A number of methods were employed in the production of the lace of that brilliant period, the simplest of which consisted of forming the design independently of the foundation. Threads spreading at even distances from a common center served as a framework for others which were united in squares, triangles, rosettes and other figures worked over with the buttonhole stitch, forming in some portions openwork, in others solid embroidery. This was, in fact, the first needle-made lace, and doubtless its origin is due to the Venetians. {3} [Illustration: Real Flemish Point.] [Illustration: Real Point de Venise.] {4} Through constant practice the art was developed to a very high state by the nuns, who taught their methods to the pupils of the convents, through whom the knowledge passed to the peasantry, and thus became an important industry. Perhaps, however, the development of the lace industry at this period was due more to the spread of the methods by which it was done--through books more than in any other manner--for it must be remembered that contemporaneously with the development of the industry the art of printing was in its first bloom. As one traces the growth of lacemaking from the earliest times he is impressed with the sharp advance made at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when laceworkers, having practically exhausted the designs possible by the then known methods, invented passementerie, which were known as passements. These, speaking broadly, much resemble the passementerie of to-day. They were made of stout linen thread in imitation of high relief work of the needle point, a thick thread being introduced to mark the salient points of the pattern. Thus the term guipure was applied to the thread lace with guipure reliefs, and the designation has since remained to all laces without grounds, in which the patterns are united by brides. In the beginning lace was made by two entirely distinct processes, in commenting upon which we can do no better than to quote the words of Cole, which are particularly lucid and concise. He says: "It is remarkable that lacemaking should have sprung up or been invented at about the same period of time by two entirely distinct processes without relationship or evolution between them, and that the people of the countries wherein either of the inventions was made were not only {5} unknown to each other, but apparently neither had any knowledge of the processes of lacemaking employed in the other country." One of these processes is the employment of the needle and the single thread, wherein the work was perfected mesh by mesh, each mesh being completed as the work progressed.