Wednesday 29 March 2017

Brise-bise lace curtains

I keep coming across the term brise-bise in my curtain research so decided to find out more. Brise-bise or Brisby net curtains are short curtains that hang across the lower part of the window. The name comes from the French for ‘wind breaker’. They tend to have a channel along the selvedge for a rod or wire to be passed through, which is attached to either side of the window and often a scalloped lower edge. They were popular in the early twentieth century, hung across the lower part of a sash window. CafĂ© curtains are similar, short curtains, which became popular in the 1950s. They could be hung singly but were sometimes hung in tiers with one curtain across the upper part of the window and another over the lower part. Like brise-bise curtains they were often made with a channel for a hanging rod or sometimes had tab tops or loops through which the rod was inserted.

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