Doily designs inspired by gothic architecture

 

I found these designs for doilies inspired by gothic architecture in a small leaflet produced by Coats Sewing Group in 1964. The introduction explains that ‘in this book the designer has turned to gothic architecture with a fresh eye and discovered, in the soaring pointed arches and the delicate stone tracery, a wonderful inspiration for crochet’. Unfortunately the designer is not named but the booklet suggests that one person designed all ten designs.

This doily with the pointed edges was inspired by the ceiling of Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey. You can see from the detail above that it features the portcullis and Tudor rose. These were both images used by Henry VII to validate his tenuous claim to the English throne, which he had achieved by conquest.

The portcullis was the emblem of his mother’s family, the Beauforts, through which he was related to royalty, and the Tudor rose was a symbol of his union with Elizabeth of York whose family had a stronger claim to the throne. The fleur de lis emblem you can see in the photograph of the ceiling was part of the Elizabeth’s coat of arms, but I think the crochet designer probably decided it was too difficult to reproduce in crochet and did not include it.

The Church of San Michele in Florence was the inspiration for another doily. In particular the star design at the top of the elaborately carved marble tabernacle. In the same way as before, the designer has not reproduced it exactly but has taken inspiration from it to produce a six-sided doily reflecting the six-pointed star.

The instructions for the patterns suggest that the correct tension is important in order to reproduce each design accurately and suggests altering the size of the crochet hook if adjustments are required. Detailed instructions for laundering and pinning out the crochet are also given. These include, accurately drawing the shape of the finished doily in pencil on to plain paper, using a ruler and set squares for squares and rectangles and compasses for circles. Then using rustless pins to pin out the lace, making sure that all scallops are the same size and all flower petals are pulled into the correct position. This all sounds a lot of work, but these gothic designs do rely on the shapes being accurate and reflecting the original architecture. In fact the leaflet does suggest how to starch them if you wanted them to be slightly stiffened to retain their shape.

Shaping sixteenth-century lace ruffs

 

Shaping lace ruffs was a skilled profession in the sixteenth century. It is said that Queen Elizabeth of England had her ruffs starched, shaped and set by the Dutch wife of one of her coachmen. Starch, which provided the stiffening for ruffs, had been introduced to England from Flanders in 1564. The shaping was achieved by using setting sticks, poking sticks and struts, which were held in the hand or in a holder, so they stuck out horizontally, and the frills of the ruffs were formed over them.

Ruffs were made from long lengths of fine fabric, generally lawn or cambric, sewn together to make a long piece and then gathered to form cartridge pleats and attached to a neckband. Without the addition of starch or shaping the folds of the ruff were soft and merely formed a frill around the neck. However, a skilled laundress could transform the ruff into a three-dimensional form, with the aid of starch and poking sticks. She could also make different shaped frills from the same basic form so that one ruff could look quite different each time she shaped it.

This image of monkeys ‘aping’ the fashion for ruffs shows the processes required to set a ruff. It was first washed, then covered in starch, taking care not to clog the holes of the lace with the liquid starch, and then dried. The starch was generally made from grains such as wheat or bran or from roots and could be coloured using plant dyes. Once the laundress was ready to set the ruff it was lightly dampened and ironed flat. It was then shaped using the poking sticks ensuring that the frills were all of the same size and the amount of fabric was divided equally between the sets. Once the shape had been achieved the ruff was ironed to fix the frills by pushing heated poking sticks into each set. To produce a ruff with a figure of eight appearance was more complicated and required the use of small pins to link adjacent sections together.

As you can see from the engraving of the monkeys starching ruffs, the fashion attracted much satire. It was a very impractical fashion, for example Queen Margot at the French court needed a spoon over 60 cm long to eat her soup because her ruff was so large. How she managed to eat soup using such a long spoon and negotiating a wide ruff I have no idea – I think I would have chosen something else to eat! However, fashion is often extravagant, fabulous and over the top and no fashions were more so than lace ruffs.

Venetian gros point needle lace

 

Venetian gros point is an Italian type of needle lace made in the seventeenth century that is characterised by three-dimensional lace scrolls in a baroque design. It was popular from about 1650 to 1660 and was made in fine thread, entirely of buttonhole stitches. First the outline of the motif was couched onto a background fabric and the base layer of filling stitches worked within the couched outlines to produce a flat piece of lace. The filling stitches were made by working one row of buttonhole stitches into the row above leaving spaces where required to make the holes in the patterns. Once the filling stitches are completed the thicker raised edges are worked. This is done by couching additional threads over the couched outlines and then securing them to the lace with closely worked buttonhole stitches. Much of the skill of the designer depends on raising some areas only slightly and padding others quite fully, to give contrast and a three-dimensional appearance to the finished lace.

As the buttonholing over the raised cordonnette progresses loops of buttonhole stitches or picots can also be added into the edge of the work. Once all the raised areas have been completed, separate rings of needle lace called couronnes can also be added, which can also be decorated with loops and picots. In fact the more decorated all the elements are the better! Finally the finished lace motif can be removed from its backing. This type of lace was made by a team of lacemakers each making separate motifs or specialising in different aspects of the work, depending on the structure of the workshop, with the beginners making the simple couronnes. Once the motifs were complete it would be the job of a specialised lacemaker to join them together to form the complete design. This could be done by sewing them directly on to one another or by joining them with thin lines or bars of buttonhole stitching.

Venetian gros point is a heavy lace that is seen to best advantage when it is laid flat so it was ideal for edgings, flounces and church vestments. This image shows part of a lace border dated from about 1660 which could have been used round a skirt, cuffs or church robe. When Venetian gros point was used as a collar it was spread flat over the shoulders and could also be used around the wrists of a garment or as a panel on each side of a neck opening.

By 1670 cravats had become fashionable for menswear. They comprised a long strip of linen with lace attached at each end, which was twisted round the neck and tied at the front, allowing the lace ends to be displayed below the chin and over the coat, as you can see in this painting from 1685 showing William III when he was Prince of Orange. The Prince has knotted his cravat, but an alternative style was to tie the ends together with a separate ribbon, passing round all the material and forming a bow at the front. The skill and time required to make Venetian gros point meant it was expensive. For example James II of England spent about £36 on a Venetian cravat for his coronation in 1685, which would cost the equivalent of over £4000 today. However, considering the work involved in making the lace, I really don’t think this is too high a price!

Bobbin Brown of Cranfield and his lace bobbins

William Brown was the eldest of ten children and was born in Cranfield in Bedfordshire in 1793. He described himself as a bobbin maker in the census returns of 1841, 1851 and 1861. This was unusual as most bobbin makers were not so specific and described themselves as woodturners or labourers. However, he was called Bobbin Brown by the local people so presumably his greatest trade was in lace bobbins. He had six children with his first wife, Sarah, but sadly she died in 1847 and in the 1851 census William is described as living with his unmarried daughter Mary. However, in 1857, at the age of 64, he married again, this time to a 44-year-old lacemaker called Hannah and they had two sons, one of whom it is thought later became a bobbin maker.

William’s bobbins are characterised by a small bulbous head with a slight dome at the top and a shallow pointed tail end. He made a large quantity of bobbins many of them inscribed with names and messages. His lettering is always coloured red and the letters are very neat although his spelling is sometimes incorrect, which may indicate he was not very literate. The bobbins in the image at the top of this post read from left to right ‘Sarah Ions my D[ear] Mother’, ‘My dear Father’, ‘George Burt my brother Jan 1856’ and ‘Love don’t forsake me’. Interestingly the bobbin with the spiral inscription follows a left hand spiral indicating that William was left handed. It also does not feature the characteristic domed head but I think the rest of the bobbin is so obviously William’s work that the head is a replacement, probably made by another bobbin maker to replace one that became chipped or broken.

The bobbins with single names in the next image read from left to right Mary, Dan[i]el, James, John. These are all common names of the time and William would probably have had a stock of them for sale in contrast to the longer and more complicated messages above which would have been specifically made to commission. The name bobbins also have very similar patterns of coloured dots at the back, which you can see in the image above, using his trademark colours of red, black and yellow.

William also made many bobbins inlaid with pewter. They were made by incising the bone or wood of the shank and then pouring molten pewter into the channels. They are called tigers, leopards or butterflies depending on the shapes of the pewter. All the bobbins in the image are tigers, because they have stripes of pewter, but the one on the right also includes  the name Joseph and a V shape called a butterfly. A leopard bobbin would include pewter circles. Over the years, the pewter used by several other bobbin makers has corroded and fallen out of the grooves in the bobbins, but William used a type of pewter with a low tin content which has survived well and gives a lovely silvery shine to them. William made a huge number of beautiful bobbins through his life, many of which survive today in excellent condition and are still used by contemporary lacemakers so I feel his nickname of Bobbin Brown is well deserved.

Lace fashions in 1919

This image of two elegant women at the races in Paris shows wide bands of lace being worn at the neck, waist and knees. The woman on the right also has a parasol edged with a  fringe of lace. This wide lace with a bold abstract pattern was probably Torchon or heavy Cluny lace or it could have been Swiss embroidered lace, all of which were fashionable at the time. An article in the American magazine The Lace and Embroidery Review for the year 1919 reports that many types of lace were fashionable in Europe and production had begun to increase following the ending of the First World War at the end of the previous year. In particular, reporters had found beautiful handmade applique, duchesse and rose point laces for sale in Belgium, of the style shown below.

   

 The London correspondent of the Review reported an increase in the use of lace in fashion especially in evening wear, as flounces on straight skirts and as short cap sleeves. However, much of this British lace was heirloom lace that women already owned rather than new purchases. The reporter noted that wearing lace had been considered slightly old fashioned but ‘Today laces make the elderly look young and the young even more youthful.’ They also noted that lace was quite scarce at the time so was also sought after because of its rarity value.

Reports from America suggested that one of the best selling laces was Valenciennes, but in Europe laces such as Chantilly, filets, venises and vals (Valenciennes) were also selling well. The sales of good quality laces, like the Chantilly lace in the image, were being buoyed up by the number of weddings and parties being celebrated following the armistice at the end of the war. The reporter noted that frills of lace, net and fabric were popular and women wanted lace frills on accessories, such as hats, handkerchiefs and veils, as well as on dresses and blouses. It seems that buyers and designers were keen to embellish clothing with lace and frills after the war years, but this fashion for lace was short lived as more simple designs prevailed during the 1920s.

The influence of the toile de Jouy style on lace curtain design

 

Toile de Jouy printed fabrics became popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They are printed in one colour and depict scenes from classical mythology or other narrative themes. Many include idealised country views including shepherdesses, Grecian temples, and country pursuits as well as animals and birds. Many companies printed this style of fabric but the factory at Jouy, near Paris, that was established by Jean-Christophe Oberkampf in 1760 became the most famous and gave its name to the style of design. The fabrics from Jouy were a particular favourite of Marie Antoinette. In fact the piece of a bed valance shown below was designed by Jean-Baptiste Huet for the Oberkampf factory, commemorating the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. It even depicts her and was exhibited at the recent Marie Antoinette exhibition at the V&A in London.

Toile de Jouy style designs have been popular ever since their introduction and the fabrics were used for clothing as well as furnishings. It is not surprising then to find similar bucolic designs used in the production of lace curtains. In the collection of Nottingham Museums and Galleries I discovered several toile de Jouy style curtain samples in the archive of the Ashworth company. These samples were manufactured in the early 20th century so were a product of the revival of interest in toile de Jouy designs that occurred at that time.

This is a good example of the style, with a Grecian temple in the background as well as animals and foliage. In the foreground we can see various musical instruments and a girl on a swing with an admirer, in the style of a Fragonard painting, whose work was popular at the time of the first toile de Jouy designs.

This sample shows a detail of another typical design, depicting girls dancing in the countryside, to music being played by other women with pipes and tambourines.

Another good example of the toile de Jouy bucolic style is this very fine piece with idealised country figures, animals and the ruins of a Greek temple in the background. A detail of this sample is at the top of the blog and shows the fineness of the lace. The delicate shading gives a three-dimensional appearance to the animals and the figures. You can almost feel the skin of the animals and see all the folds and creases of the clothes the man and woman are wearing. I love the little details too, including the way she is spinning and the dog is licking its hind leg. Lace designers find their inspiration from many sources and the toile de Jouy style is just one of the many styles that they have used over the years.

A draught for the Nottingham lace curtain machine

 

This image shows part of the draught or pattern for a large lace curtain to be made on the Nottingham lace curtain machine. The designer would have drawn the pattern, probably starting with the main motif, then deciding how to work the pattern repeat across the whole fabric and finally designing the edging. It is interesting that the designer has incorporated one-third of the main motif at the edge and linked it in to the edging design rather than just leaving a strip of blank net between the edge and the first main motif. The main motif that is closest to the edge has also been linked to that side bar with a swag, to reflect the smaller loops on the side motifs. This is a large scale pattern and the large arrow head in the image below shows where the centre of the curtain will be.

Once the designer produced a drawing of the finished design, it was sent to the draughtsman to convert it into instructions for the lace machine. He did this using the graph paper you can see here. Originally draughtsmen, or their assistants, had to draw out the graph by hand before they began their work, but this graph paper has been bought from a supplier ready printed. Each square measures one inch and is divided into 180 small rectangles. These are painted by hand to indicate the movement of the threads that are required by the lace machine to create the design. Different manufacturers used various colours for their instructions but in general red indicated back spool ties, green symbolised Swiss ties and blue meant combination ties. The draughtsman had to be a technician as well as an artist because he had to ensure the instructions for the machine were accurate and would reproduce the design in the way the designer intended. However, I'm sure it was easy to make mistakes and you can see that this draughtsman has tried to paint a green square over one he first painted red and someone has circled his mistake!

When the draught was finished it was then passed to the card puncher to produce the jacquard cards that were used to instruct the lace machine. Based on the colour codes on the draught, he used a machine to punch a series of holes through the cards. The cards were then joined together to form continuous lines of instructions for the lace machine. Other instructions are hand written on the edge of the draught, giving the machine operator more information about the lace. These include the style of the lace to be made and the recommended size, as well as the gauge or fineness of the finished lace (10 point) and the quality (54) which is a measure of how many complete motions of the machine were required to make three inches of the lace. So, not only are these draughts beautiful pieces of art but they also contain a wealth of information.