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?