Furnishing fabric for a curtain of woven velvet, designed by Herbert Herkomer, woven by Anton Herkomer for 'Lululand', United States, 1894

Voided cut velvet, silk and cotton, plain weave with supplementary pile warps. The design shows interlaced branches, with scrolling foliage against a spotted ground, the scrolls encircling a banderole with the motto of Sir Hubert ‘propriis alis’ (‘by my own wings’). Below the banderole the ground is woven with the name of his second wife ‘LULU’, in whose memory his house was named. The curtain is made up of two panels, joined along the selvedge with a machine-stitched seam. Neither panel shows the full loom width. The curtain is lined with two joined panels of green ribbed cotton and headed with brown rufflette tape. Apart from the central seam, most of the stitching is by hand.
Warp repeat approx. 100.4 cm. Loomwidth uncertain from these sections, but established as 61.8 cm on the example of the textile held in the Art Institute of Chicago (1991.79)

Purchased. Registered File number 1990/336.
Made for Lululaund, a house in Bushey, Hertfordshire. The house was built between 1886 and 1894 by H.H. Richardson, the American architect for Hubert von Herkomer, the artist.

The curtains were used in the Drawing Room and the Hall, and Herkomer himself wrote of the interior decoration '... I wish the reader first to understand clearly that I alone am responsible for the design of whatever meets his eye throughout the interior of Lululaund'. He goes on to describe the curtains as 'the work of my Uncle Anton, one of the three makers of my house' (See Sir Hubert von Herkomer. The Herkomers. 1911, p. 204, 210). Herkomer names the three makers of his house as his Uncle John, a carver, his Uncle Anton, a weaver, and his father, also a carver. Portraits of the three appear op. cit. p. 231. The same book has two chapters devoted to the architect and decoration of the house (p. 187-230). A photograph of the Drawing Room with curtains also appears (opposite p. 210).

Probably designed by Sir Hubert Herkomer RA (1849-1914) for his house Lululand, Bushey, Hertfordshire, built 1890-94
Made by Anton Herkomer (1816?-1901), silk weaver working at New Hyde Park, Long Island, NY. Very little is known of the work that he produced. When he arrived in America in the 1850s or 1860s, he worked as a ribbon weaver but when most of that work moved to the large factories in New Jersey, Anton Herkomer moved to Long Island and set himself up as a handloom-weaver making expensive and luxurious fabrics.
An article in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Sunday March 1 1896 describes the old weaver and his work on these curtain (see http://bklyn.newspapers.com/newspage/50336900/ or http://fultonhistory.com/Newspapers%207/Brooklyn%20NY%20Daily%20Eagle/Brooklyn%20NY%20Daily%20Eagle%201896%20Grayscale/Brooklyn%20NY%20Daily%20Eagle%201896%20Grayscale%20-%200956.pdf ). This reported that he was weaving 400 yards of curtaining for his nephew and that the curtains to be made from them were to cost $2500 a pair.
Other surviving pieces from the same weaving
Bushey Museum, Hertfordshire – 2 curtains
Art Institute of Chicago – length of fabric, 1991.79. It is they who give silk and cotton as the fibres.

This velvet was made by the collaboration of two talented brothers. In 1890 the German-born painter Sir Hubert Herkomer (1849-1914) was creating a house for himself, Lululaund, at Bushey in Hertfordshire. He named the house after his second wife Lulu Griffiths. It took several years to build and more to furnish after its opening in 1894. A drawing for the house had been acquired from the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886), in return for a portrait. Herkomer himself designed many of the furnishings, including this silk. His father and his uncle Johann carved the furniture and he turned to another uncle, Anton, to weave silk for curtains and upholstery. Anton Herkomer (1816-1901) had settled in New Hyde Park, Long Island, USA, where he became celebrated for his fine hand-weaving, much of which was exported to Europe. A newspaper article of 1896 described him as working on this project, weaving 400 yards of silk for his nephew.

T.163-1990