Philip Schwarz’s Novelties in Laces for Furniture and Decoration. The prints were delivered to the museum in a cloth-bound box with a leather-bound presentation folder. The folder describes the object’s approximate date, 1880, place of origin, Vienna, and maker, Philip Schwarz, “Manufacturer of Laces.” The presentation folder also lists an address: "ZiegerGasse 11," in Vienna’s Mariahilf, then an important business district near Vienna’s major shopping street, Mariahilfer Strasse.
The late nineteenth century saw a veritable boom in the consumption of trimmings both in Europe and the United States, facilitated by manufacturers such as Philip Schwarz. Indeed, a popular Danish term for the period is klunketid, or tassel period. In his seminal Handbook of Ornament, first published in 1886, Franz Sales Mayer describes the pervasive use of trimmings in interiors, but also notes that they “occur perpetually in various national costumes, and in the toilet of our modern ladies.”[1] Indeed, many of the examples featured in Schwarz’s Novelties in Laces for Furniture and Decoration can be likened to trimmings used in women’s fashionable dress and men’s military regalia of this period, and several explicitly reference national symbols. This example incorporates the crescent moon of the flag of the Ottoman Empire, demonstrating the use of interior decoration in expressions of national pride.
Le garde-meuble. (1841-51) Paris : D. Guilmard. Decorative use of tassels in window treatments.
Draperies des croisees ronds au grand salon. Valances, Livre 28, Pl. 074. Smithsonian Libraries f NK2547 .Z8G96 CHMRB
Mae Colburn is a graduate student in the History of Decorative Arts and Design program at Parsons the New School for Design. Her focus is textiles.