Encyclopedia of Interior Design

The year 1846 saw the invention of the Nottingham Lace Curtain Machine, which was equipped with a Jacquard loom that produced patterns automatically. By mid‐century there were a hundred of the machines in Nottingham; by the 1860s “several tons of cotton curtains” were leaving the city every week. Many of the patterns were stolen from the French, but among those that proved most popular in Britain were “the ruined castle set amid oak trees” and “a herd of cows grazing in pasture near a village church”. Lace curtains also took off in the USA. Webster’s Dictionary defined the adjective “lace‐curtain”...