This is the pattern, or draught, for a lace curtain made on the Nottingham lace curtain machine and it contains all the information required to make one pattern repeat of the curtain. This one has a stamp on it indicating that it was made by Edwards and Richardson, designers and draughtsmen, of 7 Carlton Street Nottingham.
Designing and
draughting are just two of the stages required in the process of making a lace
curtain. First, the designer has to design the lace, then a draughtsman
converts the design into a draught. The draught would then have been passed to
another company where a card puncher would have followed the instructions it
contained to make the jacquard cards that programme the lace machine. Those
cards would then have been used in a lace factory to make the lace. Some large lace
factories had in-house designers, draughtsmen and card punchers but many
smaller companies relied on outside companies for their designing and
draughting work.
The draught
is made up of hand-painted rectangles indicating different operations for the
lace machine. There is no standardised colour code, but in general red
indicates back spool ties, green indicates Swiss ties and blue represents
combination ties. The draught also has hand written instructions around the
side describing the type of lace (filet combination in this case), the width of
the repeat and the fineness of the lace. Unfortunately there is no date on the
draught but the design has a 1930s feel to it so it may be from that time.
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