By Ines Keane
There is no loom, no bobbins, nothing mechanical between the thread and the hand holding the needle. That’s the whole identity of punto in aria, “stitch in the air”: a needle lace worked over a paper pattern with no woven backing fabric, until what began as empty space is solid enough to hold its own shape.
Venetian lace has deep roots. A Venetian document from 1476 is cited among the early references, and the tradition is described as a Venetian invention of the fifteenth century. By the 1600s it was among the most prized possessions of European nobility. The heyday of Burano needle lace is usually put between about 1620 and 1710, when demand from noble and royal courts was at its height.
That demand did not hold. By some accounts punto in aria nearly vanished after 1797, when the Venetian Republic fell, and by the 1870s genuine punto in aria was close to a lost craft on the island that had once defined it. Then came a hard winter. In 1872 the lagoon froze, fishing families lost their income, and Countess Andriana Marcello organized a campaign to bring lacemaking back as a livelihood. She worked under the patronage of Queen Margherita of Savoy. The Scuola di Merletti, the lace school, opened that year on Piazza Galuppi.
One name matters here: Cencia Scarpariola, an elderly woman who still remembered how to make Burano’s stitch. She is reported to have taught the school’s first teacher, who then taught the pupils. The school grew from a handful of pupils to around 600 women by 1900.
The school itself did not last forever. It ran for roughly a century and closed in the 1970s. Its building now houses the Museo del Merletto, the lace museum, and a consortium formed in 1978 has worked to revive and promote Burano lace. Lacemakers sometimes demonstrate the stitches there for visitors. A genuine piece takes real time to make, which is worth remembering next to anything sold at a price that assumes it didn’t.