Tablecloth

Description

This lace tablecloth was started in the early 1940s by Gertrude Barth Aronson, who died in 1945 before finishing it. It was completed in 1962 by her daughter, Edith Aronson Blumsack. The tablecloth is comprised of 660 lace squares sewn together in a 22 by 30 grid. The squares were worked on a handheld loom threaded with crochet cotton, then woven back and forth with pearl cotton. The individual lace squares were then sewn together to create the full tablecloth. This type of lace is often known as Tenerife or sol lace. This particular tablecloth was made using a loom manufactured in the early 1940s by the Chicago-based company K. and K. Products, who marketed it as “Polka Spider-Web” lace. The loom, a booklet of patterns, and a lace motif sample are also in Winterthur’s collection: see objects 2017.0019.112.002-.004. This object is one of a large group transferred to Winterthur from the American Textile History Museum when it closed in 2017.