A draught for the Nottingham lace curtain machine

 

This image shows part of the draught or pattern for a large lace curtain to be made on the Nottingham lace curtain machine. The designer would have drawn the pattern, probably starting with the main motif, then deciding how to work the pattern repeat across the whole fabric and finally designing the edging. It is interesting that the designer has incorporated one-third of the main motif at the edge and linked it in to the edging design rather than just leaving a strip of blank net between the edge and the first main motif. The main motif that is closest to the edge has also been linked to that side bar with a swag, to reflect the smaller loops on the side motifs. This is a large scale pattern and the large arrow head in the image below shows where the centre of the curtain will be.

Once the designer produced a drawing of the finished design, it was sent to the draughtsman to convert it into instructions for the lace machine. He did this using the graph paper you can see here. Originally draughtsmen, or their assistants, had to draw out the graph by hand before they began their work, but this graph paper has been bought from a supplier ready printed. Each square measures one inch and is divided into 180 small rectangles. These are painted by hand to indicate the movement of the threads that are required by the lace machine to create the design. Different manufacturers used various colours for their instructions but in general red indicated back spool ties, green symbolised Swiss ties and blue meant combination ties. The draughtsman had to be a technician as well as an artist because he had to ensure the instructions for the machine were accurate and would reproduce the design in the way the designer intended. However, I'm sure it was easy to make mistakes and you can see that this draughtsman has tried to paint a green square over one he first painted red and someone has circled his mistake!

When the draught was finished it was then passed to the card puncher to produce the jacquard cards that were used to instruct the lace machine. Based on the colour codes on the draught, he used a machine to punch a series of holes through the cards. The cards were then joined together to form continuous lines of instructions for the lace machine. Other instructions are hand written on the edge of the draught, giving the machine operator more information about the lace. These include the style of the lace to be made and the recommended size, as well as the gauge or fineness of the finished lace (10 point) and the quality (54) which is a measure of how many complete motions of the machine were required to make three inches of the lace. So, not only are these draughts beautiful pieces of art but they also contain a wealth of information.