The Love of Lace

Nobles bankrupted themselves in pursuit of it. Young convent girls spent 60 hours just to make a square inch of it. The Victorians revived it, and today it still hasn't lost its romance and allure.

The Love of Lace celebrates this enchanting fabric from its beginnings as crude open cutwork in the 14th century to the height of lace mania-when over a quarter of Europe's workers were employed as lace makers-to laces today and how to use and care for them. Gracing Catherine Calvert's richly informative text are Cynthia Hart's exquisite compositions mixing antique laces with fresh flowers, silver heirlooms, bibelots, a faded photograph.

Fine enough to be drawn through a wedding band or heavily worked for a dining table, lace is the highest expression of the needleworker's art, a poem in thread-and The Love of Lace is universal.