Rainbow lace curtains

 

I love the idea of these rainbow lace curtains, which I found in a facsimile of a Harrod’s store catalogue from 1895. Rainbow is perhaps a rather over optimistic description as they are basically only three colours: gold, terra, and eau de nil, rather than the seven we usually associate with the rainbow, but definitely a change from the more usual white or ecru curtains. Unfortunately there is no colour illustration so we have to imagine what they actually looked like. I think gold would have been a rich, dark yellow rather than a shiny gold fabric. The Italian term terracotta means baked earth and terra usually describes an earthy brown colour, although it can range from dark brown, to a pinky brown, taking in orange and burnt umber on the way. Eau de nil (water of the Nile) is a light greenish blue with an interesting history. The description was coined at the end of the nineteenth century just as European, and especially French, interest in Egypt was at its height. It is supposed to reflect the shifting colours of the River Nile. This type of subdued yellowy greeny blue became associated with Modernist interiors so would have seemed very new to readers of this catalogue. The curtains are quite large with a width of 60 inches and a length of 126 inches so would have provided a dramatic and unusual window covering for an upper class home with wide, tall windows.

Waves on a lace curtain

 

The sea seems an appropriate topic for a summer blog post so I thought you’d like to see a detail of this lace curtain which depicts a sunrise/sunset and its reflection on the sea. This piece is interesting because the colour effect is not achieved by using different coloured threads in the machine, but by printing or painting coloured dye on to the fabric after the curtain was made. It has been done very skilfully but you can see where two of the yellow and blue waves meet there is a slight green area where the colours have overlapped.

The colouring could have been done with a paintbrush or with small blocks dipped in dye in the same way as block printing, but the subtlety suggests it was done using a paintbrush. The curtain does incorporate different threads because a floss thread has been used to depict the foam on the waves and parts of the sun. So it would have been possible to use different coloured threads as well, but it was probably quicker just to print the colour on afterwards. The curtain is made from a rayon thread, which gives a lovely warm glossy appearance to the scene, and sunlight coming through the curtain would have made the colours appear to glow.