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Etyka resuscytacji oraz problemy końca życia
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before it got into circulation with other published patterns.
It was not, however, till the seventeenth century that lace acquired a really independent character and
individuality, and M. Duplessis states that the production of the more noteworthy of early laces owes more to
the influence of men than to that of women. The reign of Louis XIV. witnessed the production of the most
stately needle-point laces, the transformation of Venetian point, and the growth of Points d'Alençon,
d'Argentan, de Bruxelles and d'Angleterre.
The king, aided by Colbert, determined to make France the centre, if possible, for lace manufacture, sending
for this purpose both to Venice and to Flanders for workers. The studio of the Gobelins supplied designs.
The dandies had their huge rabatos or bands falling from beneath the chin over the breast, and great prelates,
like Bossuet and Fénelon, wore their wonderful albs and rochets. It is related of a collar made at Venice for
Louis XIV. that the lace-workers, being unable to find sufficiently fine horse-hair, employed some of their
own hairs instead, in order to secure that marvellous delicacy of work which they aimed at producing.
A FASCINATING BOOK 150
Reviews
In the eighteenth century, Venice, finding that laces of lighter texture were sought after, set herself to make
rose-point; and at the Court of Louis XV. the choice of lace was regulated by still more elaborate etiquette.
The Revolution, however, ruined many of the manufactures. Alençon survived, and Napoleon encouraged it,
and endeavoured to renew the old rules about the necessity of wearing point-lace at Court receptions. A
wonderful piece of lace, powdered over with devices of bees, and costing 40,000 francs, was ordered. It was
begun for the Empress Josephine, but in the course of its making her escutcheons were replaced by those of
Marie Louise.
M. Lefébure concludes his interesting history by stating very clearly his attitude towards machine-made lace.
'It would be an obvious loss to art,' he says, 'should the making of lace by hand become extinct, for machinery,
as skilfully devised as possible, cannot do what the hand does.' It can give us 'the results of processes, not the
creations of artistic handicraft.' Art is absent 'where formal calculation pretends to supersede emotion'; it is
absent 'where no trace can be detected of intelligence guiding handicraft, whose hesitancies even possess
peculiar charm . . . cheapness is never commendable in respect of things which are not absolute necessities; it
lowers artistic standard.' These are admirable remarks, and with them we take leave of this fascinating book,
with its delightful illustrations, its charming anecdotes, its excellent advice. Mr. Alan Cole deserves the
thanks of all who are interested in art for bringing this book before the public in so attractive and so
inexpensive a form.
Embroidery and Lace: Their Manufacture and History from the Remotest Antiquity to the Present Day.
Translated and enlarged by Alan S. Cole from the French of Ernest Lefébure. (Grevel and Co.)
THE POETS' CORNER VIII
(Pall Mall Gazette, November 16, 1888.)
A few years ago some of our minor poets tried to set Science to music, to write sonnets on the survival of the
fittest and odes to Natural Selection. Socialism, and the sympathy with those who are unfit, seem, if we may
judge from Miss Nesbit's remarkable volume, to be the new theme of song, the fresh subject-matter for
poetry. The change has some advantages. Scientific laws are at once too abstract and too clearly defined, and
even the visible arts have not yet been able to translate into any symbols of beauty the discoveries of modern
science. At the Arts and Crafts Exhibition we find the cosmogony of Moses, not the cosmogony of Darwin.
To Mr. Burne-Jones Man is still a fallen angel, not a greater ape. Poverty and misery, upon the other hand,
are terribly concrete things. We find their incarnation everywhere and, as we are discussing a matter of art,
we have no hesitation in saying that they are not devoid of picturesqueness. The etcher or the painter finds in [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
