Artist: Alessandro Allori
Title: L'Annunciazone (The Annunciation)
Date: 1603
Nationality: Italian
Pillow: bolster, resting on cushion
Bobbins: Fairly stick-like. Only 4 pairs! (One pair is off to the right of the pillow - you can see the threads.) There may be more pairs pushed off the edge off the pillow to make room for this stitch, or fallen there as the pillow was put down.
Comments: You can see the lace, which seems complicated with so few bobbins! Alessandro Allori lived 1535-1607, so the painting is a very late one in his life, but still early for a lacemaker painting. Nuw Modelbuch (1561) seems to have 3 pairs, and a complicated pattern, and similar bobbins. Perhaps Alessandro Allori copied it! But the detail of how the thread is wound, with most of it at the bottom, but a bit at the top, is carefully done. There also aren't enough pins.
I have heard a suggestion that she is "tying off" which would explain lack of bobbins and lack of pins. There is also no pattern, so this is "free lace", done wthout a pattern.
Detail from painting
© Jo Edkins 2017 - return to lace index