In 1877, at the Exhibition of Sumptuary Arts which was held in Barcelona, a magnificent lace _toca_ was shown, which was affirmed by its possessor, Señor Parcerisa, to be the work of a Spaniard of the later part of the fifteenth century, and to have belonged to Isabella the Catholic. The cathedral of the same city owns three thread-lace albs of sixteenth century workmanship, and the South Kensington Museum other pieces of Spanish lace of a comparatively early date, probably made by nuns and subtracted from the convents during the stormy scenes of 1835. Dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we have a number of notices, though scrappy and inexplicit as a rule, relating to Spanish lace. One of the more complete and interesting is quoted by Riaño from the _Microcosmia y Gobierno Universal del Hombre Cristiano_ (Barcelona, 1592) of Father Marcos Antonio de Campos. "I will not be silent," wrote this austere _padre_, "and fail to mention the time lost these last years in the manufacture of _cadenetas_, a work of thread combined with gold and silver; this extravagance and excess reached such a point that 100 and 1000 ducats were spent in this work, in which, besides destroying the eyesight, wasting away the lives, and rendering consumptive the women who worked it, and preventing them from spending their time with more advantage to their souls, a few ounces of thread and years of time were wasted with so unsatisfactory a result. I ask myself, after this fancy shall have passed away, will the lady or gentleman find that the chemises that cost them 50 ducats, or the _basquiña_ (petticoat) that cost them 300, are worth half their price, which certainly is the case with other objects in which the material itself is worth more?" [Illustration: XXVII A SPANISH _MAJA_ (_A.D. 1777_)] Several of the other notices relating to the lace-makers' craft are from the pen of Countess d'Aulnoy. Of the Countess of Lemos this writer says: "Her hair was white, but she carefully concealed it beneath a black blonde"; and of another Spanish lady, Doña Leonor de Toledo, that she wore "a green velvet skirt trimmed with Spanish blonde." In the apartments of the young Princess of Monteleón the countess saw "a bed of green and gold damask, decorated with silver brocade and Spanish blonde. The sheets were fringed with English point-lace, extremely broad and handsome." The countess also says that the petticoats of the Spanish ladies were of English point-lace,[53] and that these ladies, when they visited each other, wore on their heads "a _toca_ of the richest English black point-lace, half a yard broad, forming points like the antique laces, beautiful to look at, and very dear. This head-dress suits them rarely." [53] Upon the other hand, a notice dated 1562 says that at that time Spanish-made black lace was largely used at the Court of England.