Chantilly lace

Chantilly lace is a very fine black bobbin lace characterised by its light, airy appearance, subtle shading and outlining threads. It was originally made in about 1840 in Chantilly, a small town in northern France. The town had been known for its blonde lace but as fashions changed the lacemakers started to use grenadine, a black silk thread, for their work. It became popular and by 1850 other towns in France and Belgium were also making Chantilly style lace. The delicacy of the fine black lace was shown to advantage draped over the large crinoline skirts of the time, but it was also used for parasols, gloves, lappets, veils, flounces and edgings. These large pieces were made by a team of lacemakers each working one section of the design, which would then be joined to the next part using a stitch known as point de raccroc. This technique is so subtle that it is usually extremely difficult to find the seam although it also forms a weak point in the lace which sometimes unravels. Using teams of workers in this way allowed the lacemakers to compete with the rapidly developing machine-made laces. The jury report from the 1851 Great Exhibition praises the design and workmanship of the handmade Chantilly lace exhibited but notes that machine lace imitations are ‘admirable’ and the ‘price is 75 per cent’. The Chantilly lacemakers survived by maintaining the quality and designs of their work and marketing their lace as a luxury product. However, at the 1889 Paris exhibition Chantilly lace was described as ‘more of an art than an industry’. By 1904 a report about the lace industry noted that Chantilly lace was no longer being made commercially.