Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/546

528 point de France for French point-lace was after a time dropped, and the different styles took the name of the towns at which they were made, as point d'Alençon and point d'Argentan.

"Point d'Alençon is made entirely by hand with a fine needle, upon a parchment pattern, in small pieces, afterward united by invisible seams. Each part is executed by a special workman. The design, engraved upon a copperplate, is printed off in divisions upon pieces of parchment ten inches long, and numbered in their order. Green parchment is now used, the worker being better able to detect faults in her work than on white. The pattern is next pricked upon the parchment, which is stitched to a piece of very coarse linen folded double. The outline of the pattern is then formed by two flat threads, which are guided along the edge by the thumb of the left hand, and fixed by minute stitches, passed with another thread and needle through the holes of the parchment. When the outline is finished, the work is given over to the maker of the ground, which is of two kinds, bride and réseau. The delicate réseau is worked backward and forward from the footing to the picot. For the flowers the worker supplies herself with a long needle and a fine thread; with these she works the button-hole stitch (point noué) from left to right, and, when arrived at the end of the flower, the thread is thrown back from the point of departure, and she works again from left to right over the thread. This gives a closeness and evenness to the work unequaled in any other point. Then follow the modes and other operations, so that it requires twelve different hands to complete it. The threads which unite linen, lace and parchment are then severed, and all the segments are united together by the head of the establishment. This is a work of the greatest nicety." From its solidity and durability Alençon has been called the Queen of Lace.

The manufacture of Alençon lace had greatly declined even before the Revolution, and was almost extinct when the patronage of Napoleon restored its prosperity. On his marriage with the Empress Marie Louise, among other orders executed for him was a bed furniture—tester, curtains, coverlet, and pillow-cases, of great beauty and richness. The pattern represented the arms of the empire surrounded by bees. Fig, 5 is a piece of the ground powdered with bees. The differences of shading seen in the ground show where the separate bits of lace were joined in the finishing. With the fall of Napoleon this manufacture again declined, and, when in 1840 attempts were made to revive it, the old workers, who had been specially trained to it, had passed away, and the new workers could not acquire the art of making the pure Alençon ground. But they made magnificent lace, and Napoleon III. was magnificent in his patronage of the revived manufacture. One flounce worth 22,000 francs, which had taken thirty-six women eighteen months to finish, appeared among the wedding-presents of Eugenie. In 1855 he presented the empress with a dress of