Needle-point lace is an offspring of embroidery, and pillow-made lace is the highest artistic development of twisted and plaited threads. The foundation lines or threads of the pattern, various kinds of grounds, and the edging in needle-point lace, are usually worked over with a button-hole stitch in the ordinary course of making, while this distinguishing feature of needle-point lace is absent in the pillow-made varieties. The earliest forms of lace were known as “lacis,” or darned netting, and a species of embroidery called “cutwork.” One kind of cutwork consisted in cutting, vandyking, or scalloping the edges of collars, cuffs, or garments into various shapes, and overcasting the edges with the button-hole stitch; another kind was when an embroidered design was wrought on stretched network, and the pattern wrought in looped stitches with the needle. This was the transitional form between embroidery and lace work. “Lacis,” or darned netting, was worked in regulated stitches on a ground formed in squares, called “reseuil,” and sometimes it was formed of pieces of linen cut out and applied to the net. Ornamental open-work of cut linen and other material embroidered with silks of various colours, gold and silver threads, and woollen yarns, were made before the sixteenth century. All these varieties, though akin to lace work, required some kind of a foundation, but lace consists of a combination of threads alone, and has no foundation. Pattern-books were published in Venice of designs for “cutworks” and embroidery of all kinds as early as 1527, and later, in 1531, a book was published by Tagliente, giving the descriptions and methods employed for making the various stitches used in embroidery for hangings, costumes, and altar-cloths. Some of the geometric designs in this book have been used for point-lace patterns. The term used by the Italians, _punto in aere (aria)_, or “point in air,” is thought by Mr. Alan Cole to mean needle-point lace. The geometric design (Fig. 276) of Genoese point is something very much akin to the _punto in aria_ patterns. [Illustration: Fig. 276.—Genoese Point Lace.] At Antwerp and Cologne, and other cities in Germany and Flanders, imitations of the Venetian pattern-books were published, which served the lace makers of those countries for their patterns. The Flemish lace workers imitated to a great extent the Venetian patterns, and in later years those of the French. Lace is made in silk, cotton, flax, and sometimes in gold and silver thread, aloe-fibre, and hair. In the early kinds of lace the pattern was united by single threads covered with button-hole stitch, and edged with little loops, the flowers or pattern made of compact “clothing,” or woven threads (Fig. 277D), and the ground in its simplest variety by meshes made by plaiting (Fig. 277A), as in the Brussels and Honiton four-thread ground, or in other varieties, by simple twisting (Fig. 277B).