Romanian Point Lace is a needle-made lace that combines tradition, creativity and skill, resulting in exquisite tape lace that captivated both creators and admirers alike.

Romanian Point Lace is also known as ‘Hungarian Point Lace’, ‘Macramé Lace’, ‘Macrame Crochet’, or simply ‘Romanian Lace’. The work ‘Point’ means ‘stitch’.

Romanian Point Lace is considered a ‘tape lace’. Unlike all other known tape laces using bobbin-made tape or machine-made tapes, Romanian Point Lace uses a hand-crocheted cord, also referred to as ‘braid’. To further distinquish it from all other tape lace, Romanian Point Lace features/uses not only needlelace stitches (based upon use of the Buttonhole Stitch) but also needle-weaving fillings and stitches.

Origins and History:

• Romanian point lace emerged in the early 20th century. It owes its existence to Romanian nuns who traveled to Egypt and taught this intricate technique to families of European descent.
• Interestingly, in England, it is referred to as ‘Hungarian Point Lace’ due to its origin in Transylvania, which was once part of eastern Hungary, now part of western Romania.
• The lace gained popularity in the United States through Romanian-born lace-makers Sylvia Murariu and Ioana Bodrojan. Murariu published books on the subject in 1966, while Bodrojan contributed to its recognition through interviews with PieceWork magazine.
• Since the 1980s, Aenne Burda’s Knitting and Needlecrafts magazine has featured articles about this technique, often calling it “macramé crochet.”

Creation Process:

• Romanian point lace involves a unique combination of crochet and stitching techniques.
• Instead of using pre-made tape (as seen in other tape laces like Battenberg lace), specially crocheted cords are employed. These three-dimensional cords have picot loops along the sides to which additional cords and stitches are connected to create filling stitches.
• The process includes basting hand-crocheted cord onto an intricate design and then filling the spaces between the cords with needle lace and needle weaving.
• If worked properly with appropriate filling stiches, joining bars, and the cords stitched together it is a stand-alone piece of lace when released from the founation pattern base, usually not requiring additional stiffening/starching.
• It is traditionally worked in white or ecru, but ‘Modern Romanian Point Lace’ (such as NeedleLaceArts designs) are incorporating color into the work.
• This lace does not utilize ‘knots’. Thus all the stitching thread ends are hidden inside the dimensional cord.
• When worked in one color only (eg. white or ecru) the lace can easily have a two-sided appearance with both sides being ‘frontside’. However, when worked with more than one color, greater attention must be used to ensure that both sides are equally beautiful (frontside vs. backside) and many times this just isn’t possible.
• Filling Stitches can be borrowed from many different needlelace types as well as drawn thread work.