A Nottingham lace curtain collection

I’ve been writing an article about lace curtains this week. It’s mainly about a collection of curtains I’ve been studying in an archive, which were all produced at about the same time but for different markets. It’s been interesting finding out about the different lace curtain fashions and the associated window styles that influenced them. It seems that curtain styles do not change very quickly and many designs continued to be manufactured for several years. It’s also been interesting to see how some curtains have been altered, often to shorten them for use at smaller windows probably in the children’s or servants’ rooms when they were no longer fashionable for the main rooms of the house. I’ve also been looking at the factors influencing curtain styles including magazine articles, books dealing with decorating and managing a home, and even the international exhibitions that began with the Great Exhibition of 1851.