While researching early twentieth century lace recently I came across a series of advertisements for ‘Bohemian’ lace in the American publication Lace and Embroidery Review. This magazine was aimed at the trade buyer and informs them that a new lace line for Spring will be ‘Bohemian’ lace, which it claims is already very popular in Paris, particularly in champagne and ecru colours. Now, I appreciate that Bohemia is a well-known lace producing area, famous for both its traditional and contemporary lace, but the ‘Bohemian’ lace depicted in the magazine article is described as a tape lace made up of ‘two and sometimes three widths of linen tape twisted in arabesque form and very lightly bound together by brides’. It continues by suggesting that the designs resemble Moorish architecture and are also reminiscent of vermicelli patterns made from soutache braids. The dictionary tells me that soutache is a narrow, flat, ornamental braid used to trim garments and therefore is indeed very similar to the tapes used in tape lace.
The
advertorial tells us that these ‘Bohemian’ laces come in both handmade and
machine made varieties. Tape lace was popular at this time and many women’s
magazines included patterns to be made up at home. It was also easy to buy a
variety of different braids and threads from haberdashery shops. However the
laces in the images are all machine made varieties sold by the dealers Case and
Co. I don’t think it is surprising that the manufacturers have repurposed the
name Bohemian for their lace. Machine laces were often given the names of
handmade varieties of lace, for example, Valenciennes and Chantilly, to
describe the style of the lace. I think the price would have soon made it clear
whether the lace in question was hand or machine made.