Tea at Trianon: The Queen of Lace

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, December 18, 2022

The Queen of Lace

And let us remember that Zélie Martin, the mother of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, earned money for her daughters' dowries by making the point d'Alençon. From How Stuff Works:

To begin the tale of needle lace, we'll travel back to Venice, Italy, in the second half of the 16th century. According to Durand, it was then that Venetian embroiderers first gave up their embroidery support and created "punto in aria" (needlepoint in the air), which spread throughout Europe.

In 1665, King Louis XIV and Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the king's finance minister, founded the state-sponsored lace industry in France, explains Michele Majer, professor emerita of fashion and textile history at Bard Graduate Center and co-curator of the center's "Threads of Power" exhibition. Louis XIV and Colbert built the lace industry chiefly for economic reasons, as they were interested in limiting French nobles from spending their money on Italian and Flemish laces, which had been most desirable and fashionable.

Louis XIV and Colbert created the Manufacture des Points de France, and French cities with a strong lace-making tradition, such as Alençon, Aurillac and Sedan, welcomed royal workshops with a 10-year supervision by the crown. These workshops were the only ones allowed to produce various types of lace.

"French nobility were forbidden from wearing foreign lace and only state-accredited dealers were permitted to buy French lace," Amelia Soth wrote for JStor Daily.
The king and Colbert's strategy worked.

"By early 1670s, this type of French needle lace — Alençon — was already being admired for its high quality," Majer says. Referencing the book "Lace: A History" by Santina M. Levey, Majer explains that sumptuary laws also prohibited what commoners wore at that time, and fine fabrics like lace were restricted to royalty only. Prohibition only increased its value, and there was a thriving smuggling of it across borders. In 1675, they had achieved their goal of creating a French lace industry, Durand says. The king did not renew the monopoly, but he did not need to. Surpassing Venice, France had begun to set the tone in terms of fashion.

By the mid-17th century, Alençon was a remarkable lace center with skilled workers — more than 8,000 in the city and its surrounding areas — and the style of Alençon needle lace evolved according to the tastes of queens and empresses. (Read more.)