How do you feel about lace curtains? A charming finishing touch that brings back fond memories of granny’s cottage? Or an age-old prop of the curtain-twitcher that should never haunt windows again?
The textile designer Tori Murphy, who has launched a collection of British-made, vintage-inspired lace curtains, is hoping customers are persuadable to the former. Made in Nottingham, the home of the original lace-making industry, the designs are drawn from the archive of one of the city’s oldest manufacturers, which began making lace in the 1760s. “The laces in this new collection are made exactly the same way, on the same machines, with the same materials that would have been used 50, 100 and 150 years ago,” she says. “Extraordinary manufacturing capabilities still exist in this country, and we’re dedicated to preserving them.”
Murphy, who grew up between England and Ireland and is now based in Nottingham, is well aware that she has some prejudice to contend with. “Nets” have suffered a bad press over the years. While the original Nottingham lace was seen as a luxury, a status symbol made using state-of-the art British textile manufacturing, its desirability diminished as lace curtains grew in popularity and technology developed, with manufacturers turning to cheaper materials, including acrylic and nylon. Over-familiar and poor quality, lace curtains became associated with small-minded parochialism.
The term curtain-twitcher came into parlance in 1940, when lacy windows were widely visible across the British Isles. The Oxford English Dictionary attributes its first usage to Flann O’Brien, writing under the moniker Myles na gCopaleen, in a column for the Irish Times. But it was another Irish writer (under another pseudonym), Brinsley MacNamara, in 1918, who created the indelible image of nosy neighbours peering through curtains to cast judgment upon their townspeople, in his thinly-disguised village tell-all, The Valley of the Squinting Windows.
Still in publication more than a century later, the cover of the 2018 edition of the book features a window with a lace half-curtain and a human silhouette, just visible — proof that those negative curtain-twitching associations still stand today, but also that its subject matter continues to make rivetingly good drama. Following what the neighbours are up to and judging them for it is, after all, the driving narrative of every soap opera ever made. Only last year, the trailer for Wicked Little Letters, starring Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley as neighbours-at-war, saw lace curtains used as a visual shorthand for the tale of prying and tittle-tattle that lies ahead.
But if there is a time for sheer curtains to shake off that frumpy image, it is surely now. After years dedicated to minimalism, we’re in softer and more decorative interior times and curtains have found themselves in favour again. Café curtains, usually made from sheer or demi-sheer linen, covering the lower half of windows, have been leading the way. Mary Walsh and Laragh Bohn, founders of bespoke curtain and blind-making service The London Curtain Girls, report a notable uptick in the style over the last couple of years, particularly for central London areas, such as Notting Hill, where houses directly front busy streets.
“They’re an easy solution for privacy,” says Walsh. “Other options are shutters or full blinds, which block out a lot of light.” Lace, they believe, is the next step, particularly for the romantically inclined. “They’re definitely making a comeback and I think that’s because it’s all about memory and nostalgia,” says Bohn, “Using the kind of fabric you remember being used in your family. Lace always has a story — what it’s made of, where it’s made, who made it.”
A dramatic case in point is Murphy’s BB lace; the style was deemed the best for protecting households from flying glass and shrapnel during the Blitz, able to catch fragments in its intricately designed weave. Such heroic levels of practicality are surely a good reason to let go of lace’s negative associations.
But let’s not pretend the attributes that made lace curtains a popular option in the first place are not still attractive today. What is our preoccupation with social media if not 21st century curtain-twitching? A lace curtain allows you a certain amount of control over your privacy, while still being able to invade your neighbour’s. “You can tweak them so that people can see or not see what you want them to,” says Murphy. “You’re screened from the outside but you can still follow everything that’s happening beyond.” Sound familiar? Sound tempting? Maybe time, then, to give lace curtains another look.
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