Brise bise lace curtains and blinds

 

Researching more brise bise curtains this week I came across these in a 1933 pamphlet of lace furnishings. Brise bise lace curtains were very fashionable in the early 1930s and were designed to hang across the lower half of a window. The name brise bise comes from two French words, briser meaning to break and bise meaning a light cold wind, so they are designed to stop a light breeze. All the examples in the booklet have an integral channel woven across the top of the curtain through which a rod or wire could be inserted for fixing them. Some of these channels are patterned but others are just plain weave and most have a scalloped lower edge. Brise bise curtains could be gathered along the rod or kept flat against the window and it may be that those labelled as blinds were designed to be used flat. However, it looks as if all the designs could be used either way depending on the preference of the householder.

The fruit design shown at the top is only available in one width (17 inches), but the design of flowers and trellis comes in three sizes (20, 31 or 38 inches). The smaller sizes are those usually associated with brise bise curtains; 38 inches seems quite large for a brise bise, but perhaps the idea was that you could have a combination of matching designs to fit a range of window sizes. The curtains were sold by the yard so would not be finished at the edges, just cut from the roll. Unfortunately there are no details of the manufacturers or the prices and I suspect those details were probably on an order form in the centre of the booklet which has been removed.

Another subversive doily

 

I’m delighted to have finally finished another doily in my subversive doily project. This is an ongoing project with no deadline but something I will write about and exhibit once I’ve made enough doilies to form a body of work. Because of that, other work with deadlines keeps interrupting and, in fact, having to start another large project gave me the incentive to finish this doily and clear the pillow I was working it on. The idea behind the subversive doilies is that they subvert the traditional idea of doilies as overlooked, undervalued domestic craft items by giving them a voice. The latest one incorporates the words 'f*** off’ in a Bedfordshire lace technique in the centre of the mat, which is surrounded by a circular edging of Eastern European style tape lace. I designed the doilies so that the wording is not immediately obvious and it is only after looking at them for a while that the viewer realises that they are more interesting than they first appeared and actually incorporate a message. In general, doilies are overlooked, considered old-fashioned and taken for granted, rather like the women who originally made them. These doilies represent those very skilled women whose work was undervalued and whose voice was not heard. They have a mind of their own and are speaking out!

The Battle of Britain commemorative lace panel

 

The 80th anniversary of the Victory in Europe day, following the second world war, seems an appropriate time to blog about the Battle of Britain commemorative lace panel. The large panel (it is 450 cm long and 163 cm wide) was made by the Nottingham lace company of Dobson and Browne between 1942 and 1946 to celebrate the famous air battle of 1940, which was a pivotal moment in the war. In 1940, Britain was the only major power opposing the Nazis and Adolf Hitler planned to invade Britain to bring an end to that final opposition. He knew that without a functional airforce an invasion of Britain would probably succeed. The German offensive began in July 1940 targetting airfields and cities and the British retaliated by bombing German sites.

The most intense battle occurred on 15 September when the Germans sent two waves of 500 aircraft across the English Channel. It resulted in the greatest defeat the German airforce had experienced and we know it as the Battle of Britain. Two days later Hitler cancelled the invasion plans although the bombing continued until May 1941.

The bombing was very destructive of lives and property and photographs of the bomb damage in London were used as the basis for the images in the panel. This panel depicts the damage to St Clement Danes Church, while the image above shows the dramatic moment a building collapses in Queen Victoria Street.

This depiction of St Paul’s Cathedral shows the undamaged building rising above the smoke and destruction of the Blitz and became an iconic image representing the resilience of London and Londoners. The commemorative panel was designed by Harry Cross, a professional lace designer, and includes eight images of bomb scenes as well as St Paul’s, a cottage and castle and the floral emblems of the commonwealth airforces that took part in the battle. It also includes a stylised image of the aircraft involved and an airman preparing for the battle as well as an abbreviated version of Winston Churchill’s famous and very apt words that ‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few’.

If you are interested in finding out more about the panel I’ve written about different aspects of it in various publications (as well as this blog), most recently in Reading the thread edited by Lesley Millar and Alice Kettle, published by Bloomsbury. I’ve also written about its production and my commission to produce a contemporary response to it in Textile: cloth and culture 18(1) 24-38 which you can access for free via the link below https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/4FNFA2Z8U8DBTUWKP4ZK/full?target=10.1080/14759756.2019.1646497

 

Suzani embroidery

 

I’ve just returned from an amazing tour of Uzbekistan with a group of textile enthusiasts and thought I’d blog about the lovely suzani embroidery I saw there. It is named from the Persian word ‘suzan’ which means needle and was traditionally used for wall hangings, bedspreads and table covers throughout Central Asia. In the past it was part of an Uzbek girl's dowry and she and her family would begin making her suzani textiles from a young age.

Many suzani are made by groups of women, each stitching one part of the cloth and then combining them to make the final piece. This often results in variations in colour and design as you can see in the image above with the changes in colour of the flowers in the central section.

Suzani were thought to bring good fortune, protection and prosperity to the brides new home and many of the motifs have special significance. For example pomegranates signify fertility, vines are linked to growth, and the sun represents light and life, while other images are talismanic to deflect the evil eye.

Chain stitch is the main stitch used to outline the motifs, delineate borders and often to fill solid areas. It can be worked using a needle and thread or using a tambour technique with a hook. In many suzani only the motifs are filled with stitches, but in more intricate designs the entire surface of the cloth is covered in stitching.

Another method of filling large areas is Bukhara couching. In this technique the first line of thread is couched at intervals along its length. The second row, below it, is then couched so that the couching stitches are slightly to the left of the stitches in the row above, and so on with the following couched threads, thus forming diagonal lines of stitching. Bukhara couching (the upper section of the image above) gives a slightly flatter appearance to the work when compared with the chain stitching in the lower section.

Although chain stitch and Bukhara couching are the main stitches used in suzani embroidery, some examples also incorporate buttonhole stitching and satin stitch as well as decorative couching and alternating coloured stitches in chain stitch. We were lucky enough to see so many beautiful examples of suzani in workshops, museums and markets and were pleased to see that the art of suzani is being revived and preserved for the future.

Draught for a machine lace tablecloth

 

This is a draught, or the instructions, for a tablecloth to be made on the Nottingham lace curtain machine. The first step in producing this type of lace is to design the pattern, which is done by the designer drawing freehand onto paper. That design is then passed to the draughtsman who converts it into the draught, essentially by digitising the design into a series of squares, which are recorded on graph paper by hand painting the individual squares. The draught forms the coded instructions for the lace machine. It is then sent to the card puncher who produces a set of jacquard cards based on the draught, which are then used in the production of the lace.

The draught also includes hand written instructions including the size of the lace; this piece is 36 inches square. The written notes also specify that this tablecloth should be made in ‘single action filet’, meaning that it will resemble handmade filet lace when it is made. All Nottingham curtain lace is made in a series of blocks but they can be open or closed and thick or thin giving an appearance of shading. However when making single action filet lace all the blocks tend to be fairly solid, emphasising their similarity to handmade filet lace. There is also a stamp on the back of the draught giving the Nottingham address of the firm of designer draughtsmen who made it, as well as the pattern number and the date (April 1970). So this lovely image includes a wealth of information.

Early twentieth century tape lace

 

These tape laces are all advertised in one of the monthly issues of The lace and embroidery review in 1911. This was an American magazine produced for trade buyers which discussed the new seasonal trends and contained many advertisements for buyers and suppliers of lace and embroidery. This advertorial shows ‘some beautiful real tape laces’ available from P K Wilson and son. It shows a range of design styles and suggests that the top and bottom ones are possibly Bohemian lace (a term described later in the same issue and discussed in my blog of 14 November 2024).

The fact that these laces are labelled as ‘real’ implies that they are all handmade. It is hard to see from the image but the second piece does seem to include lines of tape that have been gathered and folded to make the pattern and then joined with simple filling stitches. So this piece is probably handmade, although the tape itself is machine made.

In the third piece machine-made tapes have also been gathered and folded to make the bold designs on each side. This was probably worked by hand over a machine made net, with the surplus net being cut away once the tape had been sewn in place and joined with simple filling stitches.

The piece on the fourth line was probably worked in a similar way with the edging tape and flowers added to machine made net. The central swirls could also be made using a fine tape, but I think it would be much easier to work this part of the design in tambour lace with a hook and thread producing a fine chain stitch. Tape lace was certainly popular in the early twentieth century; customers appreciated its bold designs and manufacturers liked it because it was quick and easy to make.

London landmarks in lace

 

This machine-made, lace panel of Westminster Abbey in London is one of a series and I have another one depicting Trafalgar Square. Many of these fairly small lace panels (they are 30 x 45 cm) were made from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s and I’ve seen others of famous UK landmarks such as Edinburgh Castle and Nottingham Castle. The two I have are made of a synthetic thread so are definitely fairly modern in construction. As you can see in the detail below, they are very cleverly shaded by using a limited range of stitches and the square format of this type of lace lends itself well to depicting architecture.

I don’t know how many different landmarks were part of this London series. I have seen lace panels of Buckingham Palace and St Paul’s Cathedral but they did not have the same border as my two examples so I don’t think that they are part of this series. A search on the internet does not reveal much and concentrates on the images of London shown in the Battle of Britain commemorative lace panel, which I know very well having researched it and written about it many times. However, the images on the commemorative panel are not views of London landmarks, but mainly images of bomb-damaged London buildings. I bought my panels online but I assume they were originally sold as souvenirs for tourists and that is why I think they must be part of a wider series of London landmarks in lace.