Photo by A. Dryden from Salviati & Co.'s Collection.]
Point lace was held in high estimation in Portugal. There was no regular manufacture; it formed the amusement of the nuns and a few women who worked at their own houses. The sumptuary law of 1749 put an end to all luxury among the laity. Even those who exposed such wares as laces in the streets were ordered to quit the town.[311]
In 1729,[312] when Barbara, sister of Joseph, King of Portugal, at seventeen years of age, married Ferdinand, Prince of Spain, before quitting Lisbon, she repaired to the church of the Madre de Dios, on the Tagus, and there solemnly offered to the Virgin the jewels and a dress of the richest Portuguese point she had worn on the day of her espousals. This lace is described as most magnificent, and was for near a century exhibited under a glass case to admiring eyes, till, at the French occupation of the Peninsula, the Duchesse d'Abrantès, or one of the Imperial generals, is supposed to have made off with it.[313] When Lisbon arose from her ashes after the terrible earthquake of 1755, the Marquis de Pombal founded large manufactures of lace, which were carried on under his auspices. Wraxall, in his _Memoirs_, mentions having visited them.
The fine points in relief of Italy and Spain were the result of such time and labour as to render them too costly for moderate means. Hence they were extensively counterfeited. The principal scroll of the pattern was formed by means of tape or linen cut out and sewn on, and the reliefs were produced by cords fixed and overcast after the work was finished, thus substituting linen and cords for parts of { 106}the needlework. These counterfeit points were in France the occasion in 1669 of an ordinance.
The modern laces of Portugal and Madeira closely resemble those of Spain; the wider for flounces are of silk: much narrow lace is made after the fashion of Mechlin. Both Spain and Portugal enjoy a certain reputation for their imitation white Chantilly lace. A considerable quantity of coarse white lace, very effective in pattern, was formerly made in Lisbon and the environs;[314] this was chiefly exported, _viâ_ Cadiz, to South America. Both black and white are { 107}extensively made in the peninsula of Peniche, north of Lisbon (Estremadura Province), and employ the whole female population. Children at four years of age are sent to the lace school, and are seated at _almofadas_ (pillows) proportioned to their height, on which they soon learn to manage the bobbins, sometimes sixty dozen or more, with great dexterity.[315] The nuns of Odivales were, till the dissolution of the monasteries, famed for their lace fabricated of the fibres of the aloe.