Traces Of Embroidery & Fragments - Fourteen

Last year I acquired a collection of beautiful hand drawn designs on tracing papers from a lady who sources in France who was exhibiting at Newark Antiques Fair.  If I had a full and decorative wallet of money I could have purchased her entire stall.

These tracings are wonderful and were the starting stage of designing a length of lace/embroidery for production that would have been used to then formulate the old loom/punch cards to place in the mechanical machines. These designs were particularly created for embroidered lace onto muslin and organza bases.

Exquisitely executed in lines of graphite and lead.  You will see that the main repeating design sits heavier and the repeating structure has been drawn more feintly to represent how the design repeats as a width.

I was told that these came from an archive of an old French studio that was part of a production mill, but I have no more information.  All I know is that they are a beautiful example of our textile history and produced around the late 1800's and early 1900's.  This is why I haven't been able to part with them until now as I have enjoyed them staying a while here in the studio to admire and study.

Accompanying this drawing is a few lovely snippets of lace/embroidery/broderie.

I am selling the design as found so there is a folded line from storage that will iron out leaving only a feint line if you choose. 

The base paper measures 24cm x 17cm