There are other variations of old Italian laces and embroideries which have not been mentioned here on account of space; either they are not often met with--certainly not outside Italy--or in some cases they appear to be only local names for the well-known sorts. {82}CHAPTER V. GREECE. "Encor pour vous poincts de Raguse Il est bon, crainte d'attentat, D'en vouloir purger un Estat; Les gens aussi fins que vous estes Ne sont bons que comme vous faites Pour ruiner les Estats."--_La Révolte des Passemens._ We have already spoken of Greece as the cradle of embroidery, and in those islands which escaped the domination of the Turks, the art still lingered on. Cyprus, to which in after times Venice gave a queen, was renowned for its gold, its stuffs, and its needlework. As early as 1393, in an inventory of the Dukes of Burgundy, we find noted "un petit pourpoint de satin noir, et est la gorgerette de maille d'argent de Chippre"--a collar of silver network.[250] The peasants now make a coarse thread lace, and some fine specimens have recently been made in white silk, which were exhibited in the Cyprus Court of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886, and are now in the possession of the Victoria and Albert Museum. In our own country, in 1423, we have a statute touching the deceitful works of the embroiderers of gold and of silver of Cipre, which shall be forfeited to the king.[251] But the secret of these cunning works became, after a time, known throughout Europe. Of cut-works or laces from Cyprus[252] and the islands of the Grecian seas, there is no mention; but we hear much of a certain point known to the commerce of the seventeenth century as that of Ragusa, which, after an ephemeral existence, disappears from the scene. Of Ragusa, {83}says Anderson, "her citizens, though a Popish state, are manufacturers to a man." Ragusa, comparatively near the Montenegrin sea-board, and north-western coast of Greece, was, in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, one of the principal Adriatic ports belonging to the Venetian Republic. Certain it is that this little republic, closely allied with the Italian branches of the House of Austria, served them with its navy, and in return received from them protection. The commerce of Ragusa consisted in bearing the products of the Greek islands and Turkey to Venice, Ancona, and the kingdom of Naples;[253] hence it might be inferred that the fine productions of the Greek convents were first introduced into Italy by the merchants of Dalmatia, and received on that account the denomination of points de Raguse. When Venice had herself learned the art, these cut-works and laces were no longer in demand; but the fabric still continued, and found favour in its native isles, chiefly for ecclesiastical purposes, the dress of the islanders, and for grave-clothes.