Handkerchiefs probably were invented with the first woven piece of cloth. One of the first references to such a cloth was by Catullus in 87-57 b.c.e. He chose the name "sudarium" which is a derivation of the Latin for "sweat."
The art of language helped us define the difference between napkins and handkerchiefs. In Italian the word fazzoletti means decorated and scented, and to be used by the hand to entertain and to protect one from the odors of the day. The fashion for handkerchiefs apparently started in Italy and worked its way to the French court.
The square cloth fixed the shape of handkerchiefs in 1685 by Louis XIV. "Snuffing cloths", were used by both women and men to protect clothing from tobacco stains and were not lace trimmed. The "pocket handkerchief" came into society the same time pockets did and that was in the early nineteenth century.
Portraits from the seventeenth century suggest that handkerchiefs were rare luxuries. Heavy linen handkerchief were decorated with picot edges, and often wide insert and edgings of Venise lace. Pattern books of the day offer designs for elaborately contrived corners, suggesting that the item was meant to be a "lace handkerchief", as opposed to a handkerchief with lace added as an afterthougth. Fine linen handkerchiefs are shown edged with Flanders bobbin lace, generally gathered to round the corners.
Spanish, French and Italian portraits suggest that handkerchiefs were used much as were fans to show off graceful hands with "flirty" gestures. These handkerchiefs, of course, were not available for measurement, but from the portraits, the proportion suggests that they were sixteen to twenty inches square.
Handkerchiefs of the Louis XIV era, the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, were immensely large and most likely twenty-four inches square. By the first quarter of the eighteenth century and the reign of Louis XV, they decreased to approximately eighteen inches in size. Now during the French Revolution and the later years of the 1700's, the sizes varied from eighteen to twenty-four inches. The "showy ones" were of finely embroidered in white and edged with narrow (inch-wide) Valenciennes or Mechlin lace.
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