Lace curtain draught

 

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.