The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-01-13
vENICEs LACE.

The Revival of Famous Old Indus-
 try.
 Several centuries ago Venice was the headquarters of the lace industry, and genuine old Venetian lace has world- wide reputation being almost priceless
 Most of the genuine old Venetian of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Is now in museums and the cabinets of a number of exquisite pieces. There is. a good deal among the old families of Italy also. It can be picked up occa-
 sionally in the smaller towns. I saw g piece yesterday that is offered for sale for $5,0O0, and another piece, much
 smaller, that can be had for $2,000. The former was made in the thirteenth cen- tury and the latter in the fourteenth. A Jewish merchant named Jerusem has a collection of examples made 800 years ago, much finer than anything that has been produced since.
 The revival of the lace industry has been rapid and popular, and is due largely to the influence of Queen Mar
 guerita of Italy and the Countess Mar cello of Venice. The latter, who comes from very old family, some years ago established a school in Venice for re- pairing old faces and making new in order to give employment to some poor. women of her acquaintance who hap- pened to have skill in that directions.
 She was so successful and found so many women and girls eager to learn the trade that, with the patronage or the queen, she extended her work and induced a committee of benevolent wo-. men to lend their influence and assist ance.
 The schools have grown until they are now seventeen in number, and give enl- ployment to between 4,0oO and 5000 Wo Wo-l men and girls. The instruction is tree, and the operatives are paid l franc
 day for their services. They work ten
 hours day and the school has the benefit of their labor, but after they have learned the business they are en- couraged to do the work at home and sell their lace by the piece to the local
 merchants. They are perhaps H0OO lacemakers now in northern Ialy as a result of the energy of Countess Mar cello. and lace Is becoming so plentiful l that the price is going down. The | schools will take orders for any kind of | lace to be delivered in any part of the world, and people in the United States can order 1t through Mir. Johnson, our
 consul at Venice. The Countess de Brazzi, formerly Miss | Cora Slocum of New Orleans, who rep
 resented Queen Marguerite at the worlds fair, has school of a similar l character at the Udine. al title town 1 just north of Venice, on the Austrian | border, where her husband has cas- l tle
 MT. Jerusem, the lace merchant of | yenice. of whom have already spoken,
 has already made a fortune in the busi- ness He formerly kept little shop on one of the back streets of Venice for the I sale of pins, tape needles and shoe
 string, and had woman to menu | pieces of lace that he picked up Tn ms purchases of secondhand goods l Through her he learned of the eHorts l of the Countess Marcello to revive the industry, and having faith in her en- l terprise and sound business Judgment of his own entered into contract to | buy the entire product or the ecHoui for term of twenty years. This mo-
 nopoly recently expired, but not until 1t had made him rich and famous. The lace schools are scattered all l over the city but the largest are at Bu- l rano, an island about two or three miles from Venice, where there are perhaps so,o0O people engaged in the manufac- ture of glass-table ware, beads. mo-
 safes, mirrors, chandeliers, ornaments of all sorts. which made Venice famous as early as the twelfth century, but the
 factories can now initiate it so closely
 that none but experts can distinguish the difference They tell me. too, that there is nothing so easy to initiate as I glass. The origin of the industry at
 Murano Is older than history.-Ws E.
 Curtis in Chicago Record Herald. l