st stage (just the past few years), when lace-making,
as almost every other art work in this country, is emerging from what,
from an artistic point of view, has been one long Slough of Despond.

[Illustration: COMTESSE D'ARTOIS, WIFE OF ONE OF LOUIS XIV.'S GRANDSONS,
WEARING FINE BRUSSELS LACE.]

VIII

THE MODERN BRUSSELS LACES AND MECHLIN

[Illustration: AN OLD PRINT OF "MARIE ANTOINETTE," SHOWING THE
SIMPLICITY OF ADORNMENT SHE AFFECTED.

"MECHLIN" LACE.]

VIII

THE MODERN BRUSSELS LACES AND MECHLIN

Modern Brussels, Point Gaze--Ghent--Duchesse Point--Mechlin
(the Queen of Laces).

Magnificent laces are still made at Brussels, but almost wholly on a
machine-made ground, the workers and merchants apparently finding the
old hand-made ground unprofitable. The machine-made ground is cheap, and
often of mixed flax and cotton instead of being of purely Flanders flax
thread, as in the old days. Both quality and colour suffer from this
admixture, the lace washing badly and wearing worse.

The most common lace is the Point Applique, in which the sprays, groups,
and borders on the design are made separately by hand on the pillow, and
are afterwards applied by tiny stitchings to the machine-made net. Some
qualities are better than others. In the better class the sprays are
appliqued to the net, which is then cut away and the interstices of the
design filled in with hand-made modes and brides, making a very pretty
and showy lace. The best lace made in Brussels now is

_Point Gaze_,

in which the finest modern lace is produced. Its chief characteristics
are its superb designs, repeating many of the fine Renaissance patterns,
its clear ground, and its use of shading in leaves and flowers, which,
while it adds much to the sumptuous effect, is possibly too
naturalistic. This lace is a mixture of hand and machine lace, the
ground being of the best machine net, the flowers and sprays frequently
needle made, the various fillings being composed of a variety of
designs, and the shading often being produced in the needle-darning as
in modern Ghent and Limerick. Point de Gaze is costly, but it has the
reputation of appearing "worth its money" to which few other laces of
the present day can aspire.

Other lace-making towns in Belgium and Flanders are--

_Ghent_,

which produces a fine machine-made net, worked and embroidered in exact
imitation of the earliest Limerick lace. So _real_ is this