Lacemaking was one of the early ‘women’s industries’, a means by which many women achieved a measure of financial independence. Before the French broke the Venetians’ control of the lacemaking industry Burano was one of the main centres of lacemaking in Europe.
After a ferry trip in which drunken men sparred – a display more of linguistic than physical abilty – the sense of space under a blue spring sky was a relief, an escape.
Burano is famous for lacemaking. Authentic Burano lace is no longer sold in the town's street stalls. Burano lace is now a luxury item, priced according to the time and skill that goes into its making.
Much of the lace sold in Burano shops is today made to order in countries where labour is cheap.
The visitor can still watch lace being stitched in the Scuola dei Merletti (School of Lacemaking) whose museum traces the history of lacemaking on Burano.
Burano’s lacemaking tradition evolved from the influence of Venetian imports of gold and coloured embroideries from the East. These inspired Venetian craftswomen who supplied the church cloths and vestments. They developed white embroidery to trim these items. Needlepoint lace developed from white embroidery.
The first lacemaking is, in spite of competing claims from orientalists, Francophiles and the numerous other voices clamouring for recognition of their area, not really known. Many forms of decorative fabric trim were in existence long before true lace evolved.
But it is interesting that the two regions of Europe where pictorial art flourished in conjunction with great trading skills, north Italy and Flanders, were where lace making first evolved as an important industry.
Lace came into being at the end of the fifteenth century and lace designs evolved from embroidery designs.
The first needle lacers were Venetian. In the 16th century Venetian women realized the monetary value of lace. It was not only nuns cloistered in convents who made lace. The women of Venice filled their palaces with relatives and servants and bales of thread from Salo on the shores of Lake Garda. They produced lace edgings by the thousands of metres to trim cuffs, collars, hems because, in the early days, lace was used as a trim.
These relatives and servants in turn began making lace at home and the skill spread to the islands.
Lace was a non-perishable product, that could be made in spare moments in the course of a woman’s day. It was not dependent on timing or the season or the weather.
Soon Murano, Chioggia, Burano and Pellestrina set up schools. The translation of the Italian ‘scuola’ to the English ‘schools’ is confusing. Italian ‘scuola’ were artisans’ guilds with strict rules and control over the products made under their auspices. The scuola controlled who worked in the guilds, who trained the artisans and how, who sold the products, to whom and for how much.
In the sixteenth century the women of Burano developed a fine, delicate form of lace known as “punto in aria” (“points in the air”) which transformed the island into one of the most prosperous lacemaking centres in Europe. Burano represented the standard for lacemaking in Europe until the end of the 18th century
During the 17th century women broke away from the strict rules that had grown up around lacemaking for the church and developed new styles.
But within the mercantile spirit lies the seeds of its own destruction. The Venetian Republic aspired to become the publishing capital of Europe and the Venetian dialect had been adopted as the official language of lace makers.
Printers, authors and designers of manuals on lace making emerged on the fondamentas, salizadas, calles, campos and cortes of Venice. Guides to lace making were published and became best sellers. Outside Italy these guides were copied and translated or written by expatriate Venetians.
Those wily French and Flemish lace makers soon were providing serious competition for the women of Burano. In order to encourage home-based industries the French imposed duty on imported lace and established their own factories for making all types of thread work. The Venetians responded with their own import duties and bans.
From the 18th century lace became a commercial enterprise. Venetian lace makers were paid large sums of money to go to France to work in the lace factories there. The Venetian Republic retaliated by introducing laws against the emigration of lace workers, as they had done previously with the glassworkers of Murano.
Nineteenth century male writers seemed to take particular pleasure in recounting stories about Burano’s women and children, beautiful yet reduced to aggressive begging.
An article published in the New York Times on 2nd July 1880 typifies this writing:
“[We] soon drew up in a bad smelling canal, before a dirty broad street or narrow marketplace, ... we pushed our way through the crowd of begging children to the lace school. We were accompanied all the way by one particular dirty little girl ... who begged persistently and dolefully. ...
In spite of being unable to locate finished pieces of lace to purchase the writer found at least one compensation for the trip to the island:
The Buranese women are among the prettiest we have seen in North Italy. When we went back to the gondola, we found the landing swarming with beggars. We were paddled away from Burano, followed along the sides of the canal by the troop of begging children among whom the frowsty-pated little girl was still prominent and quite unabashed by her utter want of success.”
It is almost certain that canals throughout the lagoon smelt badly in those days. They still are not that fragrant. One only wishes the ‘frowsty-pated little girl’ had flung great handfuls of mud from the stinking canal onto the backs of the mean-spirited but doubtless well scented retreating tourists.
Observer
11 May 2010
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Email: longline8@gmail.com
Note:
There is an enormous amount of information about lace and Burano on the web. There is also an almost equal amount of printed literature on the lace makers of Burano. Below is just a sample listing.
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Art of Modern Lace Making, by The Butterick Publishing Co. (Good for techniques and styles of lacemaking, but with dubious historical information)
Migration, Minorities, and Technology Transfer in Early Modern Europe* by Salvatore Ciriacono, University of Padua
New York Times Archive for 1880
The Sciama book is an excellent sociological study
Posts
Connections. Before I read your post I knew nothing about lace making. Then a distant cousin told me our great-great-grandpa was a lace maker in Nottingham, before he migrated to Australia to become a farmer in 1848. It seems Nottingham lace flourished as Burano declined, but I think my ancestor made the right mid-life career change. His wife was a silk winder, which is probably not as attractive a pursuit as it sounds.
ReplyDeleteHi Bryce, that is very interesting as apparently the cottage industries where the wife spun (or treated the yarn in some way)the yarn and the husband did the weaving or lacemaking etc was a common joint effort in England (and probably other countries). There is a theory that people from these areas developed a more independent and creative style of thinking because of their lifestyle. Lacemaking blossomed in all the trading countries once it became established and each area in each of these countries developed their own style of lacemaking. It is a fascinating way of looking at society from the grass roots. I agree with your comments about your ancestor's lifestyle changes, though.
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