Gil Dye has posted a pdf of her talk on early lace at the School of Historical Lace in London on her website.  While subscribers to Arachne have seen the link, I would encourage all to take a look at it.  There is a lot of good information on how the materials were constructed, but the photography is just as important.  You can really see how these laces were made.  See https://earlylace.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/gold-thread-to-gold-lace.pdf