Early twentieth century lace scarves

 

These lace scarves were all advertised in the 1904 catalogue produced by Samuel Peach, a well-known lace manufacturing company based in Nottingham. They are interesting because despite being machine made they all copy different styles of handmade lace. The black lace scarf in the top image is an imitation of a fine Chantilly-style lace, popular at the time, especially for evening and mourning wear. The scarf is 82 inches long (slightly over 2 metres) and 11 inches wide (28 cm) and cost 8 shillings and 6 pence.

The second scarf ends in a very bold pattern, similar to crochet lace, although it is actually chemical lace. This is made by machine embroidering onto a sacrificial background, which is removed by chemical or heat treatment, leaving the embroidered lace behind. This scarf is narrower and shorter than the black one (63 x 6 inches; 160 x 15 cm) and costs 3 shillings and 6 pence.

This scarf imitates fine point lace, such as Buckinghamshire lace, and incorporates several motifs that are common in the handmade version of this lace. This one is much cheaper than the previous two scarves and only costs 9 pence. This seems quite a bargain as it is 52 x 4 inches (132 x 10 cm) in size.

The final scarf is also machine embroidered but this time the embroidery is worked directly on the net background. This technique imitates handmade tambour lace, which is made with a fine hook that the lacemaker uses to work a type of chain stitch through the holes in the net. This scarf is also quite narrow (66 x 6 inches; 168 x 15 cm) and only costs 7 pence, probably reflecting the small amount of lace it includes. Unfortunately there are no illustrations showing how the scarves were worn, but the catalogue does give us a snapshot of what was available at the time. 

Plauen lace collars

 

These lovely lace collars are advertised in a 1904 catalogue from the Peach lace company and are both labelled as Plauen lace, a town in Saxony known for its embroidered lace. The lace was embroidered in a type of lock stitch, using a Schiffli embroidery machine, onto a net background or other backing material which was then removed leaving only the stitched lace behind. Between 1881 and 1905 various patents were taken out describing types of backing fabrics and methods for removing them. In Britain the general term for lace produced in this way was chemical lace and most was imported from Switzerland and Saxony.

The lace was popular at the end of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. It produced a good imitation of handmade lace and was reasonably priced for middle-class customers. The collar at the top was 8.5 inches deep and cost 3/9 while the lower collar was 7.75 inches deep and cost 2/9. It was also hard wearing and easy to launder so would have been easy to keep clean, and was therefore a practical as well as a beautiful lace.

Machine lace Schiffli designs

 

These lovely lace designs come from a catalogue produced by the Christian Stoll company of Plauen from the late nineteenth century. These laces would have been made using a Schiffli embroidery machine. This machine could embroider on to a machine net background to imitate handmade lace or could produce guipure lace by embroidering onto a ground fabric that was later destroyed to leave only the lace behind.

At the end of the nineteenth century there were several methods for disposing of the backing fabric including treating the ground fabric with dilute acid before embroidering it then putting it in a hot room where the ground threads deteriorated. Alternatively the thread could be treated with an alkali such as ammonia then the embroidered fabric could be place in an acid bath to remove the ground. A cellulose base could also be used which could be removed by heating or acid treatment after embroidering. The number of patents relating to the disposal of background fabrics at the end of the nineteenth century shows how keen inventors were to find the ideal method. If these guipure techniques were used, the designer had to ensure that all parts of the lace were attached to other areas or include bars of thread joining the separate elements of the design so the lace remained in one piece once the background had been removed, alternatively the lace could be applied to a net background to keep the elements of the pattern in place. The Schiffli lace machine was invented in the 1860s in Switzerland and ‘Swiss’ lace became very popular throughout Europe at the end of the century for curtains and clothing.

Chemical, Swiss or burnt out lace

 

Chemical lace is basically embroidery on a sacrificial background that is removed once the lace is made. The lace in the image here would have been embroidered using the Schiffli machine which was developed at the end of the nineteenth century in Switzerland, hence its alternative name. There were various ways of removing the backing fabric once the lace was completed and Pat Earnshaw records several patents from the 1880s and 1890s describing different techniques. The two main methods are a chemical one in which the lace is embroidered on a cellulose material that is chemically removed or a carbonised method in which the lace is heated so the background becomes brittle and is then removed by brushing. The design here comes from a catalogue by Christian Stoll a company that was famous for this type of lace in the early 1900s.