Antique 18th Century Hollie Point Needle Lace Fragment Circa 1700s

A sweet and very ancient survivor from mid 1700s England. This small strip would have formed part of a baby's cap or baby's shirt. This needlelace technique sometimes called Holy Point which consists of rows of knotted button hole stitches over horizontal threads. The clever element is that the designs are of the negative or voided type, meaning that the pattern is created by the gaps or voids left in the design. Thought to have originated prior to the 1600s as a form of lace for the Catholic Church. By the 1700s it was mainly used in a domestic setting and in particular to decorate baby's clothing. However as it was such an exacting lace to make you will only find small items of baby clothing with Hollie Lace insertions. These special items of layette clothing would then be treasured and used through future generations of new borns. Designs that you will find in Hollie Point lace from this period are birds, flowers in urns, crowns and very occasionally initials/words.

Our small survivor is a small 3 inch tall by approx 1 1/8 inch wide. We see two flowers growing from a vase or urn. Said to depict the Lily of Annunciation.

Condition: Later housed in a modern little frame on black velvet and behind glass. It does have a few small age imperfections - stretched stitches etc as seen in the images. It can easily be removed from the rather crude frame, it is not stitched in situ. We have removed it from the frame for photographing it.

ITEM ID:13736