women in the French lacemaking
centers of Reims and Alençon.
Eventually, the rise of French and Flemish centers of production signaled the end of an
era for Venetian lace. By the end of the seventeenth century, stiff competition with these
northern rivals caused the Venetian lace industry to decline, even though Burano lace-
makers attempted to evolve along with fashions. French needle lace, point de France , rose
in popularity, and Venetian lacemakers began to borrow French motifs. When collars made
with Flemish bobbin lace became all the rage in the eighteenth century, Venetian lace-
makers emulated it with the needle and thread, resulting in a new type of lace that came to
be known as punto Burano .
As Venetian lace began to fall from favor, there were attempts to found a lacemaking
school on Burano to revive what was already seen as a waning tradition. However, by the
end of the eighteenth century, in the wake of the French and American Revolutions, people
no longer wanted to wear fashions that were associated with the reviled aristocracy.
HOW LACE CAST A WIDE NET
Venice was a capital of European bookmaking, and by the sixteenth century,
Venetian engravers and printers were producing lace pattern topics that were
widely disseminated across the continent. A significant percentage of the lace
pattern topics produced during the sixteenth century were made in Venice.
Based on the topics' dedications, we know that many of these topics were
destined for noble households occupied by women for whom formal educa-
tion and labor were not an option but for whom lacemaking was considered
an appropriate pursuit. Many of the pieces these women made—table linens,
for example—would have been destined to adorn the richly appointed house-
holds of the increasingly wealthy patrician and merchant classes of Renais-
sance Europe.
On Burano, however, lacemaking never truly died, as mothers continued to pass on the
tradition and the skill to their daughters and granddaughters. The art of Venetian lacemak-