Pins were used to keep the newly worked threads in place as the work progressed below them. The precious threads were kept from tangling and knotting by winding them on weights which were made of lead, bone or wood. It doesn't require a great leap of imagination to see how these evolved to become the lace maker's pillow and bobbins. The precise timing of the transition to bobbin lace is not known. However, there is much evidence to support the claim that it was known in Venice and in Flanders by the period around 1520.
Portraits show it being worn, often as part of an embroidered item or as surface ornamentation.
Household accounts, merchant lists and estate listings from this period begin to show common reference to bobbin lace by one name or another. Santina Levey, in the introduction to the 1559 edition of Le Pompe , a reproduction of one of the earliest known pattern books for bobbin lace, states that bobbin lace almost certainly preceded the development of needle lace. She states that the prevalence of openwork, which gave rise to it, didn't gain impetus until later in the century. And indeed, it isn't until the period around the 1550's that portraits begin to show bobbin lace being used in conjunction with Reticella and Punto in Aria, an association which continued for several decades. One thing that surprises many who study the fashions of the Renaissance is the rapidity with which tastes and trends in fashion disseminated.