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Legend whispers of a beautiful maiden on Burano, heartbroken and forlorn, her beloved far away in the lands of the Orient. Her only solace was a piece of seaweed, a love token from the young crusader. But the fragile beauty of the seaweed, day by day, threatened to fade, intensifying the girl's desire to preserve this singular, tangible memory of her love. From this poignant sorrow was born a luminous idea: to reproduce the delicate form of the seaweed on her fisherman father's net. She took the needle, and a miracle unfolded, giving birth to the first, enchanting Burano lace.

While legend paints a romantic origin, historically, lace appeared in Venice in the 15th century, with the earliest documented evidence found in a painting by Carpaccio (1456-1526). However, more precise accounts of the lace's origins point towards Magna Graecia and Asia Minor, lands from which it presumably arrived in the Venetian lagoon. Popular belief credits the Dogaresa Morosina Morosini, wife of Doge Marino Grimani, with popularizing its use towards the end of the 16th century. Yet, more than a century earlier, in 1473, King Richard III of England, on his coronation day, wore a magnificent "triumph of trimmings and lace" originating from the Venetian lagoon. The year 1537 is generally considered the beginning of the specific craftsmanship that made the island famous for its unmistakable Burano lace.

Outside the picturesque, brightly colored one or two-story houses of Burano, whose vibrant hues, as poet Diego Valeri beautifully described, "shine even against the sun, so that the waters of the canals, reflecting them, multiply their splendor," the women of Burano still gather in groups today. From their swift and magical hands emerge, as if by enchantment, those wonders of thread that, in distant times, adorned the garments of kings and queens, from Louis XIV, who commissioned a collar entirely made of white hair for his coronation, to the English Queen Mary Tudor and the French Queen Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589).