---
title: "Point de neige"
description: "Point de neige is Venetian raised needle lace, in vogue from about 1650 to 1720, with small detached sprays on a ground of decorated bars."
type: Glossary
url: https://teazle.art/glossary/point-de-neige
published: 2026-10-19
updated: 2026-10-19
author: "The Teazle editors"
---

# Point de neige

*Point de neige is Venetian raised needle lace, in vogue from about 1650 to 1720, with small detached sprays on a ground of decorated bars.*

Point de neige (Italian *punto neve*) is a Venetian needle lace worked in raised relief, made in the later seventeenth century and the early eighteenth. It takes its name from its ground of decorated [bars](https://teazle.art/glossary/bride-lace.md), arranged in star shapes that Mrs. Bury Palliser compared to snowflakes. It belongs to the family of [rose point](https://teazle.art/glossary/rose-point.md), but on a smaller, lighter scale.

## How is it different from gros point?

Margaret Jourdain, writing for collectors in 1908, divides the raised points of Venice into three kinds: gros point de Venise, point de neige and coraline point. She dates gros point to the years from about 1620 to 1650. It was made to lie flat, with heavy, continuous scrolls, simple bars and a straight edge.

Point de neige she places from about 1650 to 1720. It was made to hang in folds or to be gathered. The designs are smaller, the scrolls are no longer continuous, and the pattern breaks into detached sprays of slender leaves and tiny flowers covered with flying loops. The ground of bars becomes a more important part of the effect. Jourdain thought French influence probably explains the change.

## Why does the name matter?

It fixes a date range and a look, which helps with pieces that were later altered. The Metropolitan Museum of Art catalogs a collar of linen needle lace as point de neige (08.180.701) and dates its elements to the late seventeenth and late nineteenth centuries. Mrs. F. Nevill Jackson called point neige, in 1900, the most delicate needle-point in double and triple relief.


## Sources

1. [Old Lace: A Handbook for Collectors (1908), Margaret Jourdain](https://archive.org/details/oldlacehacol00jourdain). Archive.org scan of the 1908 edition
2. [History of Lace (rev. ed. 1902), Mrs. Bury Palliser](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57009). Project Gutenberg, ebook 57009
3. [A History of Hand-Made Lace (1900), Mrs. F. Nevill Jackson](https://archive.org/details/historyofhandmad00jackrich). Archive.org scan of the 1900 edition
4. [Collar, late 17th and late 19th century elements, 08.180.701](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/215050). The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Canonical: https://teazle.art/glossary/point-de-neige