Palatial Lace Period Cotton Panels

Background

The word lace is derived from the Latin word lacques, meaning loop or snare. The term lace extends to any openwork fabric that is created by looping, twisting, or knotting of threads either by hand or machine. Lace may be made of any fiber—silk, linen, cotton, polyester, rayon, etc. Most hand-made laces today are made from linen, cotton, or silk. Machine-made laces are most frequently made from polyester (which performs well on industrial lace machines), cotton, or a combination of both of these fibers.

Lace includes areas of openwork juxtaposed with areas in which fabric or thread has been filled in, thus creating a textile which includes both an open mesh as well as opaque sections. The resulting fabric is airy and light, allowing light and air to filter in through the lace curtain, or permitting a colorful clothing fabric to peek out from behind lace used in clothing decoration.

The first use of lace curtains is unknown, but it is unlikely that anyone but the very wealthy could have afforded to have put handmade lace in their windows. It is more likely that they were used first in the mid-nineteenth century when machinemade laces made such curtains affordable. Furthermore, as heavy curtains are coupled with lighter curtains to shield the privacy of the Victorian house, lace curtains were the logical choice for these filmy barriers.

History

It is difficult for us to imagine the value that our ancestors placed on handmade lace. Always highly prized for its extraordinary beauty and intricate patterns, lace was considered quite a dear commodity until lace-making machines largely destroyed the market for handmade lace. Ancient Egyptian art depicts lace hairnets at about 2,000 B.C. Ancient Babylonian and Assyrian costumes include knotted ornamental braiding and knotting. Lacy fabrics were used nearly 2,000 years ago. By the Middle Ages, ecclesiastical clothing and textiles included lace, as well as exquisite and expensive clothing from the fifteenth century until the early nineteenth century. Particularly complicated and expensive, clothing laces were made by hand in the 1600s and 1700s. Laces made from fine Flemish linen were most highly prized and fortunes were spent on the acquisition of exquisite clothing laces. Sumptuary Laws, which restricted the wearing of gold, silver, jewels, an silk, boosted the popularity of lace, which was often made of plain white linen thread.

By the early nineteenth century, the British were successfully producing machine-made laces with the production of a knitted net. As the machine-made laces became more common, the hand lace-maker could not compete with the low prices of the new laces and the craft waned in popularity. Astonishingly, some old machine made lace imitated the handmade laces to a remarkable degree and sometimes can only be distinguished from the handmade lace by its relentless regularity of pattern (handmade laces incorporate human flaws).

This machine net could then be embroidered or appliqued by hand. By 1870, several other machine-made lace machines were in production, supplying Americans as well as Europeans with relatively inexpensive lace, including lace curtains. Nottingham lace curtains, with their characteristic square mesh ground, were imported into the United States by at least 1870. By the 1880s, it was affordable and considered a mark of good taste to purchase curtains for the Victorian parlor.

Today, lace curtains are popular once again. Still prized for their airy beauty, lace curtains permit light to filter through the window, while still providing privacy. Some lace curtain companies offer patterns that have been in machine production for 140 years.