Victorian lace from the Great exhibition

Another lovely lace design from the Art Journal Illustrated catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851. This white lace scarf imitating Brussels point was exhibited by Mr Urling of London, an ‘extensive manufacturer of lace’. Although the term manufacturer implies to us that Mr Urling produced the lace, this term was used in the lace trade to indicate someone who acted as the middleman for all the processes required between the lace machine operator and the person who bought the finished textile – I learnt this from Sheila Mason’s book on Nottingham lace. The catalogue describes the scarf by saying: ‘the date 1851 is encircled by the rose, thistle and shamrock. The straight lines of the border are embroidered in gold, and worked upon a clear fine net, for which Mr Urling long ago obtained a patent. The design for this scarf was, we believe, made expressly for the manufacturer by Miss Gann, a clever pupil of the Government School of Design.’ It is nice to see the designer acknowledged, and interesting to discover that the design was made for Mr Urling, which suggests that he was involved in the lace process from the beginning.