Bobbin Lace and Tombolo Lace: the Italian tradition of handmade lace

Tombolo lace is a lace made entirely by hand, created by interweaving, crossing and twisting threads of cotton, linen, silk or wool around pins fixed onto a cylindrical cushion, the tombolo, with the help of small wooden sticks called bobbins (fuselli).

Born in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century and developed across Milan, Genoa, Venice, Pisa and Naples, today it is a craft of excellence that 27 Italian municipalities have nominated as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. This guide explains what it is, how it is made, where it originated and how to recognise it.

What tombolo lace is

Lace, also called pizzo or trina, is a working of threads that produces a light, precious and ornate fabric. Its distinguishing feature is technical before it is aesthetic: it is not embroidered onto a pre-existing fabric, but is the construction of an interlacing in empty space. The thread becomes warp, weft and design all at once.

The tombolo gives the technique its name because it is the central tool of the work. It is a cushion of cylindrical shape (or with a spherical cap, as in Sansepolcro), traditionally stuffed with horsehair. In the Cantù dialect it is called ul cusin; it rests on a wooden trestle, ul pundin, and stays tilted thanks to a small board, the taparela, which gives the artisan the right angle.

Bobbins are small tapered sticks 4 to 16 cm long. The upper part winds and stores the thread; the lower part serves as a handle during the interlacing. Traditionally made of turned wood, there are variants in bone, ivory, glass, metal and plastic: bone bobbins have even been found in Etruscan tombs.

History of lace in Italy

Origins and the Renaissance

The origins of bobbin lace remain uncertain: the earliest manuscripts date to the 1400s, and Italy, Flanders, France and Germany all claim primacy. From the written evidence, however, it appears that Italy was the first centre from which the technique spread, propagating through Europe via Venetian merchants.

The art took hold towards the end of the fifteenth century in the great trading hubs: Milan, Genoa, Venice, Pisa and Naples. In the sixteenth century it was the Most Serene Republic of Venice that held European primacy, contested only by Flanders.

The role of the nuns

A decisive contribution came from the monasteries. Carlo Annoni, in his historical notes of 1835, traces the origin of the Cantù lace to the eleventh century, when Agnese di Borgogna, prioress of the Benedictine Cluniac monastery of Santa Maria in Cantù, is said to have introduced the practice. In Offida, on the other hand, it was the Benedictine nuns who arrived in 1655 who turned lace into a mass activity.

Venice, Burano and the "punto in aria"

In Venice the famous "punto in aria" (stitch in the air) developed, worked strictly with needle and thread alone. Its European prestige was immediate: at the coronation of Richard III of England (22 June 1483) Queen Anne wore a mantle adorned with Burano lace. In the early eighteenth century the Venetian workshop "Ranieri e Gabrielli" employed around 600 lacemakers. On 14 May 1643 Louis XIV ascended the throne wearing a Burano collar that had required two years of work.

Decline and revival

The fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797 triggered a long crisis; production shrank to a family activity. The turning point came in the winter of 1872, when Countess Andriana Marcello and the Honourable Paolo Fambri entrusted the elderly Vincenza Memo, known as Cencia Scarpariola, with the task of passing on the secrets of the art to a group of young pupils. Thus was born the Burano Lace School, which by 1875 already had more than 100 pupils.

The difference between tombolo and other types of lace

To grasp the value of tombolo lace, it must be distinguished from the other techniques, both handmade and industrial.

  • Needle lace (e.g. Burano): made with needle and thread alone, without any backing fabric, following a design fixed onto several superimposed sheets. The traditional process was carried out "in separate pieces": each lacemaker specialised in one phase — warping, net, guipure, relief, final joins — and the lace was then detached by cutting the warp threads.
  • Bobbin / tombolo lace: the interlacing takes place on a padded cushion with a perforated card and wooden bobbins. The threads are continuously crossed and twisted around pins that trace the shape of the lace.
  • Macramé: uses neither needle nor bobbins nor crochet hook. The fabric arises from the manual knotting of the threads. The term appears for the first time in a document of 1584. Compared with needle and bobbin laces, macramé is stiffer, heavier and more three-dimensional, traditionally used for fringes, linens and, today, monumental works of fibre art.
  • Industrial lace: produced on Jacquard, Textronic or Raschel looms with a tricot stitch, which yields a uniform, flat ground with no thickness. The only exception is the prized Leavers looms, born in England in the nineteenth century and today concentrated in Calais, capable of imitating the floating threads and reliefs of handmade work.

Two details almost always give away industrial production: the ground (flat tricot in the industrial version, three-dimensional interlacing in the handmade one) and the picot — the small decorative loops along the edges — a clean, well-defined little ring in handwork, and irregular "little teeth" in machine-made lace.

How it is made: technique and tools

Making a tombolo lace is a choreography of gestures repeated with discipline and rhythm. Everything arises from the relationship between a few tools, an extremely fine thread and very precise movements.

The essential tools

  • The tombolo: a cylindrical cushion stuffed with horsehair, set on a wooden trestle and kept tilted. In Sansepolcro a spherical-cap variant is used.
  • The bobbins: small tapered sticks of 4-16 cm, always used in pairs. For a simple piece a few pairs are enough; for complex designs as many as a hundred bobbins may be in use at once.
  • The pattern card: a card bearing the design of the lace, perforated along the lines and fixed to the tombolo with pins.
  • The pins (gügitt in the Cantù dialect): numerous, used to fix the pattern card and to hold the threads in place during the interlacing.
  • The threads: cotton, linen, silk, wool or synthetic fibres. For the most prized work, gold and silver threads, beads and sequins are also used. The finer the thread, the more delicate and precious the lace.

The two basic movements

All tombolo work reduces to two fundamental movements: the cross and the twist (girata). From their combination come the three classic bobbin-lace stitches: half stitch, cloth stitch (or linen stitch) and whole stitch. Small "weavings" can also be carried out to form little leaves, small squares, triangles and half-moons.

The techniques fall into two families:

  • Continuous-thread (Torchon, Flanders, Aquila tombolo): you need as many bobbins as the lace is wide; the work is a single piece with no going back.
  • Tape/braid lace (Cantù, Idrija, Gorizia): a few pairs suffice, which can "wander" across the whole design, composing even large-scale laces.

Step-by-step process

  1. Preparation: the thread is wound onto the upper part of the bobbins, loading them in pairs (typically starting from 5 or 6 pairs).
  2. Fixing: the perforated pattern card is fixed to the tombolo with pins; the starting threads are anchored to the first pins.
  3. Interlacing: the artisan moves the bobbins, performing combinations of cross and twist. As the work proceeds, new pins are inserted into the holes of the card to lock the shape (little leaves, connecting bars, lattices).
  4. Finishing: at the end a closing method is carried out that hides the knots and ensures the work holds.
  5. Removal: once the pins are taken out, the lace is detached from the pattern card, ready to be admired or applied to a fabric.

How long it takes

Time is the true currency of this art. For the Dior Cruise 2021 collection, the Apulian embroiderer Marilena Sparasci and her team worked up to 15 hours a day to create the lace butterflies, flowers and leaves that adorn dresses and headpieces. For a top-level piece, such as a large, finely embroidered Burano tablecloth, the work of ten lacemakers over three whole years may be required.

Regional schools

Each Italian region has developed its own grammar of lace. The technical differences reflect history, trade, monasteries and local resources.

Venice and Burano

In Burano the work is done strictly with the needle, using the famous punto in aria. Among the most famous stitches, many invented by the Burano women themselves, are the punto Venezia (which recalls the city's bridges), the punto Burano (an extremely fine net inspired by fishermen's nets), the punto rosa and the punto cappa. The prices of original Burano laces can reach thousands or tens of thousands of euros per piece. In the lagoon, by contrast, bobbin work is typical of Pellestrina.

Cantù (Lombardy)

Cantù lace, ul pizz in dialect, is worked with bobbins (i oss) using cotton, linen or silk threads. The tradition takes shape in the seventeenth century, when the nuns of Santa Maria and Sant'Ambrogio taught the use of bobbins to the girls of the common people: from there the Cantù tombolo schools were born. Today Cantù lace is renowned for the elegance of its wedding dresses.

Offida (Marche)

In Offida the art of lace boasts around 600 years of history. The oldest documented pieces date to the fifteenth century and adorn the albs of Saint James of the Marches and Saint John of Capistrano. The practice became widespread with the Benedictine nuns of 1655; in 1910 the first local school was founded.

L'Aquila and Abruzzo

The Aquila tombolo is a "continuous-thread" bobbin lace, born around the fifteenth century and characterised by being produced in a single piece, never returning to work already done. In Pescocostanzo, where the tradition is documented from 1547 (a work commissioned for Catherine de' Medici), the Tombolo Lace Museum operates today.

Other regions

  • Molise: in Isernia, from 1503, it was the Spanish Benedictine nuns of Santa Maria delle Monache who spread the art. Characteristic is the extremely fine ivory-coloured thread produced in Molise.
  • Calabria: a living tradition in Cropani, Tiriolo, Gerace and San Giovanni in Fiore, with work in very fine silk or linen.
  • Sicily: Mirabella Imbaccari is officially the "City of Tombolo" and since 1986 has hosted a permanent exhibition.
  • Aosta Valley: in Cogne the technique was imported from France in 1665 by Cluniac nuns.

Cultural and artistic value

Italian lace is not merely an artefact: it is memory, identity and art.

  • UNESCO nomination: in May 2019, 27 Italian municipalities signed a memorandum of understanding to nominate the art of Italian lace as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
  • Dedicated museums: the Burano Lace Museum, founded in 1981 in the premises of the historic Lace School, exhibits over 200 unique pieces from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Equally important are the Tombolo Lace Museum in Pescocostanzo, the Musec in Isernia and the permanent exhibition in Mirabella Imbaccari.
  • Haute couture: for the Dior Cruise 2021 collection presented in Piazza Duomo in Lecce, the Apulian artisans applied lace butterflies and flowers to the models' dresses and headpieces.
  • Recognition: on 23 September 2021 the master craftswoman Rita Bargna received in Venice the European Union Cultural Heritage Award for having directed two Cantù schools and collected over 3,000 pieces of lace, probably the largest private collection in Europe.

How to recognise an authentic lace

The market offers laces of every price and provenance. Recognising whether a product is handmade requires attention to a few but unmistakable indicators.

Signs of authenticity

  • Structure of the ground: the handmade piece is an interlacing in empty space, three-dimensional, with thickness. The industrial one (Jacquard, Textronic, Raschel) has a flat, uniform tricot-knit ground.
  • The picot on the edges: in handmade lace it forms a clean, well-defined little ring. In machine-made lace it appears as irregular "little teeth".
  • Fineness of the thread: the finer it is, the more delicate and precious the lace. The most prized pieces use very fine cotton, linen and silk, sometimes combined with gold and silver threads, beads and sequins.
  • Complexity of the design: unique works, in a single piece (as in the Aquila tombolo), or with dozens of bobbins in simultaneous motion, attest to a skill impossible to replicate by machine.

Care and conservation

Editorial note: the bibliographic sources consulted for this guide explore the history, technique and regional schools of lace in depth, but do not provide unequivocal operating instructions on washing, conserving or repairing the artefacts. The indications below reflect guidelines generally adopted for fine craft textiles and should be adapted case by case, preferably by consulting an expert textile restorer.

Washing

A handmade lace should be treated like a textile work of art. As a general principle, hand washing in cold or lukewarm water with a neutral soap specific for delicate fabrics is preferred, avoiding rubbing, bleach and spin cycles. Drying is done flat, on a clean cloth, away from direct heat sources and sunlight.

Conservation

To preserve colour and structure, laces should be kept away from direct light and humidity, wrapped in neutral (acid-free) tissue paper and laid flat or rolled without sharp folds. Avoid plastic bags and untreated woods.

Repair

Any tears, missing knots or torn threads should be entrusted to expert lacemakers or textile restorers: the intervention requires the same technique and the same thread as the original piece.

Contemporary artisans

The art of lace survives thanks to a network of masters, associations and schools. Rita Bargna, a Cantù master, has directed two schools and collected over 3,000 pieces of lace. Marilena Sparasci, from Apulia, created the tombolo appliqués for the Dior Cruise 2021 collection. Emanuele Bonaglia promotes the teaching of Cantù lace through blogs and video tutorials.

At Uno Emme we carry on this tradition with the creations of Gabriella Tassotti, whose collection of tombolo laces is available in our shop.

Discover Unoemme's tombolo lace creations

Our dedicated selection is born from the collaboration with Italian artisans who keep this tradition alive. Among the most representative pieces:

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Frequently asked questions

What is tombolo lace?

It is a handmade lace created by interweaving, crossing and twisting threads of linen, silk, cotton or wool around pins, with the help of wooden sticks called bobbins and a padded cylindrical cushion called a tombolo.

How long does it take to make lace?

It depends on the fineness of the thread and the complexity of the design. For a haute couture garment, the lacemakers for the Dior Cruise 2021 show worked up to 15 hours a day. For a large, finely embroidered Burano tablecloth, the work of ten lacemakers over three whole years may be required.

How do you wash lace?

As a general principle, hand washing in cold or lukewarm water with a mild neutral soap is recommended, without rubbing, spinning or bleaching. Dry flat, away from direct light and heat. For antique or particularly valuable pieces, always consult an expert textile restorer.

Where can you learn to make lace?

There are historic schools and active associations throughout Italy: the Burano Lace School, the Cantù schools, the Tombolo Lace School of Pescocostanzo, the Offida Lace, the Gorizia Lace School Foundation, the "De Fabula" Association in Genoa. Courses and video tutorials are available online, such as those by Emanuele Bonaglia.

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