Lacemaking: Needle, Bobbin and Burano

Handmade lace builds an open patterned fabric from thread. The two principal methods are needle lace, made with a single thread and looping stitches, and bobbin lace, woven from many threads carried on bobbins. The open spaces are as much part of the design as the thread.^[1]

Needle lace builds one stitch after another into a fabric. Bobbin lace interweaves multiple threads in different combinations to form a pattern. The tools give the methods their names, but each can produce intricate motifs and grounds.^[2]

Venice was among the important centres of needle lace in the sixteenth century, with forms including “punto in aria”. Seventeenth-century Venetian “gros point” is a sculptural openwork built from linen thread with a needle. These examples trace different phases of the city’s lace history.^[2,3]