Chantilly lace

 

Fine, black, Chantilly bobbin lace was first made in about 1840 in the northern French town of Chantilly. It is a very fine, open lace, generally designed with floral patterns, which drapes beautifully. The lacemakers in Chantilly originally made blonde lace using white or cream thread, but as fashions changed they started using grenadine, a black, matt, silk thread, for their lace. The style became popular and other towns in France and Belgium began to use the black thread and make Chantilly style lace as well.

The main designs in Chantilly lace are worked using half stitch, often incorporating open filling stitches in the centres of motifs. The main design elements are outlined in a thicker black thread, or a group of black threads, and the net background is a light twisted Lille ground. The resulting lace has a delicate appearance and was used for veils, shawls, gloves, parasols, edgings and flounces.

Because Chantilly lace was time consuming to make, pieces were often made by a team of lacemakers each making a strip of the pattern. The sections were then sewn together using an almost invisible stitch called point de raccroc. Occasionally this stitching comes apart with time and the joining line between sections is revealed. By the early 1900s, competition from machine-made lace, and changes in fashion, meant that it was no longer commercially viable to make Chantilly lace by hand, but lace enthusiasts still make beautiful Chantilly lace for their own use.