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Not currently on display at the V&A

Panel

1790-1800 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Panel of bobbin lace with a profile portrait of the head of a classical warrior. His helmet is decorated with a mythical beast. The panel is worked with a very fine cream silk thread for the ground and thicker shaded silks, mostly in beige and brown, for the head. The net is a tightly-worked twist net of the Lille type. It does not continue under the portrait, the silks of which are not darned-in, but are worked as cloth stitch with the finer silk of the ground. The pinholes are visible where the coloured silk is turned at the edge of each pattern piece. The panel has been tacked to a later soft silk and the edges of which are turned-over to bind the edges of the net.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Materials and techniques
Bobbin lace worked in silk thread, and on a silk backing
Brief description
Panel of bobbin lace with a profile portrait of the head of a classical warrior, probably French, 1790-1800
Physical description
Panel of bobbin lace with a profile portrait of the head of a classical warrior. His helmet is decorated with a mythical beast. The panel is worked with a very fine cream silk thread for the ground and thicker shaded silks, mostly in beige and brown, for the head. The net is a tightly-worked twist net of the Lille type. It does not continue under the portrait, the silks of which are not darned-in, but are worked as cloth stitch with the finer silk of the ground. The pinholes are visible where the coloured silk is turned at the edge of each pattern piece. The panel has been tacked to a later soft silk and the edges of which are turned-over to bind the edges of the net.
Dimensions
  • Length: 15.75in
  • Width: 12.25in
  • Length: 40cm
  • Width: 31cm
  • Length: 395mm
  • Width: 310mm
Marks and inscriptions
  • 'Specimens from a Normandy Lace-school. circ. 1700' (Handwritten on a label sewn to the front of the panel)
  • '62' [or 'b2'] (In pencil on the label)
Object history
Purchased. Registered File number 1985/607. There are no signs of any joins in the net and the panel is excessively wide to have been worked on a conventional pillow, although the number of bobbins (approx. 600) would have been manageable. None of the original edges are visible.

This panel and T.215-1985 are from the collection of Jeffrey Whitehead of Mays, East Grinstead, who was a member of the Burlington Fine Arts Club and who collected a variety of objects d'art in the 1870s and 1880s. The two panels were in an album of lace samples acquired at Christies.
Subjects depicted
Bibliographic references
  • Silk: Fibre, Fabric and Fashion, edited by Lesley Ellis Miller and Ana Cabrera Lafuente with Claire Allen-Johnstone, Thames and Hudson Ltd. in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom, 2021, pp. 252-253
  • Miller, Lesley Ellis, and Ana Cabrera Lafuente, with Claire Allen-Johnstone, eds. Silk: Fibre, Fabric and Fashion. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 2021. ISBN 978-0-500-48065-6. This object features in the publication Silk: Fibre, Fabric and Fashion (2021)
Collection
Accession number
T.214-1985

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Record createdJune 24, 2009
Record URL
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