[Illustration: PORTRAIT TOWARD CLOSE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY Showing collar ornamented with bobbin-made cluny] Some laces combine both needle and bobbin points. In the lovely Point d’Angleterre, increasingly difficult to obtain, bobbin-made flowers are united by an airy needle mesh. And the coarser Flanders lace has the same composition. [Illustration: ANNE OF AUSTRIA BY VAN DYCK About 1635, cluny lace made with bobbins] There are, besides, the familiar and often beautiful Applications, in which either needle or bobbin-made flowers are stitched, or _appliquéd_ on machine-made tulle, or, rarely, on a tulle made by hand. And various mixed laces, fantasies and embroidered tulles, as well as a whole company of cheaper tissues called lace, but which can not honestly claim the name, are trying always to crowd the true lace from the market. Naturally, the technique of any given kind of lace has undergone various transformations through the centuries. The Valenciennes mesh, for instance, first had round spaces, while square ones became more popular later. During a certain period the introduction of jours, or open-work effects, added an airy lightness to many laces. I had the pleasure recently of being with a friend of mine, the sister of the Belgian Consul-General at New York, Madame Kefer-Mali, who has devoted twenty years to the study of lace, when she first examined a lace collection lately presented to the Cinquantenaire Museum. With magnifying glass I followed from case to case, as she placed each specimen in its country and century, according to its design, its mesh, the manner of directing the threads, the relief of the flowers, the various stitches or the kind of thread employed. As I listened to her, it was easy to appreciate why lace may become an all-absorbing interest. Madame Kefer-Mali’s love for the lace itself is now subordinate to her passionate desire to secure justice for the lace-worker. As she takes a filmy length in her hand, her first thought is of the talent and patience of the girl or woman who made it, of the eye-straining, meticulous labor it represents, and of the pittance still paid her for her gift to the world of art. Madame Kefer-Mali has already won something for the _dentellière_ and she will continue to fight for more.