wing of threads in linen fabrics, then dividing
the existing threads into strands, and working over them, in various
fanciful designs, either with a buttonhole stitch or simply a wrapping
stitch. Exactly this method is used at the present day, and is known
as hem-stitching and fine-drawing. A later development suggested,
apparently, cutting away of some of the threads, their place being
supplied with others placed angularly or in circles. Many delightful
examples of the work are to be seen in our Old English samplers of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and even so recently as thirty
years ago specimens of this primitive and early lace-making were to be
seen in the quaint "smock-frock" of the English farm labourer, a garment
which, though discarded by the wearer in favour of the shoddy products
of the Wakefield looms, is now deemed worthy of a place in the
collector's museum.

It required little effort of fancy and skill, by the simple process of
evolution and survival of the fittest, to expand this plan of cutting
away threads and replacing them with others to doing away _entirely_
with existing and attached threads, and supplying the whole with a
pattern of threads laid down on some geometric fashion on a backing of
parchment, _working over_ and _connecting_ the patterns together, and
afterwards liberating the entire work from the parchment, thereby making
what was known at the time as "punto in aria," or working with the
needle-point in the air, literally "_out of nothing_."

Strange as this may appear, this was the origin, in the fifteenth
century, of the whole wonderful fabric which afterwards became known as
"Point lace," which altered and even revolutionised dress, made life
itself beautiful, and supplied the women of Europe with a livelihood
gained in an easy, artistic, and delightful manner. It also, however,
led to ruinous expenditure in every country, at times requiring special
edicts to restrain its extravagance, and even the revival of the old
Sumptuary laws to repress it.

The earliest known lace, and by far the most popular with all classes,
was "Reticella," which was the first kind evolved on the "punto in aria"
principle. Until the discovery of an easy and simple way of decorating
the linen ruffs and cuffs of the period these had been quite plain, as
many contemporary portraits show. Afterwards the fashion of trimming
garments of all descriptions with the pointed wiry edges of Venice
became a