Nottingham lace curtain machine
The lace curtain machine is a lace machine invented by John Livesey in Nottingham in 1846. It was an adaptation of John Heathcoat's bobbinet machine. It made the miles of curtaining which screened Victorian and later windows. History. The forerunner of the mechanical lace-making machine was the 1589 stocking frame. This is a weaving frame fitted with a bar of bearded needles that passed back and forth, to and from the operator. There was no warp. The beards were simultaneously depressed by a presser bar catching the weft and holding it back for a  course, making a row of loops. After Jeremiah Strutt had modified the machine in 1759 to make it capable of ribbing, in 1764 Hammond introduced a tickler stick to transfer the loops 2 or 3 gaits sideways. In this way, mechanical lace-making was born. But there was no carriage or comb, and the operations continued to be performed sequentially by the operator. Invented by John Livesey in Nottingham in 1846, the lace curtain machine was initially seen as a form of a Leavers machine - a modification of the Circular. The Leavers mesh tends to be hexagonal, while the Curtain  machine produces a straight mesh. The use of Jacquards for producing patterned lace was well established. At the 1851 Great Exhibition, curtains long by wide were displayed. Their extensive designs required over 12,000 Jacquard cards. The curtain lace industry prospered with the advent of the fashion for large rising sash windows. The width of the frame ultimately increased to , and in 1928 a machine of was considered to be the smallest viable size. Its supremacy was challenged in 1900 by the popularity of Schiffli embroideries produced on the bobbinet, then in the 1950s by the Raschel and the use of  artificial fibres. Description. Viewed from the front, the frame is similar to that of a Leavers machine. However, its action is different, as it produces a square net rather than a hexagonal one. The Nottingham lace curtain machine only has one warp, and the patterning threads are carried on a spool, not on a beam. The terms to describe the actions are the same as those used for a Leavers machine: rise, fall, right, left, sley, carriage, comb etc. The lace is collected at the top, unlike the Pusher machine, where it is collected at the bottom. Collection is via  a take-up beam; a spiky roller beneath it called the porcupine regulated the take-up tension. The curtain machine. There are four groups of thread: warp, top board, bottom board and bobbin. On a 10-point, 360-inch machine there are four groups of 3,600 threads, making a total of 14,400 threads. (The term 'point' refers to the number of warps per inch.) There are three guide bars controlled by work cams. These allow a shogging movement across 2, 3 or 4 gaits. The cams cannot be stopped, but threads in the middle and back bars can be  interrupted by a Jacquard mechanism. Each bobbin thread has its own jack - a steel wire that can interrupt its movement and create a hole in the pattern, in effect leaving off a tie.