Reticella
Also: point coupé, Greek point
Reticella is an early needle lace in which threads are drawn out of linen and the open grid that remains is filled with geometric stitched designs.
Reticella, from the Italian for “little net”, is one of the first European laces. The maker pulls threads out of a piece of linen, leaving a grid of squares, then fills that grid with needle stitches in geometric patterns of squares, circles and stars.
When was it made?
Reticella belongs to the second half of the sixteenth century and stayed popular in Western Europe until about the middle of the seventeenth. Printed pattern books, among them Federico de Vinciolo’s of 1587, carried its designs from workshop to workshop. Its French name was point coupé, cut stitch, the same family as cutwork.
What came after it?
As more and more threads were drawn out, the linen became too weak to hold the work, and lacemakers began stitching without any fabric at all: punto in aria.
Sources
- Reticella. Textile Research Centre, Leiden
- Lacemaking pattern book. Folger Shakespeare Library, The Collation
- Punto in Aria. Wikipedia
See also
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