Lace designs by Marcel Tuquet

 

Marcel Tuquet was a prolific lace designer working at the end of the nineteenth century. His designs are generally floral and incorporate a more decorative band at the side which also runs along the bottom of the lace.

A notice I’ve seen from The London Gazette of 1890 records that he and Marcel Boudard were partners in a lace curtain design business in Nottingham. They not only designed lace but are also recorded as the owners of a patent for a double action jacquard (the mechanism by which pattern was applied to the lace machines). They were not the inventors of the jacquard system but had obviously patented a modification to the system that was already in general use. The purpose of the notice in the London Gazette was to dissolve their partnership. This seems to have been an amicable split, with Tuquet taking on the lace design part of the business and Boudard the manufacturing side.

The designs in the images here were all made later in Marcel Tuquet’s career when he supplied lace curtain designs to the Christian Stoll company of Plauen, which produced design inspiration folders for the European lace industry. Whether he had relocated to Plauen by then (approximately 1900) or remained in Nottingham but sent his designs abroad I have yet to find out.