I pick up oodles of books at my local library. While thumbing through A History of Hand-Made Lace by Emily Jackson (reprint from a 1900 edition), I found this dictionary section on Macramé Lace:
“This pillow lace is made in many of the convents of the Riviera, and is taught by the nuns to the cottagers, the children of either sex beginning their training in this handcraft very young. It is a survival of the Knotted Point Lace, which was much used in Spain and Italy during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for the ornamentation of Church vestments, and other ecclesiastical purposes, and is still worn by the peasants in the neighborhood in Rome. The name Macramé is of Arabic origin; in the great picture of the supper in the house of Simon the Cannanite, by Paul Veronese, the ends of the tablecloth are ornamented with Macramé lace. House linen richly ornamented with Macramé forms an important item in the trousseau of a Genoese lady. It was not until 1843 that the Macramé made on the Riviera was executed in any but the simplest designs; then a piece of old Macramé or knotted lace was brought by Baroness d’Asti to the Albergo de Poveri from Rome. Marie Picchetti one of the workers, carefully unpicked and examined the complicated knots, and managed to discover the art of producing the intricate effects. Since then many fresh patterns have been designed, and the results are exellent.”
