| Marthe La Perrière | |
| Birth Date: | 1605 |
| Birth Place: | Alençon, France |
| Death Date: | January 12, 1677 |
| Death Place: | Alençon, France |
| Citizenship: | France |
| Occupation: | Inventor |
| Spouse: | Michel Mercier |
| Parents: | Suzanne Hourdebourg and Jean Barbot |
Marthe La Perrière, born Barbot, was born c.1605 in Alençon, France, where she died on January 12, 1677. She is the inventor of the "point d'Alençon", or Alençon lace.[1]
Marthe Barbot grew up in Alençon with a sister, Suzanne. Her parents were Jean Barbot, a public prosecutor, and Suzanne Hourdebourg, from whom she likely got her lace-making skills. Marthe married Michel Mercier, sieur de La Perrière, in March 1633, bringing to the marriage 300 livres as earnings from her work with lace before their marriage.[2] They had a son. Her husband died after 12 years of marriage in 1645, and La Perrière remained a widow.[3]
In 1657 and 1658, La Perrière was ill and bedridden. However, she survived to make her most notable contribution - "point d'Alençon."
In around 1650, La Perrière introduced an Italian lace technique called points de Venise to Alençon. She fine-tuned her craftsmanship, and around 1660, invented "point de France" that later became "point d'Alençon."
This technique involved using vellum to create the pattern.[4]
In addition to the technique of lace-making, La Perrière also improved the production of lace-making through dividing tasks to different workers, using division of labor. By encouraging workers to specialize in a specific part of the lace-making process, La Perrière increased the quality of the outputted lace.[5]
In 1665, the local lace industry expanded rapidly, during the reign of Louis XIV by Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Colbert established a Royal Workshop in the town to produce lace in the Venetian style, including a monopoly on the production of point de France, which La Perrière had previously produced.
La Perrière continued to secretly make her lace throughout the ten-year monopoly.