Lace at £l,000 a Yard.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue XXIV, 10 December 1904, Page 63

Lace at £l,000 a Yard.

There is a legend that the first lace was made by a girl who preserved a beautiful bit of seaweed by catching all the dainty parts of leaves and stems to a piece of linen with tine thread. The most expensive lace manufactured today is valued at £l9OO a yard. Such lace is made, however, in very smail quantities. It is in imitation of "old point,” and the thread used is of the finest filigree silver, the pattern being thickly encrusted with diamonds. The price of this trimming is about £2B an inch. The high prices which the fine laces command are, of course, occasion ed by the careful workmanship that it required in their manufacture. Besides, the thread is very expensive, an ounce of Flanders thread having frequently been sold at £4 a pound. But this quantity can be turned into lace worth £ 40. At a sale of lace which was held recently in Brussels a point d’applique lace flounce brought more than £2OO, while some old A'enetian point was sold for £2 an inch.