Figure 1.--This young musician from Boston, Massachusetts with his violin wears a dark velvet suit, perhaps a color like burgandty with a floppy bow, proably red. He seems to be wearing a pin-on lace collar with matching cuffs. The cabinent portrait is undated, but we would gless was taken about 1890.

We note many different styles of lace collars worn by boys. Here unfortunately we do not know much about lace and can basically only describe the obseveable shapes in the available portraits. There are differences both in the type of lace and the shape of the collar. Some of the collars look to be more crocheded work rather than fine lace. We are not sure about the lace collars worn in the early 19th century, but photographic portaits provide us a great deal of information about the collars worn in association with Fauntleroy outfits during the late-19th century. Some of the collars were pure lace. These were done in various shapes. We note rounded collars as well as many varied shapes such as multi-pointed stars and cirles or swirls. The sizes varied subsantially over time. Most of the pin-on lace colars seem to come frm the 1880s and 90s. They were commonly worn on collar-buttoning jackets. We note them being worn with and without floppy bows. Large floppy bows often cover up the collar majing it hard ro assess. Some pin-on lace collars were also worn with matching sleeve cuffs. Here hopefully a reader with some understandong of lace will provide some insights.

Circles and Swirls

We see lace collars dome in a rance of designs. These include both circles and swirls. There were a great range of actual design and fifferent size cirl and swirl motifs as well as the soze of the collar itself. We also notice substantial differences in the openess of the design. Some collars were done so you can see quite a bit of the suit underneath. Others had more of a closed or solid look to them. Some look to be lace circiles sewn together. This could be done in different shapes. We see some sewn to gether with a collar tip look, but this was difficult whn large cirles were used. . Others were rounded collars, completely covering the front and back of the collar area.

Pointed Collars

Some lace collars were done to resemble actual collars. Some had pointed tips and others a more rounded look. These collars had an open front where the collar under the pin-on lace collar buttoned.

Rounded Neck Covering

Some lace collars were done with no effort to replicate the look of a collar and instead just cover the entire area around the neck. Some collars rather eveloped the boy the collars had no open front, compketely coveing the front. Theu could vary in size. Some were small while others extended to or beyond the shoulders. While we term these rounded collars, this was the general shape of the collars. The actual hem might be done in rays or insets with ponted or rounded alternations.

Star Rays

Some lace collars were done with multipe rays. Some could be short, squat rays. Other could be long narrow rays. The overall shape of the collar varied, but were generally done in a circular pattern.

Square Collars

We notice some lace collars done as squares or perhaps more commonly. The square/rectangle lace collar does not seem as common as many other other styles, in part because it generally meant covering a fairly large area and lace was expensive. It also was a plainer shape, an mothers at the time were more concerbned with fancy decorative ornamentation. We notice one example of an essentially rectangular lace collar worn by Frank Wulf, we think in the 1880s. His lace collar had circles added to the basically rectangular shape. We note other collars that were more fully square. Some look rather like bibs, but we don't think mothers would have used expebsive lace as bibs and in fact lace would have not served to really protect the garment undeneath.

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Created: 12:52 AM 11/13/2007
Last updated: 2:47 PM 11/3/2008