ARGENTAN LACE

French Point D'argentan, lace made at the French town of Argentan from the 17th century, when Louis XIV's minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert founded the lace industry. Characteristic of this lace is a net background consisting of a large hexagonal mesh, the six sides of which are worked over with buttonhole stitching. Flower patterns are similar to those of Alenon, 25 miles away, but are more solid-looking than their Alenon counterparts. Argentan lace making declined after the Revolution but was revived briefly in the 1870s.