What Jacquard Lace Actually Means

There is a lot of lace on the market and very little agreement about what the word means. Two pieces can look similar in a photograph and be made in completely different ways.

Embroidered lace

The common method is to take a finished net or tulle, put it on a machine, and embroider a motif onto it. This is fast, it is cheap, and it works.

You can identify it by touch. Run a finger across the back and the stitching sits on top of the ground fabric as a separate layer. Hold it to the light and the mesh runs straight through, unaffected by the pattern. Pull gently at the edge of a motif and the outline can lift away from the ground.

Jacquard lace

Jacquard lace is woven. The pattern is formed as the fabric itself is made, by controlling individual warp threads on the loom so that the motif and the ground come into being together.

There is no layer to lift because there is no layer. Held to the light, the mesh density changes where the pattern changes, because the pattern is a change in the weave. The flowers have a slight relief to them, and the edges stay defined rather than blurring into the net.

It is considerably slower. On a Jacquard loom a metre of dense floral lace can take an order of magnitude longer than embroidering the same design onto ready-made tulle.

Why it matters for a veil

A chapel veil is worn close to the face, at the distance where the difference is most obvious. It is also handled constantly: put on, taken off, folded, put away. Embroidered motifs are exactly the thing that catches on a ring or an earring and lifts.

And a veil hangs. Because the pattern is part of the weave, jacquard lace drapes as a single fabric with a consistent weight, instead of a light net carrying heavier embroidered areas that pull it out of shape.

Where ours comes from

Our lace is woven by TEXMA, a Korean mill that has specialised in lace for thirty years. Both of our patterns come from them: Cecilia, the finer and denser of the two, and Rosaria, with a larger floral repeat.

If you want to see it for yourself, look closely at any of the detail photographs on a product page. The mesh behind the flowers is not the same mesh as the mesh between them. That is the whole difference.