Lace dresses, like the scarlet museum dress, and the cream-colored dress below, were very popular in the 1930s.

from Cecil Beaton, "Suggestions for Fancy Dress," Vogue,vol. 90, Oct.-Dec. 1937, p. 43.

The lace of these dresses could either be hand-made or machine-made. It is assumed that the lace of the scarlet museum dress is machine-made, due to certain characteristics inherent in machine-made lace, such as a repetitive, identical design. This lace has a vertical flower design repeated all over (see below). The lace was also sewn on top of a uniform net background, unlike hand-made lace. When hand-made lace does have a background, it is random with spaces and holes varying in size and pattern.

These characteristics--a repetitive design pattern and a uniform net background--can also be seen in the confirmed examples of machine-made lace such as Alencon, or Schiffli, seen below. These examples further support the notion that the lace in the museum dress is machine-made, rather than hand-made, lace.

Machine-made lace was influenced by the invention and the use of net machines, which were modified knitting machines invented around 1768. These machines were the basis for the first lace-making machines. Two of these machines were the Levers, invented by John Levers in 1813, and the Schiffli, invented by Isaak Groebli in 1863. Both machines had the ability to imitate hand-made lace, and several versions of the Schiffli machine were developed after the original model.

Courtney Williams
Spring, 1998