What is it that makes lace so different from other textiles? Perhaps the most striking feature is the part that is missing: for lace is full of holes! Holes that are formed as the lace is made, it has to be said, not simply cut out afterwards. Lace came into existence as a decorative edging for the clothes of the rich and was designed to replace embroidery in a manner that could with ease transform dresses to follow different styles of fashion. For unlike embroidery, lace could be unsewn from one material to be replaced on another. Many styles and techniques of lacemaking have been developed, almost all of them in the Belgian provinces, which thus deserves to be named ‘the cradle of lace’. And nowhere more so than the handsome city of Bruges, tucked away in the west of Belgium

Two main techniques are practised in the Flemish provinces of Belgium. The first, a needle lace, is still manufactured in the region of Aalst. It is called Renaissance or Brussels lace because it is largely sold in Brussels. The second type, the bobbin Lace, is the speciality of Bruges. This has become very expensive to make and is therefore no longer manufactured for commercial purposes.

Over the centuries Bruges became synonymous with lace. From the sixteenth century onwards, bobbin lace making was taught in private schools and orphanages. At the beginning of the eighteenth century three nuns from Antwerp founded a lace-making school in Bruges where girls could qualify in the art of lace making whilst receiving a religious education. Bruges lace is typified by its flower work and can be made with a thick or thin thread. The finest of the Bruges lace is made with between 300 and 700 bobbins.

Real lace has always been in fashion with the nobility and the bourgeoisie and, needless to say, it has always chiefly been the poor who made the lace. Because of the lack of industry in Bruges there were many unemployed, and women and children tried to earn some extra money by selling their lace to merchants. But since it was already being made mechanically one thousand times faster than even the most skilled women could make it by hand bobbin lace making became a leisure-time activity.

Bruge’s lace industry began back in 1717. This was a time of great poverty and distress and the bishop of Bruges, a certain Mgr. Van Susteran, thought that lacemaking would provide a modest income for the poorest families. The job of teaching this delicate art was given to the Congregation of Apostoline Sisters and such was its success that the lace school soon moved to larger premises. Even when Joseph II shut down 13 convents and religious houses in 1783, the Apostoline Sisters were allowed to continue with their teaching. By 1860 the students numbered more than 400 and the school had become famous for its speciality, ‘Binche’ or ‘Point de Fée’ – the Fairy Queen stitch.

The precise origin of lace remains difficult to locate both in time and place. For though ornamented open-work fabrics have been found in ancient Egyptian burial grounds, fully developed lace did not appear before the Renaissance and, although some of the simple techniques may have originated in the Near East, the art of lace is essentially a European achievement. And most authorities will agree that bobbin lace originated in Flanders.

Aristocrats from all over Europe consistently preferred to have themselves portrayed wearing costumes decorated with Italian, Flemish or French lace, which was evidently more prestigious and fashionable than the locally produced variants. Lace was made all over Europe, but it is safe to say that it was Italy, Flanders and France that raised its manufacture to the level of an art form. Much of the rural lace produced in those countries and the aristocratic lace produced elsewhere – especially Russian, Britain, Spain and Scandinavia – imitated their designs and techniques. At the same time, countries like Spain, Denmark, Britain and Russian also produced their own local lace varieties, which differed in terms of both technique and design. Some regions produced highly artful lace for limited periods, but for the most part other centres rarely transcended the level of handicraft.

Much handmade lace continued to be produced until the First World War, despite increasing competition from machine made types. A great deal of bobbin and needle lace was made in China for export to Europe and United States. But by 1920 the industry was dying everywhere. In the second half of the 20^th century, lace was still being made in Bruges, but chiefly as souvenirs.

Bobbin lace is worked with many threads; each wound onto a separate bobbin. The pattern (pricking) of pinholes is marked on stiff card and is fastened to a firm pillow packed with straw – although nowadays a piece of polystyrene is often used. The threads are fixed at the start of the pattern, although more can be added, or removed, as the work progresses. All the stitch involved two pairs of bobbins, i.e. four threads. Once the stitches have been made they are held in position with pins pushed through the pinholes in the pricking into the pillow. The pattern motifs, which can be outlined with gimp (a thicker thread), are usually worked in cloth stitch or half stitch but more elaborate filling stitches are also used. Bobbin laces can be worked in two different ways. In straight laces the motifs and ground of meshes or bars are made in one continuous process. In part laces the motifs are made separately and then joined with bars or a mesh ground. Once the lace is finished it is released from the pattern by removing the pins.

But by the 1930s lace was going out of fashion – and at the same time the market was being flooded the cheaper, mechanically produced lace – often imported. And in 1958, the Bruges’s Training College for Lacemaking Teachers founded in 1911, closed its doors for the last time. But the people of Bruges refused to allow the lacemaking tradition, which had once been the pride of Flanders, to disappear. Meetings were arranged between representatives of the Provincial Authority and the Municipality of Bruges and members of the lacemaking fraternity – out of which grew the idea, in 1972, of a Lace Centre. The 1970s saw a revival of interest for traditional handicrafts and many women picked up their bobbins once again. Today lacemaking is becoming progressively more ambitious. No longer are women satisfied with copying existing patterns and motifs – they prefer to design their own, many of them extremely sophisticated and complex.

Lace, the most refined of the textile arts, forms an undeniably important part of Europe’s cultural heritage. As Europe’s leading city of lace, Bruges staged a lace exhibition back in 1997. Lacemaking is a cottage industry which nowadays employs about one thousand lace workers, all of them ladies aged between fifty and ninety years of age. Hardly surprising, therefore, that few visitors leave Bruges without a souvenir of lace.