LACE, TAPE, DRESS FRONT
A delicate hand made tape lace jabot or dress front fashionable in late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Fine machine tape outlines the design which is then filled with hand embroidered needlelace – spider webs, buttonhole bars with picots, buttonhole netlike fillings.
This dress front would have been hand stitched to a garment and removed again when the garment needed to be washed.
Early tape lace was made in Italy in 17th C where it was called ‘mezzo punto’, a quick method of imitating the elaborate Venetian needlepoints. Tapes of various shapes were hand made using bobbins or needlelace. With the advent of machines in early 19th C, a huge variety of tapes were produced cheaply. Very popular in the Victorian era, the technique, popularised in women’s magazines and pattern books, was called Modern Point Tape Lace or Princess lace which were quick and easy to make. Gradually tapes and designs became progressively coarser, thicker threads were used and simpler stitches used with less variety of fillings.
Mainly used for cuffs, collars and other dress accessories such as fans. Also used for wedding veils, capes, scarves, baby bonnets, christening robes and flounces and for household use - tray cloths, table centres, doyleys, tea cloths, tea cozies cushion covers and ecclesiastical items.
During the 1990s, tape lace had a revival and many household items were imported from China. The quality had declined, using thick threads and mainly cretan stitch to fill the spaces.
