Historical information

A five petal machine made lace collar, this item would be attached to the neckline of a garment and appears to be designed to lay flat although a little starch applied could make it stand up like petals around the neck. The Folk Art style rose between two rosebuds design is simple and outlined in fine black thread as are the scalloped edges of each collar petal The design being embroidered on to net leads one to believe that this was made on a Cornely machine. The Cornely machine had a great impact on the embroidery industry. It developed from hand tambouring and contemporary inventions in the field of sewing machines and was the first single-needle embroidery machine. It was easy to use, could be used in the home or a small workroom and as the mechanism developed it became difficult to distinguish machine from hand sewn.


Significance

Churchill Island has a large lace collection, which was added to by three successive generations of the Amess family - Jane, Janet, and Unity. The Amess family owned Churchill Island from 1872 to 1929. Jane was wife of Samuel Amess, who was the first Samuel Amess to own Churchill Island. The examples of lace are notable for their variety, and provide representative examples of techniques from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

Physical description

Cream lace collar with black edging. Rosette pattern and some scalloping around selvage edge. Machine made lace