The rose point lace is often called "Innishmacsaint" from the village in the county of Fermanagh where the industry was transplanted on the death of the Rev. W. Maclean, of Tynan, by his daughter, who went to live with her sister, Mrs. George Tottenham, the wife of the rector. What was Tynan's misfortune proved a boon to Innishmacsaint, and it became the chief centre of the Irish rose point industry. Both the heavier and finer kinds are made there. As at Tynan, the art of making the lace has been learnt by the unravelling and close examination of Venetian point. As in English work, some of the Irish is spoilt by the woolly cotton thread. Foreign lace likewise in these days suffers from the same fault. The workmanship at the present time can be so good that every effort ought to be made to use only fine silky linen thread. In Ireland, where flax can be grown, there should be no excuse for employing any other. PLATE XCIII. [Illustration: IRISH. CROCHET LACE.--End of nineteenth century. Width of cuff, 5 in.; length of plastron, 12 in. Victoria and Albert Museum.] _To face page 446._ {447}CHAPTER XXXVI. BOBBIN NET AND MACHINE-MADE LACE. [Illustration: Fig. 162. ARMS OF THE FRAME-WORK KNITTERS' COMPANY.] BOBBIN NET. A sketch of the history of lace would be incomplete without a few words on bobbin net and machine lace, manufactures which have risen to so much importance both in England and France, and have placed lace within the reach of all classes of society. The subject has been so ably treated by Mr. Felkin that we refer our readers to his excellent work for its full history.[1237] This manufacture has its epochs:-- 1768. Net first made by machinery. 1809. Invention of bobbin net. 1837. The Jacquard system applied to the bobbin net machine. It has been already told how Barbara Uttmann made a plain thread net in Germany three centuries before any attempt was made to produce it by machinery.[1238] This invention is usually assigned to Hammond, a stocking framework knitter of Nottingham, who, examining one day the broad lace on his wife's cap, thought he could {448}apply his machine to the production of a similar article.[1239] His attempt so far succeeded that, by means of the stocking-frame invented the previous century,[1240] he produced, 1768, not lace, but a kind of knitting, of running loops or stitches, like that afterwards known as "Brussels ground." In 1777, Else and Harvey introduced at Nottingham the "pin" or point net machine, so named because made on sharp pins or points. "Point net" was afterwards improved, and the "barleycorn" introduced: "square" and "spider net" appear in succession.