Lace in fashions from 1873

 

These illustrations depict the latest fashions from an 1873 issue of The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. This magazine was one of the most popular fashion magazines of the time. It had been founded by the entrepreneurial publisher Samuel Beeton in 1852 and was aimed at the middle class market (his wife Isabella’s famous book Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management was also hugely popular). By 1873, hooped crinoline underskirts were no longer fashionable and instead wide skirts were worn flat at the front and looped up at the sides and back to form a bustle, often with a pad of horsehair tied round the waist to pad out the fuller shape at the back. Swags, folds and pleats of fabric were swathed over the skirt and train. As you can see, the layers were trimmed with lace, ruched ribbons and embroidery. Some gowns were also trimmed with flounces of taffeta printed with lace-like designs, the edges of which were often scalloped or pinked to give the appearance of lace, although I think these illustrations depict machine-made lace frills.

This image, from the same issue of the journal, shows some fashionable accessories of the time. Hair was dressed high on the head and trimmed with small hats, ribbons, lace and artificial flowers. The small lace jacket also shows how lace fabric was cleverly cut to make use of its scalloped edging and accentuate the openings of the bodice and sleeves. Doctors were quick to condemn all these fashions as dangerous to health. Mainly because of the corseting required to achieve a tiny waist, but also because the bunched up skirts, high heels, and elaborate headwear tended to pitch the body forwards in a bent shape making walking difficult. Fashion has always been about appearance though not health or practicality!

 

Duchesse lace

In about 1850, Belgian lacemakers began making lace without an integral net ground; at the time it was called guipure lace. This type of lace was already being made elsewhere, for example in Honiton in England, and consisted of sprigs of bobbin lace joined together by fine lace bars. It’s greatest advantage was that numerous workers could be employed on the lace at the same time. Some made the sprigs, or motifs, and others assembled and joined them together, meaning that bigger items of lace could be made much more quickly compared with what one lacemaker working alone could achieve.

The finest type of Belgian lace in this style soon became known as ‘point Duchesse’ in honour of Marie-Henriette, the Duchess of Brabant. Marie-Henriette is an interesting woman, she had had a happy childhood in Austria, and was an excellent horse rider and musician. However, her marriage to Leopold the Duke of Brabant was very unhappy. They were incompatible and married against both their wishes when she was 16 and he was 18. They became king and queen of Belgium in 1865 and had three daughters and a son who died when he was 10. When Marie-Henriette died in 1901 they were living apart and Leopold came to her funeral with his mistress.

Those of you with keen eyes will have noticed that the lace in these images is not solely bobbin lace, like Honiton lace, but also incorporates some needle lace. According to Santina Levey’s book Lace: a history there were two main types of point Duchesse: Duchesse de Bruxelles and Duchesse de Bruges. The first type was made with fine bobbin lace flowers incorporating raised work, which is the raised outlining around the edge of the petals. It was also embellished with needle lace in the ‘point de gaze’ style, which is a very fine needle lace incorporating raised work, picots and small circular couronnes. Duchesse de Bruges was a coarser style and never included needle lace, therefore we can assume that this lace is the Duchesse de Bruxelles type. Levey also notes that Duchesse de Bruxelles lace was never a dominant fashion lace but was widely worn, mainly in small items such as cuffs and collars, like the one in the images.  

Saint Catherine: patron saint of lacemakers

 

Saint Catherine is the patron saint of spinners and the lacemakers affiliated themselves to her because of the similarities between their crafts. Her feast day is the 25th of November and it was a holiday known as Catterns in many English lacemaking districts, especially in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Villages celebrated the day in different ways. For example, in Bedfordshire, the people of Ampthill brewed special home-made drinks and baked Cattern cakes made of dough and caraway seeds, while those in Poddington ate their cakes with tea and then danced to fiddle music and ate a ‘great apple pie’. The lacemakers of Wendover in Buckinghamshire called the day Candle day because it was the first day of the autumn on which they started to make lace by candlelight. They also celebrated by cooking and eating ‘wigs’, which were round cakes containing caraway seeds that resembled gingerbread, and drank ‘hot pot’, which was made with warm beer and a splash of rum all thickened with beaten eggs.

As well as feasting and dancing to the music, the children played games such as apple bobbing and jumping the candlestick. There were different ways of jumping the candlestick but in one version the children danced in a circle around the lit candle singing ‘Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick’. The name of each child was inserted in the rhyme, and when their name was used they had to jump over the candlestick without extinguishing the light. Many of the candlesticks would have been about 65 cm high and with girls wearing long petticoat dresses the potential for accidents seems very high, but I have not seen any reports of injuries or burns. In some places the festivities ended with the ringing of the church bells or lighting Catherine wheels but Thomas Wright, who recorded all this information, says that the custom of using the fireworks died out in the 1890s.  

Campaign promoting lace sales after World War II

Browsing through a 1919 edition of the American trade magazine Lace and Embroidery Review I was intrigued by an initiative to revive lace and embroidery sales in the aftermath of the Second World War. To encourage sales The Lace and Embroidery Trade, based in New York, proposed a week long series of events and displays, at the end of April, to promote lace and embroidery throughout the United States. The article promises those reading it, who would have been lace buyers or retailers, that ‘the success of the event is assured’ because fashion magazines, the trade press, newspapers, department stores, specialist shops and the lace trade are all working together to make it so. It just relies on the reader playing their part by advertising in their local newspaper, making beautiful window displays and generally freshening up their department. The article continues by asserting ‘We feel confident you will co-operate to the limit of your ability’ and ‘will enlist the support of your ready-to-wear buyer’ as well as other department heads to display lace trimmed merchandise. No pressure then!

Luckily the Review seems to realise that its readers might need a little help with all this advertising and promoting so it provides templates for them. For example the illustrations above are all available either free or at cost if electroplate images are required.

There are also suggestions for how to use the images for windows cards or newspaper advertising, with appropriate layout designs and text. I think this is a very clever idea as it meant the quality of the advertising would be high, it would also be standardised throughout the country so would have brand appeal and thus link all the events together. The Review also included a page of endorsements from various lace retailers agreeing to take part in the lace week and reinforcing what a great idea the whole event would be, thus encouraging more readers to join in and become a part of it.

Following the lace week, the magazine included images of some acclaimed window displays from New York as well as more letters from those who had taken part and seen their sales increase. The initiative seems to have been successful in its aim of promoting lace sales, which had fallen during the war. In fact one reader from Chicago states that ‘this is the biggest lace and embroidery day we have had in three years and things look encouraging’.

Splinter net lace from World War II

 

I saw these examples of splinter net in the lace exhibition at the Castle Museum in Nottingham. They were made by Tatham and Co in the 1950s but are of the type produced in World War II. Splinter nets were applied to windows to stop the glass shattering in the event of bomb explosions. Even small bomb explosions can cause glass to break into sharp fragments and flying or falling glass caused many wartime injuries.

These nets not only protected those inside the house but also people walking past in the street. Instead of splinter net, some householders used strips of paper glued on to the window in a grid or criss-cross pattern. Ideally the strips were fixed to both sides of the window, with those on the outside matching the pattern on the inside. Households were allocated rolls of gummed brown paper for the purpose, which had gum on one side that had to be moistened to make it sticky.

I was surprise by the variety of nets and wondered whether they were used for different purposes. Some of them are simple woven nets while others are patterned. Some are fairly dense, and would have obscured the light making the rooms inside quite dark, and there are wartime accounts saying that some people chose not to use splinter nets because of this reason. I also wondered how householders kept the nets clean, as dirty windows and nets would also have obscure the light, although perhaps that wasn’t a concern if you were in an area that was subject to regular bombing.

Exhibition of Peter Collingwood’s macrogauzes

 

I went to see the exhibition of Peter Collingwood’s macrogauzes at Margaret Howell in London at the weekend and was delighted to see so many of them on display. Although he was a weaver, Collingwood’s macrogauzes tend more towards lace than traditional weaving because the warp threads do not remain vertical, which allowed him to move away from rectilinear shapes. The other lace-like feature of his work is that much of it is three dimensional. He is quoted as saying ‘All along my weaving has depended on finding and exploiting new techniques’ and these are certainly unusual weaving techniques.

Although this image is a bit fuzzy, because it was taken through the shop window, the macrogauze at the back shows exactly how the vertical warp threads move. The warp threads in this case are hung in a line together across the header, but are then separated and moved at angles to cross and twist with each other, to form the geometric patterns, until they finally merge on the lower rung, in a line, in the same alignment as the header threads.

It was also interesting to see so many of Collingwood’s drawings, notes and photographs in a separate display, exploring his designing and working methods. The shop window image also shows how the pieces are made into three dimensional structures with the help of fine steel rods placed diagonally from one integrated steel rod to another. This clever engineering solution also means that the pieces are woven flat, can be stored flat and potentially displayed flat until the diagonal steel rods are put in place.

Some of the details of the macrogauzes reveal how carefully they were designed and worked. The exact nature of their construction and the thread placement is stunning. If you want to find out more about Peter Collingwood and his work, he wrote several books about weaving and his archive is held at the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham.

 

Queen Mary’s Honiton lace handkerchiefs

 

A report about Queen Mary’s collection of lace written for The Connoisseur magazine of October 1928 highlights some beautiful lace made in the British Isles. Much of the lace was inherited by the Queen from her royal predecessors but we will focus on three Honiton lace handkerchiefs; two made for the Queen and one for her mother. The main image shows a handkerchief presented to the Duchess of York (later Queen Mary) as a gift, at her wedding in 1893, by the Honiton Lace Guild. The vandyke shape of the handkerchief, made from fine linen, would have been difficult to work accurately and the numerous flower and leaf motifs of the lace would have taken many hours to work. Honiton is a pieced lace, which means that each motif is worked separately. This has the benefit that many lacemakers can work the motifs, which are then assembled and joined together and attached to the linen cloth, by other lacemakers who are skilled in that part of the process. This example is unusual because the motifs are joined together, not by a net of bobbin lace stitches, but by fine plaits of thread made using two pairs of lace bobbins working from one motif to another.

The second handkerchief was made for Queen Mary’s coronation in 1911 and again presented to her by the Honiton Lace Guild. It includes symbolic flora including the rose, thistle and shamrock representing the countries of the British Isles and oak leaves for stability. This time the motifs are joined by a net ground which was probably worked using bobbin lace, although by this time much commercially available Honiton lace was mounted on machine-made net.

The third handkerchief was made for the Queen’s mother, the Duchess of Teck, and is embroidered with her monogram MA standing for Mary Adelaide. It is a pretty design and was presented to her as a gift for her wedding in 1866. The writer of the article notes that at this time the Honiton workers were producing excellent lace for international exhibitions, in an effort to show that their lace was able to compete with that from the great lace centres of the Continent. However, by 1928, when the article was written, women in Britain had more opportunities for employment and fewer were prepared to make elaborate lace for little reward, so commercial lace making in Honiton, and other parts of the British Isles, was declining.

Frayed nerves: needle lace and silk paper

 

To have frayed nerves is an expression that has been used since 1870 to mean being worn down or irritated to the point where you feel stressed, anxious and no longer able to cope. As textile people we are aware of threads fraying when they become stressed and worn to the point that they gradually pull apart and thus lose their strength and ability to function.

This piece literally show the frayed ends of the threads, and the nerves they represent, lying under the skin. It shows a glimpse of the nerves at a point where a strip of skin has been broken and torn down to reveal them lying underneath. The implication being that the skin was scratched incessantly in a nervous manner until it was torn open to reveal the nerves underneath.

The nerves are made in needlelace, which is worked with a needle and thread, forming a variety of buttonhole stitches. Here the buttonhole stitches are worked, in subtly coloured silk threads, over a core of thicker crochet cotton. The frayed ends of the nerves are embedded in a larger piece of handmade silk paper to form a hanging, with a strip of the silk paper hanging down at the front of the work as if it has been ripped from the main hanging to reveal the nerves underneath. The hanging is backed with a length of silk that has a fine shimmer suggesting the interior of the body. The fine silk paper and the subtle colours of the nerves were designed to suggest the fragility of the human body and the ease with which the nerves can be stressed.  

Roller blind lace

 

These strips of lace are advertised in the 1904 Peach lace catalogue as roller blind lace. They are quite wide (about 12 cm) and were designed to be sewn to the ends of roller blinds to make a neat and attractive ending to the fabric. (Interestingly the catalogue refers to this lower lace edging as a valance, which I had always thought referred to the upper part of a window dressing - clearly a research question for another day!) These lace trims are all numbered and priced so I assume the householder could order the length she wanted and make up her own roller blinds, however the company also offers a making-up service. They offer three types of roller blinds: plain linen, holland and union. The styles of blind all seem to be simple rolls of fabric, the only difference being the type of fabric used. Plain linen is self explanatory. Holland is generally a better quality linen cloth, although by 1887 it also referred to cotton fabric, which was usually glazed and sized to make it stronger and less affected by dust. Union is a mixture of cotton and other yarns, usually linen but also wool or jute, it was considered inferior to plain linen. It was glazed and often used for blinds, but had a reputation for not wearing well and the advice was to replace union blinds rather than attempting to wash them when they got dirty. 

The householder could buy plain fabric blinds or have them made up with one of the lace trims. They could also buy blinds with both a trim of lace and an insertion of a strip of lace a few inches above the trim in a matching style of lace, you can see an example of this combination in the image above. The insertion lace in this image (the piece with the straight edges) is about 6 cm wide and the trim 9 cm, but prices are also given for wider laces. The prices in the catalogue show that the linen blinds were the most expensive, followed by the union ones and the holland type were the cheapest, suggesting that the holland used was cotton and not linen. Many late nineteenth century influencers, were opposed to roller blinds because they blocked sunlight and impeded the flow of air, but the number on sale in this catalogue show that they were obviously popular with householders.

 

Kabuki kimono costumes

 

This is the second series of beautiful kabuki kimono costumes loaned to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford by the famous Japanese performer Bando Tamasaburo V and they are just as amazing as the first series. Kabuki is a traditional Japanese style of drama involving melodramatic plots, stylized acting, music, dance and stunning costumes. All kabuki actors are male and Tamasaburo is famous in Japan as the most well-known ‘onnagata’ or performer of female roles. He collaborates closely with the textile designers to produce unique personalised costumes.

There are many costume changes throughout the dramas and they subtly reflect the personalities of the characters, their feelings, the development of the plot and the seasons of the year. The techniques used to produce them include weaving, embroidery, dyeing and painting.

This ethereal over-robe incorporates a design of cherry blossom by firelight (there is a detail at the top of the post). The under-layer of silk is dyed and overlaid with silk gauze embroidered with thread wrapped in gold foil. This kimono is worn by the courtesan Matsuyama as she appears to her lover in a vision on a spring evening. It looks beautiful here but seen on stage, in a film that accompanies the exhibition, it really comes alive and shimmers under the stage lights.

Two over-robes worn by the courtesan Yugiri at different times in the play ‘Love letters from the pleasure quarters’ show how the costumes help to develop the narrative. She wears the black and white robe embroidered with egrets by a flowing stream with snowflakes and snow-covered weeping willow branches to reflect her fragility and the bleakness of winter when she falls ill after being separated from her lover. Later she wears the colourful robe below, embroidered with peonies and peacocks, to express the joy she feels when she recovers from her illness and is reunited with her lover.

There are six stunning kimono in the exhibition and in the accompanying film Tamasaburo explains how the costumes were made and the inspiration for their designs. It also shows how he dresses for the performances and seeing the robes being worn under theatre lighting also reveals how these beautiful costumes come to life on the stage and become an integral part of the drama.

 

Hollie point: an English needlelace

 

At first sight hollie point lace resembles other needle-made laces, however this particular style of fine, flat, white lace incorporating designs of religious motifs, made up of small holes in a grid-like pattern seems to be uniquely English. It was used particularly to trim christening robes and a circular medallion of the lace was often inserted in the crown of christening caps. The image below comes from Margaret Simeon’s book The history of lace and shows the typical panel and medallion inserted in an early 18th century christening cap; the edging is Valenciennes bobbin lace.

Hollie point was made from about 1720 until the early 19th century. The name hollie point is a corruption of holy point and the term was originally used to denote any type of church lace, but by the early 18th century the name exclusively referred to the style of lace we are looking at here. The patterns are all geometric and include religious symbols such as the Holy dove, the crown of glory, and the tree of knowledge. They were thought to have a protective function in warding off evil and keeping the child who wore them safe.

The hollie point stitch is basically a buttonhole stitch with an extra twist, worked over a horizontal thread. The example here was an exercise in working the holes and was made in crochet cotton, so it was easier to see the stitches and their placement. It was worked on a backing with an outlining cordonnet secured round the square shape to provide an outline from which to work the rows of stitches. The examples above give an idea of how attractive these designs could be, even though they are worked on a simple grid. Many antique pieces also include dates and initials adding a touch of social history to these lovely designs.  

 

Marriage lines: a wedding veil for Jane Austen

 This veil, entitled 'Marriage lines', was inspired by Jane Austen’s life and in particular the manuscript of her unfinished novel The Watsons, which is housed in the Bodleian library in Oxford. One of the interesting things about the manuscript is that Jane used ordinary sewing pins to ‘cut and paste’ parts of the story in order to make changes and rearrange the words. Jane’s novels are concerned with social issues, seen from a female point of view, and the way in which young women, in particular, navigate the world around them and their place within it. Jane herself never married, although she came close to doing so twice; the first time for love (although the young man’s family prevented the marriage) and the second time for pragmatic reasons. In fact she accepted the second proposal but changed her mind by the next morning and broke off the engagement.

At one point in The Watsons, the heroine’s sister, Elizabeth, says ‘I think I could like any good humoured man with a comfortable income’ which is a sentiment shared by many of Jane’s fictional characters; although not her heroines, who are all seeking love and meaning in their relationships. I embroidered this text onto lace, which I cut and pinned to the wedding veil. This mirrors the way Jane pinned her manuscripts, so that the words, like the sentiments, can be rearranged or even removed as the situation changes. My aim was to reflect the general view of marriage in Jane’s novels as a negotiation open to rearrangement as well as Jane’s own equivocal views of the married state.

Families recorded in lace bobbins

 These inscribed lace bobbins celebrate various family relationships. The first three celebrate parents: My dear father; Sarah Ions my dear mother; and A present from my father 1836. I think these three were made by the Compton family, with James making the two on the left and his father Jesse making the one with the spiral inscription. Jesse was born in 1793 and James died in 1889 so between them they covered a large part of the 19th century and made hundreds of bobbins for their local community in Buckinghamshire.

The next two bobbins recall a sister and a son: Eliza Hall my dear sister died Feb 5 1866; and My dear son David Hall 1866. These two people have the same surname but I don’t know if they were related. I have a feeling they probably were though because the date 1866 has been added as an afterthought to the second bobbin. I don’t know if David Hall also died in 1866 or that date just became important to the lacemaker, possibly because it was the year her sister died. There is no space on the bobbin to add the word ‘died’ but bobbin makers often used the shorthand D to signify death and there is room to squeeze that in, so the fact that it doesn’t appear suggests that it is not a memorial bobbin for her son.

The final two lace bobbins record Aunt Betsy and Aunt Sarah. There are quite a few of these bobbins with aunts names on them and I think they must have been given as gifts to the aunts. Families were larger then so most people would have had several aunts, and also family friends called aunts, who would all have been lacemakers and would have appreciated the gift of another lace bobbin for their work. These bobbins are a lovely reminder of the social and personal history recorded on lace pillows that reminded lacemakers of their loved ones as they worked.

 

Whispering lace curtain

 

The lace trim on the ‘Whispering’ net curtain reflects and records the conversation overheard at a formal house party. The lace, like the party, begins formally with everything in its place, but soon degenerates as the guests talk freely among themselves and the threads of the lace unravel to reveal a tangle of whispers, hinting at coercion, control and confinement. The net curtain has captured nine whispers including It’s our little secret, What did you expect, you got what you deserved, He frightens the life out of me and Keep out it’s not your business. They reveal that all is not as it seems. There are some cries for help underlying the social veneer.

The curtain is part of a series suggesting that the net curtain acts as a sieve within the home capturing and recording conversations, atmospheres and feelings and becomes a repository for the essence of the home. I designed the main piece of lace in the Bedfordshire style and then used threads from within the lace to embroider the ‘whispers’ across the fabric of the curtain. The whispers cross over each other and the text is not supposed to be read in a linear fashion, but as snippets of overheard conversations. Therefore, the story may change depending on the order in which the whispers are read; in the same way as overheard conversations are pieced together to form a narrative, which may be correct or not.

Marking time net curtain

 

This net curtain entitled ‘Marking time’ is pierced with pins and needles in the traditional tally pattern for counting and suggests a prisoner marking time; counting the days until their release. The use of a net curtain for such a method of counting seems unusual and even uncanny, in the Freudian sense, when the boundary between the homely and the unhomely becomes blurred. This boundary, the liminal space between home and not-home, is represented here by the net curtain.

The use of pins and needles for marking time suggests that the time keeper is using the only tools at her disposal, her needlework equipment, to record the passing of the days. This misuse of feminine sewing equipment suggests a subversion of the domestic and reflects the duality of home as sanctuary and prison. But like many uncanny experiences it leaves us with more questions than answers. Why is she not sewing quietly and contentedly? What is troubling her? Is she held against her will? Is she a victim of domestic abuse? What is she afraid of? Why does she have no voice? Is she still even enclosed in the curtained room or have we stumbled upon a scene from a fairy tale?

 

Chantilly lace

 

Fine, black, Chantilly bobbin lace was first made in about 1840 in the northern French town of Chantilly. It is a very fine, open lace, generally designed with floral patterns, which drapes beautifully. The lacemakers in Chantilly originally made blonde lace using white or cream thread, but as fashions changed they started using grenadine, a black, matt, silk thread, for their lace. The style became popular and other towns in France and Belgium began to use the black thread and make Chantilly style lace as well.

The main designs in Chantilly lace are worked using half stitch, often incorporating open filling stitches in the centres of motifs. The main design elements are outlined in a thicker black thread, or a group of black threads, and the net background is a light twisted Lille ground. The resulting lace has a delicate appearance and was used for veils, shawls, gloves, parasols, edgings and flounces.

Because Chantilly lace was time consuming to make, pieces were often made by a team of lacemakers each making a strip of the pattern. The sections were then sewn together using an almost invisible stitch called point de raccroc. Occasionally this stitching comes apart with time and the joining line between sections is revealed. By the early 1900s, competition from machine-made lace, and changes in fashion, meant that it was no longer commercially viable to make Chantilly lace by hand, but lace enthusiasts still make beautiful Chantilly lace for their own use.

Lace fans inspired by the elements

 

This series of four bobbin lace fans inspired by the four elements has been in production for a while. It began with the blue, water fan, which I made for an exhibition in Valtopina, Italy in 2013. Having made the water fan I liked the concept of having a series of them representing the other elements of fire, earth and air. I decided to use the same format for all of them, with the same lace pattern, wire frame and silk paper making up the leaf of the fan, but in colours appropriate to the different elements. I decided on brown and beige colours for the earth; orange and red for fire; and the greys, blues, mauves and ivory you can see in the air fan below.

Although the elements are quite different, the finger like design of the bobbin lace worked well for them all, as it can represent water droplets, currents of air, flames of fire, and layers of earth. 

The silk paper surround also seems appropriate as it forms a firm barrier but also includes threads and layers representing aspects of the various elements. I finished the final piece of lace a while ago but have only just made the silk paper and combined it with the lace and wire frame. I’m pleased with the resulting set of fans and they make a nice group for exhibiting.

Antarctic expedition lace panel

 

This panel was made in 1957 to commemorate the Commonwealth Trans Antarctic expedition, which took place over the years 1957 and 1958 and was led by Sir Vivian Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hilary. During the expedition Fuchs became the first person to make an overland crossing of Antarctica, which entailed covering 2200 miles in 99 days.

The lace was made in cotton thread on a Nottingham curtain lace machine by the Stiebel ad Co lace company based in the city. It was designed by John Belton and depicts the aurora australis (the Southern lights) over the sea and snowy landscape of Antarctica with explorers, equipment and penguins. The panel is often known as the Magga Dan panel after the name of the expedition ship, which is also shown in the scene. As well as its interesting subject matter the panel is also unusual because it has been hand coloured with dyes and stencils to highlight the Southern lights and other aspects of the design, to give the scene a more three-dimensional appearance.

Casements and brise bise – curtains from the 1930s

 

I found this combination of curtains in a 1933 Lace Furnishings catalogue and thought they made an interesting pair. The casement net curtain is the one with the all over pattern and was designed to be hung down the length of a window. It could have been gathered at the top or left as a panel. The householder would have bought a length of the net (35 inches wide) and made up the curtain herself, so she would have had to make an allowance for a hem at the bottom and a turn over at the top of the curtain, to make a channel for the hanging rod. The brise bise fabric (16 inches wide) was designed to be hung half way down a window rather than from the top, in the style we know as a café curtain. It wouldn’t have required any sewing as it is finished at the bottom and  there is already a channel for the hanging rod or cord at the top. I can imagine the curtains being used in a kitchen, with the brise bise across the lower half of the windows and the larger curtain over the window panels on the back door. I like the way just a small part of the main design has been used on the brise bise, to link the two curtains together without overwhelming the smaller curtains.

Both these curtains were made from artificial silk (a much more evocative name than viscose) and cotton. They were available in dark ecru or could be dyed in a variety of shades which the manufacturers guarantee to be fadeless. Dyed fabrics cost more than the standard dark ecru but unfortunately the catalogue doesn’t include prices. The householder could choose from ivory, champagne, blue, copper, rose, gold, putty, old gold, tango, green or brown. I think I’d go for ivory or champagne so they didn’t make the room too dark, what do you think?

Whispers from the library at West Horsley Place

 My latest piece ‘Whispers from the library’ has just been installed at West Horsley Place as part of the ‘Hear my voice’ exhibition. At the start of the project, the artists taking part were invited to a tour of the house and gardens and asked to respond with a textile work inspired by the venue and giving a voice to someone linked to the place. My piece was inspired by the early sensation novel Paul Ferroll written by Caroline Clive in 1854 and the subject of a letter found in a copy of the book in the library at West Horsley Place. The letter was written by Caroline to Richard Monckton-Milnes, a previous owner of the house, the creator of the Crewe book collection, and an advocate for women writers at the time.

 

The book begins with Paul Ferroll murdering his wife so that he can marry another woman and ends with him escaping from prison after being condemned to hang for the crime. The net curtain acts as a sieve trapping whispers from the book in the library. The bobbin lace represents sound waves emanating from the library and the embroidered lines capture the voice of Paul Ferroll’s wife as she narrates her side of the story. Her words are a cry for justice.

 

The Victorian readers of the book were confused by its dubious morality in allowing a convicted murderer, who stabbed his wife in cold blood while she was asleep in her bed, to evade justice. Caroline Clive felt obliged to add a concluding chapter to the fourth edition of the book in which Paul Ferroll dies in exile, thus allowing natural justice to prevail where the law of the land had been subverted. It is this final chapter that is the topic of the letter in the library. However, many readers were not satisfied with that ending either and she was obliged to write a prequel entitled Why Paul Ferroll killed his wife. It is in this book that we learn some of the wife’s story and the love triangle that underlies the crime, told from his point of view, however her voice can now be heard in the whispers from the library at West Horsley Place.

 The exhibition opens next week and runs until the end of October (4 August-31 October). Other artists exhibiting include Machiko Agano, Beverly Ayling-Smith, Anne Jackson and Alice Kettle. The curators are Lesley Millar, Alice Kettle and Clare Clinton.