Lace Border with Battle Scene (1700s): Art, History and Details

Lace Border with Battle Scene (1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This valance, a decorative drapery made for attachment at the frame of the bed, was a typical object from the dowry of a bride in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Russia. The valance would have been made for the wedding night of a newlywed couple. The elaborate battle scene rendered in this lace is unusual and exceptional.

Object facts

• Title: Lace Border with Battle Scene
• Date: 1700s
• Culture: Russia
• Type: Lace
• Technique: Linen; needle lace (cutwork and drawnwork), straight (continuous) bobbin lace, (tape lace) edging
• Dimensions: Overall: 61.1 x 192.5 cm (24 1/16 x 75 13/16 in.)
• Collection: T - Lace
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1921.596

A detail from the museum

Handmade lace for marriage dowries was produced in large quantities in Russia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Collection credit

Gift of J. H. Wade

Further reading listed by the museum

• Efimova, L. V., R. M. Belogorskai︠a︡, and Santina M. Levey. Russian embroidery and lace. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.