Volume 3 — TEXTILE FABRICS (continued 3)

Plate xxxi. represents a small portion of a very original and beautiful lace curtain, ten feet high, designed by Señor Aguado, and executed, partly by Señorita Pilar Huguet (who superintended the work throughout), and partly by seventeen of this lady's pupils, at the School of Arts and Industries, Toledo. Although it is a hackneyed trope to declare that the ornamentation of the Spanish-Moors, whether in ivory, wood or metal, stone or plaster, was “delicate enough to seem of lacework,” I believe this to be the first occasion when such intricate and graceful motives have been actually reproduced in lace. The result of the experiment has proved surprisingly effective. The design is Spanish-Arabic in its purest form, recalling various arabesques upon the walls of the Alhambra, and includes thirty-three medallions which constitute the principal decorative scheme, a hundred and forty-eight palms or alharacas, and the Arabic expression “God is all-powerful,” repeated sixty-six times. The centre of the curtain consists in all of four hundred and forty-eight pieces. The broad cenefa or bordering, which runs right round the whole, contains, in Arabic, the following inscription: “This curtain was begun in the curso (course or series of classes) of the year 1903–1904, and terminated in the curso following, (Art) School of Toledo.” The style adopted throughout is that of Brussels, known erroneously as English point, although upon a coarser scale than is considered to be proper to this lace, the ground being executed by the needle, or in point-work, and the rest by bobbins.

Plate xxxii. represents a covering for a fan, also executed by Señorita Huguet, and also in the Brussels style. The design is a combination of Mudejar motives, such as conventional foliage and geometrical bordering, with a Spanish scutcheon and the double-headed eagle of the Emperor Charles the Fifth.

At the present day, and largely owing to the initiative and the skilled tuition of Señor Salvi, excellent lace is manufactured at Madrid, including reproductions—which have been generally admired in Great Britain and elsewhere—of the finest point or bobbin work of Malines, Manchester, and Venice.

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