Nottingham lace curtain machine

The lace curtain machine, is a lace machine that was 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.

The forerunner of mechanical lace making stems from the 1589 . 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 a course making a row of loops. After Jeremiah Strutt had modified the machine in 1759 to do ribbing, Hammond in 1764 used a tickler stick to transfer the loops 2 or 3 gaits sideways,mechanic lace making was born. There was no carriage, no comb and the operations continued to be done in sequence by the operator.

Invented by John Livesey in Nottingham in 1846, 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 gives a straight mesh. The use of Jacquards for producing patterned lace was well established. At the 1851 Great Exhibition curtains 5 yards (460 cm) long by 2 yards (180 cm) wide were displayed. The spacious designs required over 12000 Jacquard cards. The curtain Lace industry prospered now the fashion was for large rising sash windows.

There width increased to 420 inches (11 m), and in 1928 a 300 inches (7.6 m) in machine was considered to be the smallest viable size. Its supremacy was challenged in 1900 by the Schiffli embroideriies on bobbinet, then in 1950s by the Raschel and the use of artificial fibres

The frame viewed from the front is similar to Leavers machine. 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 spools 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 et c. The lace is collected at the top, unlike the Pusher machine where it is at the bottom, It is collected on a take up beam; a spiky roller called the porcupine beneath it, regulated the take up tension.

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